Is the World Becoming More Evil?

June 14, 2022

It is beyond debate among reasonable people that the world contains a great deal of evil, so much evil that the heart of any God-fearing person can be (or should be!) moved to tears daily.

Mass shootings.

Sex trafficking.

Government corruption.

Beatings on the street.

Wait, are we describing 2022, or 1922. Or 1122?

In one sense, we could be describing all of the above, and more. In another sense, evil perpetrated against other image-bearers has taken on new life in our age of cell phone videos that are blasted instantaneously to the entire world and tweets that within minutes are read by millions, with vivid pictures delivering the full emotional gut punch in all its bloody, teary grittiness. We no longer need to imagine the ugliest parts of fallen humanity, we now see it 24-7.

Hence the well-known debate: Is society becoming more evil, or do we just see more evil?

Is there quantifiably more evil, or is the evil that’s always been there just more visible? We all know of those “news” organizations whose bottom lines depend on our collective shock factor. We need no statistics to persuade us that the headlines about the latest school shooting get more clicks than the headlines about your community’s efforts to feed the homeless.

And clicks equal money. We get that. We all learned to add two and two many years ago.

Isn't It Plain?

It is beyond doubt that unless you live in a cave separated from all cyberspace interaction (in which case, you’re not likely to be reading these words), then you need no convincing. You are painfully aware that seeing evil has reached new empathy-numbing levels. But how should the Christian think of the sharp rise in the visibility of evil around us? Is the world more evil, or is the world just getting better at promoting the evil that has always existed?

First, the Scriptures affirm that from the moment of the Fall, the heart of man has been corrupted by the evil that all men and women have invited in. From heaven, God observes that mankind had been utterly infected with the contagion of evil.

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. -Genesis 6:5

That sweeping statement should stun the reader. The wickedness of man was great in the earth. Every intention of the thoughts of our hearts was now corrupted. To our core, evil had now lodged itself continually.

And the world flood for which this description was to prepare us did not correct the problem. Indeed, the testimony of Scripture is, if anything, the testimony of the consistent and domineering presence of evil in every aspect of every society that Scripture describes; from the Egyptians to the Edomites, from the Macedonians to the Moabites, and from the Hebrews to the Hellenists.

This describes the grand narrative of the Bible; the hopelessness of enslaved and wholly corrupted humanity, the distortion of the image of God in His image-bearers, a distortion from which the image-bearers cannot extricate themselves, a perversion of who we are, a perversion that not only swallows us up in bloody violence on our streets, but swallows us equally into penetrating dissatisfaction and unhappiness deep within our souls.

And this distortion is certainly a penetrating one, penetrating to every aspect of our humanity.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? -Jeremiah 17:9

...to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. -Titus 1:15

…the hearts of the children of man are full of evil… -Ecclesiastes 9:3

Truly, the heart of man has always been evil, at least since that fateful moment in the Garden.

But does this mean that what we so painfully witness each day is simply a function of living in the 21st century, with the world literally at our fingertips and being beamed into our consciousnesses through LED screens?

Not exactly, because Scripture also affirms a certain increase of evil that we are to expect, or at least an increase in the allowance of evil in society.

Always Evil, Yet Increasingly Evil

The prophets speak of the increase of wickedness in society, particularly the prophets Ezekiel and Hosea. Jesus, likewise, makes mention of the (coming) increase in evil when He says:

It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. -Matthew 10:25

Jesus recognizes the evil contained in the fact that “they” have called Good evil, and what could be more evil than ascribing the Source of all goodness (James 1:17) to the credit of the great Deceiver? At the same time, Jesus foreshadows an increase in such wickedness.

One of the most interesting places that the Scriptures address this rise of evil that is to be expected comes from the prophet Daniel. In the first vision of the book, given to Nebuchadnezzar and related in chapter 2, the Lord portrays the coming kingdoms of the world by a statue made of five materials. From head to toe, the statue is made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay (Daniel 2:31-45). Daniel himself interprets the dream for Nebuchadnezzar, indicating that the “sections” of the statue are teaching of the “kingdoms” that are to come: Nebuchadnezzar’s own Babylon, followed by the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, and finally the "kingdoms" that will rule until His return.

What’s interesting to see is the progression of the materials and the vast diversity of their traits. A clear progression is seen from the head (Babylon) to the feet, and the progression is an inverse one. The golden head is both the softest and the most valuable. From that, the statue becomes stronger, more durable, and less valuable (gold-silver-bronze-iron-clay).

Each progressive “kingdom” is therefore becoming stronger (and longer-lasting), as well as less valuable. It is the Lord’s intention to teach us here of a progression in both the strength of evil, as well as the decline in “value” (think “morality”).

To put it another way, Nebuchadnezzar’s vision shows a societal path in which the kingdom of evil grows stronger and, in a sense, more evil.

Can people really be more evil than the Babylonians? After all, Nebuchadnezzar famously threw innocent men into furnaces for not worshiping a statue that represented himself (Daniel 3:1-30). Earlier, he slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah while making him watch, and then put out his eyes so that the sight of his suffering and dying sons would be his last vision, branded into his mind for the remainder of his tortured life (2 Kings 25:7). That’s pretty evil.

So, in a manner of speaking, humanity has always had the same potential for evil. Nebuchadnezzar was no more evil in potential than was Hitler. This affirms what we all instinctively know: that people have suffered at the hands of cruel and evil people since Abel lay on the ground in a pool of his own blood with his brother scowling over his lifeless body.

But there’s another factor to consider: a kind and compassionate God that sovereignly limits the reign of evil for His good purpose. But that limit will not always remain constant.

We see this alluded to in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, a congregation with a sharp interest in the progression of events and circumstances leading to the end of this age.

And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. -2 Thessalonians 2:6-7

The context here is the “Man of Lawlessness” (a better translation would be “Man of Sin”), who Paul, drawing from Daniel’s prophetic imagery (Daniel 7:24-27, 8:23-26, 11:28-39) describes as one who exalts himself over the worship of God Himself. The precise identity of such an individual is beyond our point here, as is the identity of the “restrainer.” Our aim here is merely to see something about what Scripture expects the world to look like as the return of Christ gets closer.

As the return of Christ grows closer, Scripture expects a world that is progressively subjected to the increasing manifestation of evil.

That’s not to say that the human heart is more evil today than in the day of Vlad the Impaler of the 15th century, the real-life inspiration for Count Dracula, who famously murdered more than 20 percent of his subjects by impaling them on a stake that entered their buttocks and exited their mouths. But that is to say, that the sovereign God is presiding over a world in which He is allowing an increased manifestation of evil.

It’s not just that Facebook and Twitter show us more evil. There really is more evil to be shown.

Bad News Is Really Good News, If Your View Is an Eternal One

But this is good news. It is good news because it means that the return of the Son of Man is nearer than ever before, and that Day will be a Day of unparalleled joy for the Redeemed of the Lord.

To be clear, the Christian must never celebrate evil. But as the eternal Family of God, we live in two realities: one earthly, one eternal.

The earthly reality is one of ever-increasing sorrow, but the eternal reality is one of ever-increasing anticipation.

To the Christian who understands this, the daily news cycle is an unwitting confirmation that our God reigns.

Jason Wilkerson serves Disciples Fellowship as Pastor-Elder. Jason has been married to Meredith for more than 20 years, and together they have six children. Pastor Jason holds degrees from NC State (BA), and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv, ThM). Jason has followed Christ for more than 40 years and has a passion for expository preaching.