Evil reveals complexity of humanity
In the summer of 1966, Richard Speck murdered eight nurses in Chicago. I was in sixth grade and read everything I could about it. I did the same a few years later when serial killer Ted Bundy surfaced in Seattle. But as an adult, I’ve lost my fascination with serial killers, because no one has figured out exactly what makes them tick. If we can’t understand them, then everyone we love is vulnerable to their madness.
There’s enough to worry about in this world, so I had no intention to read much about Dennis Rader of Kansas, the 59-year-old man suspected of murdering at least 10 people in the Wichita area. But then, in our Sunday story about him, one detail caught my attention.
The serial killer once wrote, “I can’t stop it so the monster goes on and hurts me as well as society. It’s a big complicated game my friend the monster play, putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting.”
Was this “monster” actually Satan? Read M. Scott Peck’s latest book, “Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption,” and you’ll ponder the possibility. Peck’s book, a swift seller at Amazon.com, is generating some fascinating buzz on spirituality Web sites.
The best explanation of evil I’ve encountered is in Peck’s 1983 book, “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil.” In it, he says that at several points in people’s lives, they face moral decisions.
Decide one way and innocent people suffer. Evil ensues. The child an adult brutally beats, for instance, will learn violence firsthand and possibly spread it. Evil escalates, Peck believes, when adults refuse to get help to change their harmful behavior.
“When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder,” Peck writes. “Evil is also that which kills spirit. Evil is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.”
“People of the Lie” is not about Satan, though Peck briefly discusses two exorcisms he witnessed as a young psychiatrist. He always hoped to write more about the exorcisms before he died. Peck is in his late 60s now, and he has Parkinson’s disease. He says “Glimpses of the Devil” will be his final book.
In it, Peck describes exorcisms he performed on two women, Jersey and Beccah. Neither woman seemed likely candidates for possession. Both had been religious. Both had families, education and intelligence. Both wished to be healed from what was considered mainstream mental illness.
Though Peck believes demonic possession is real, he also believes it is extremely rare. He concludes that the women chose to collude with their demonic freeloaders. And they also had to choose to kick them out. Jersey did. Beccah didn’t.
The book, written in an almost clinical tone, is no “Exorcist.” Still, it’s scary as hell. Beccah, for instance, returned from vacations with shockingly deep suntans, because she always felt ice cold inside. The night I finished the book, I didn’t sleep well.
The book stirs questions about the true nature of evil. If Rader is the serial killer, how could a devout Lutheran, a man married for 30 years, a father of two, a responsible professional, coldly murder so many people? At one point in the serial killer’s life, he faced a choice. He could murder that first victim. Or he could seek help for the compulsion to do so. He allegedly chose to kill. Did the devil make him do it?
I wish it were that simple. But evil is a complex mystery. Every day, people make destiny-altering choices. They get drunk as skunks and drive that way, their children in the car with them. They abuse others, through words and deeds. They refuse psychological and spiritual help when needed and offered. They choose actions that crush the spirits of others, in small ways and in big.
And we’re all capable of this kind of evil, no doubt about it. That might be the scariest thought of all.