Unimaginable Evil

For someone who owns six or seven dictionaries, you'd think I'd know more, but you'd be wrong. There are a lot of words I don't understand, really common ones, too, and I'm not proud of that at all.

The word evil is one of those, and I run across that one all the time.

If I try to figure out what it means by considering how it's used, I can only conclude that evil means "to stop debate." Whenever something is called evil, the point is to stop thinking about whoever's called that and to just go along with the person saying that. No further thought or consideration is necessary. The case is closed, and there's nothing to agree about except how right the person using the word must be.

I have a couple problems with evil, not the least of which is that the word carries some amount of religious baggage. The other thing is that I can't imagine a truly evil person. I can imagine evil actions, or, maybe even evil incidents, but not someone who is evil personified, and that's how I'm supposed to think, according to the person making the claim.

Hitler, of course, is often used as an example of evil, and there's no denying that he was responsible for some pretty horrific policies and actions. But even so, I'm not comfortable with calling him evil. He had evil plans, he did evil things, but is that all that's meant when people equate him with evil? I don't know.

I can easily imagine someone robbing and killing somebody and being called evil, but if that's done because of hunger or love for someone else or to save his children, well, I can despise the act but still consider the killer not to be evil. Yep, he's doing something wrong, no doubt about it, and probably had other ways of defending someone's honor or putting food on the table, so I agree with calling him out on his actions. But I'm just not comfortable calling the guy evil.

That word, to me, means something very special. I'm just not sure what that special thing is.