Maintaining Optimism in a Society Tainted with Evil

I don't usually blog about front-page news, but this whole thing with Roman Polanski has got me really frustrated. And deeply saddened...

Roman Polanski, film director of such movies as "Chinatown," fled the United States in 1978 to escape jail time, after he plead down his drugging and raping of a 13-year-old girl to "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor." According to his own plea, he was guilty. More concrete evidence of his guilt is in the publicly-accessible court record, in which the 13-year-old child recounts being given liquor, quaaludes, and being sexually violated in several ways. He was arrested in Switzerland on Saturday and brought back to the U.S.

His sin was vile and lecherous, that is for certain. Whether or not he has changed his ways and his heart only God knows for sure. But what gets my goat is that this child rapist is celebrated like a hero in Hollywood, just because he made some noteworthy films. It is heartbreaking that Hollywood has embraced him as a tortured hero, even signing petitions to get him released. But then again, Hollywood is its own world, and seems to have created a community where anything goes and there truly is no right or wrong, as long as you have notoriety. Who needs morals or any decency at all when you have money and fame?

Despicable, that is for sure. And it hurts my heart that so many celebrities that I used to admire have backed Polanski, including Martin Scorcese, David Lynch, Jonathan Demme (director, "Silence of the Lambs"), and the most heartbreaking of all, Whoopi Goldberg, among many others. Hollywood has gone past the line of 'amoral,' into a dark and vile area of embracing evil. And that is sickening.

But alas, reflecting on the path of our society with God is always enlightening and uplifting: one must keep in mind that just because morally-bankrupt hedonists showing their support for truly evil acts tend to get a significant amount of time in front of the cameras, and hence find their ways into our living rooms, does not mean they speak for the majority. If my calculations are correct, and I'm sure they are, most people are actually good. Technically, 60% of people are actually and really oriented toward good. Of the 40% left, 35% of people are morally neutral and often act selfishly, but rarely out of spite or evil. The last 5% actually enjoy being as evil as they need to be to get what they want. Sure, these numbers are made up, but you get the idea.

My point (finally!) is that just because we see people doing vile and evil things in our world, and that they even have supporters (as hard as that is to wrap one's brain around), does not mean that society is collapsing and that goodness is losing. It just means that those espousing evil are getting air time. That's it.

Most people truly are good. And that is really comforting. So is the fact that God will see to it that goodness wins out and all people get their due justice. And God absolutely will. God rules all.