Monday, February 22, 2016

Just like his mother, the character Waller/Kunchin in David Baldacci's book 'Deliver Us From Evil' believed in God and attended church regularly, but unlike his mother, he did evil things and led an evil life. As explained in the book, Waller had some interesting thoughts on evil:

His poor mother, good to the last. Yet what she didn't understand about evil, her son clearly did. Given the proper motivation anyone was capable of terrible cruelty, baseless savagery, horrific violence. A mother would kill to protect her child or a child for his mother. A soldier kills to protect his country. Waller had killed to protect both his mother and his country. He was good at it, understood quite clearly the mind-set required. He was not desensitized to violence; he respected it. He did not use it cavalierly. Yet when he did employ it, he couldn't say that he didn't enjoy the process, because he did. Did that make him evil? Perhaps. Would his mother have considered him evil? Clearly not. He killed for his country, his mother, and his own survival. When people struck him, he struck back. There could be no fairer set of rules ever conceived. He was who he was. He was true to himself, while most people lived their lives as a facade only, their real selves buried under a platform of lies. They would smile at their friend before thrusting the knife into his back. Under those parameters, who was truly the evil one?

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