Fear No Evil

My title comes from one of the best-known parts of the Old Testament: Number 23 in the Book of Psalms. I have been familiar with it since the two years of my childhood which were spent in my mother’s hometown of Toronto, Canada. At that time (1940), it was still quite permissible for religion and prayers to be a part of daily classroom activities in a regular public school. But often there was not as much explanation as perhaps there should have been.

I particularly remember that, after hearing about the Children of Israel worshipping in the desert, I could not understand how those warships had ever got into the desert!

Of course, since my own religious background was Jewish, there was even more room for being puzzled by much that I heard. One of our songs was a hymn, which, as I heard it, said “Jesus loves me, Ess I know, for the Bible tells me so.” I didn’t know the meaning of “Ess I,” – but that was the way I insisted I heard it.

But that 23rd Psalm is a truly beautiful statement of Faith. It likens every believer to one in a flock of sheep, their deity the shepherd who oversees their well-being and protects them from danger.

My wife, who was not a religious person, so much liked the part that says “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” that she gave those names to her two favorite cats.

But we did have other ways of giving cats names. To one pair, whom we acquired together, and who seemed always to be full of mischief, we gave the names of Missie and Chief.

But the part of the Psalm which to me seems most deeply meaningful is that which says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” The trouble is, we are all walking in that shadow, and it’s hard not to be fearful.

But that Evil which we should not fear – what is it? The Psalm itself suggests some answers. We are to “lie down in green pastures” “beside the still waters.” The message I get is that this is, or should be, a World of Peace and Plenty – and anything which threatens that harmonious balance is evil. But the mention of being comforted by a “rod” and a “staff” implies that there are still possibly human dangers out there. (Yes, I know that shepherds carried those implements partly to assist in keeping the flock together, and also to fight off wolves.)

Ironically, we must admit that, even now, more than two millennia later, there are all kinds of evils to be feared, including many that were not even envisaged back then by David – to whom the Psalm is attributed – or whoever wrote this beautiful statement of faith. We know so much more about diseases, both physical and mental, about the problems of at least controlling those organisms we now consider “pests,” about ways of committing, preventing, and dealing with what we now classify as criminal behavior. Also there are all the ways we can be troubled, hurt, and even killed, by evils associated with modern technology, such as the automobile.

I happen to be something of an authority on that latter evil. Having first settled in Los Angeles when I came to this country from England as a young immigrant, I was fascinated to be living in a community which was so dominated by the multiplicity of that vehicle. I eventually made its social effects the topic of my Berkeley PhD dissertation, which later became a book called “The Great Car Craze.”

But we must remember: The same book that features that powerful Psalm with its sheltering assurance that we need fear no evil, virtually begins with God giving us a “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” As Hamlet would say, “Ay, there’s the rub!”

So, according to the Book of Genesis, no matter what the Psalm says, evil has been with us from the very beginning. That is certainly confirmed by the so-called Ten Commandments, which include specific prohibitions on killing
and stealing.

As for my own published thoughts on this subject, possibly one of the truest and best is the one that says:

Most people don’t like to complain –
That’s why there’s still so much evil
in the world.