By Adam Van Der Stoep

Read in 4 minutes

Published October 14, 2024

LOOKING FOR BLAME IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

"I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

That was my initial thought when I saw him from across the street. He was on his belly, face down on the ice-covered sidewalk. He wasn't moving at all. I hurried across the road to see if there was any life left in his body only to find that he was sound asleep; passed out from a drunken binge the night before. I could almost taste the alcohol through every small breath he breathed. 

I spent the first few minutes on my hands and knees shaking him, trying to get him awake. His face was burned red from the alcohol and from the winter wind beating his face all night long. He was wearing a ratted T-shirt and a thin denim jacket which match his faded blue jeans and worn-out cowboy boots. I shook the him again and again. Nothing. He was out.

Eventually he did wake up and open his eyes. I remember how dead he looked in side. He stirred only partially awake.

I offered him a bit of food that I had on me at the time. My questions of, "Are you okay?" and, "Do you need help?" were met with silence. When he finally did speak up, garbled, unintelligible words poured out of his mouth. I had no idea what he was saying.

He finally managed to prop himself up against the curb and begin to eat what I had given him. And as I sat next to this man watching him eat, I remember asking seriously, for the first time in my life… What is wrong with the world?

My mind raced for some quick answers.

The man. Yes! Of course! The man was part of the problem, too. His choices as an individual were obviously the problem. He made his bed on the side of the road and he had to sleep in it.

But still, my mind raced for more answers to explain what I was seeing.

"He can't be solely responsible, can he?" I thought. "He obviously has an addiction. Alcoholism probably runs in his family. And if he's genetically predisposed to this kind of disease, then he is not really the problem."

My mind hoped to another explanation.

Society. Society is to blame, of course. How can we live in a society that is so indifferent to the sufferings of others? How can we live in a world where people just walk and drive by folks who are passed out on the side of the road? We should be pointing the finger at policy makers and community leaders who allow this madness to continue.

But my mind knew that society was the only part of the problem. And in its frenzy of looking for explanations I ended up in my own crosshairs.

What if... what if I was part of the problem?

What if I was partly to blame?

Should I have given him more food? brought him to a shelter? Should I have been like the Good Samaritan and helped him get back on his feet? Should I have brought him to a hotel and advocated for him until he got into rehab and recovery program?

Looking back on those moments now I can see how I was just trying to make sense of the world I was living and give an explanation for what I was seeing. My intuition told me that something was not right in the world, but pinpointing what exactly was wrong and where that wrongness (dare I say evil) came from proved more difficult than I'd ever imagined.

Something is wrong in the world. A deep and powerful evil has its grip on this earth we call home and everything that lives in it...

But how do I begin to explain that?

Questions For Reflection: How do you see the world?

• How would you define evil?
• Do you think evil exists in the world, or are bad things and bad people just "inconveniences"?
• Do you believe the world should be a certain way? What makes you believe that?
• Do you think we have to explain what is wrong with the world, or is that not an important question to ask?
• What are solutions the world has provided in response to evil? Are any of those responses helpful? How so? If not, why are they not helpful?