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October 9, 2025
There are no hands, no matter how pure, that can be trusted with the Ring for long: such is its force that it turns every good motive toward evil.
Lewis understood evil in much the same way: it is an objective power in the world, waging a war for individual souls. It seeks to create a society of slaves, ruled by despots, and “held together entirely by fear and greed.”18
evil is a sleepless force in human lives, and that the war against it demands constant vigilance.
It is hard to imagine a more cautionary tale for the crusader in all of us: however noble the motives may be, they easily become twisted by the thought of glory and the taste of power.
“The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already, even in Ransom’s own time begun to be warped, had been subtly maneuvered in a certain direction,” wrote
The perverse relationship between technology, science, and power became a defining reality of the postwar years. Eugenics, communism, fascism, Nazism: these were the revolutions and ideologies that arose in the exhaustion of the democracies of Europe, all in the name of advancing the human race. All began by promising liberation from oppression; all became instruments of totalitarian control.
“The major disillusionment of the twentieth century has been over political good intentions, which have led only to gulags and killings fields.
The power of evil is not confined to a single, swift decision to side with the Enemy. More often it involves a subtle and gradual perversion.
For nothing is evil in the beginning.
the ancient problem of the Will to Power: the universal temptation to exploit, dominate, and control the lives of others.
This is the motive force animating the great Enemy
“But the only measure he knows is desire,” says Gandalf, ...
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“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into Nothing,”
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
They want Studdock to write a false news account of “riots” in Edgestow, which would give the Government an excuse to exercise emergency powers—and tighten its grip on the town.
The idea of personal moral guilt, however, was widely rejected in the postwar years. Psychology, philosophy, literature, even theology—all these disciplines were helping to erode individual responsibility. Vices and addictions were explained medically or scientifically, not in moral or religious terms. “Collective” or “biological” forces replaced old-fashioned notions of “sin.”
The war against evil is the moral landscape of our mortal lives: a journey of souls degraded or redeemed, dragged into the Darkness of self or led into the Light of grace.
The most influential Christian authors of the twentieth century believed that every human soul was caught up in a very great story: a fearsome war against a Shadow of Evil that has invaded the world to enslave the sons and daughters of Adam. Yet those who resist the Shadow are assured that they will not be left alone; they will be given the gift of friendship amid their struggle and grief. Even more, they will find the grace and strength to persevere, to play their part in the story, however long it endures and wherever it may lead them.
