Four Types of Evil, Part III

Spiritual evil and the violence in nature cause people to lose their faith in God. Can this be prevented?

By Brian Lowther

Editor’s Note: Over the past few weeks here on the RWI blog, we’ve been exploring Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction. Today, Brian Lowther finishes his three-part series examining Seed #1: The Seed of the Problem of Evil.

In my last blog entry I looked at a few examples to substantiate my hunch that when we battle certain kinds of evil, it shows that God is not the source of these evils, that he does not condone these evils, and that he is actively and visibly opposing these evils through us. I think this idea and these examples go a long way in preventing people from walking away from faith. Today I’ll continue in that vein, with some examples from the categories of Spiritual Evil and Violence in Nature.

1. Spiritual Evil

I think it's safe to say that believers are doing what they can to address the roots of Spiritual Evil by casting out demons and delivering people from demonization through the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

I won’t pretend to know much about the prevalence of this kind of demonic activity or the ins and outs of deliverance ministries. When the demonic activity described in the New Testament happens today, my initial response is to categorize it in a medical or psychiatric sense (e.g., seizures, self-harming behavior, schizophrenia, muteness, etc.) rather than demonic activity. I’m admittedly out of my depth when deciphering between demon possession and medical or psychiatric maladies. Having said that, I know there are legitimate deliverance ministries out there. Chuck Kraft’s Heart’s Set Free ministry is the first one that comes to mind. And to me, the existence and earnestness of these ministries says something about God. 

What do these things say about God? When believers are active in conquering the roots of this kind of evil, it says that God does not intend for people or the world to be infested with evil spiritual beings. And this allows believers to trust in God’s goodness, which prevents them from losing their faith.

For an fascinating blog entry about demonic activity and our response to it, see Roger Olson’s Should Western Christians Rediscover Exorcism?, including the comment thread. I also recommend the dispassionate way this man shares about his own experience in The Washington Post: How a scientist learned to work with exorcists.

2. Violence in Nature

In Part I of this series, I brought up the common assumption that violence in nature is normal and necessary and thus the way God intended things. I think this causes scores and scores of people to lose their faith in God, one prominent example being Charles Darwin.[1]

However, I’m not convinced that it was always necessary for animals to kill one another to survive. It doesn't seem that was the case in Eden. Even from an evolutionary perspective, life appears to have evolved for over 3 billion years without the violence and the killing normally associated with evolution.[2] Perhaps it is necessary now. But that doesn't mean it is how God intended or wanted it to be,[3] or how it will be in the future when the wolf will live with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6), or how we should foresee the kind of world God wants us to work towards.

Am I asking Christians to refocus all their attention on genetically re-engineering wolves so they won’t hunt, kill and eat lambs? No, I’m asking whether God wants us to do anything about a much more potent and efficient killing machine: the mosquito. Bill Gates—who is spearheading efforts to eradicate malaria—has said that the mosquito is the deadliest animal in the world.[4] When it comes to killing humans, no other animal even comes close. Actually, if we are talking about malaria, the plasmodium parasite in the gut of the mosquito is the real culprit. And, while Christians are noted down through history for being kind to people who are sick and helping them get well, we are not well known for fighting the viruses, the bacteria, and the tiny parasites—as in the case of malaria—that cause some of our most harmful diseases. We mount no offense against the pathogens themselves .

While treating the symptoms of diseases like malaria is necessary and perfectly good, ignoring its roots says something about God. It proclaims loudly and embarrassingly that “our God can merely get you a hospital bed to lie on [with a bed net perhaps] and a ticket to heaven,” [5] but either he does not know of the real cause of malaria, does not care, or does not have the ability to do anything about it.

One solution to this problem is a very public, top-to-bottom stance against disease at its roots, both in our theology and in our practical efforts. Otherwise I think people will continue to assume that God intended and created diseases like malaria and all violence in nature and thus will continue to lose their faith. 

Conclusion

As I said before, I think God has called us, commissioned us, and prepared us (i.e., he has given us the wisdom, ingenuity and the ability to work together, plus a Wonderful Counselor) to battle the four types of evil I've covered in this series. When we do, I think that says that God is not the instigator of these evils, that he does not approve of these evils, and that he is unmistakably opposing these evils through us. Being convinced of this, and being aware of and partnering with those who are attempting to fight evil at its roots, will go a long way in ensuring that people never turn their backs on God’s goodness and his powerful love.

But that’s just my speculation. What do you think?

Endnotes

[1] http://philosophiesofmen.blogspot.com/2012/01/charles-darwin-not-atheist.html

[2] This was during the pre-Cambrian era when life forms were very primitive. See: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/camblife.html

[3] See Genesis 1: 29, 30: Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

[4] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Most-Lethal-Animal-Mosquito-Week

[5] Ralph D. Winter, “A Blindspot in Western Christianity?” in Frontiers in Mission.

Photo Credit: U.S. Army medical researchers take part in World Malaria Day 2010, Kisumu, Kenya US Army Africa/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of
the Roberta Winter Institute

A New Interpretation of Genesis 1 and a More Complex Mission

Interpreting Genesis 1 so that it doesn't conflict with the latest scientific views about the age of the earth, while also making sense of the problem of evil, and what that means for Christian mission.

By Ralph D. Winter (compiled and edited by Beth Snodderly)

Editor’s Note: Today Beth Snodderly finishes her four-part series exploring Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction by compiling and condensing material from a number of Winter’s essays. You can read the previous installments here: Are We Building an Enduring Christianity or Not?, Emotionalism vs. Intellectualism, and Violence, Suffering, and Evil Are Not God’s Will.

As mentioned in the previous blog entry, two significant barriers to Christian belief are the rampant suffering, violence, and evil in this world as if there is no Satan behind it, and a Bible that is thought to have feet of clay, beginning with Genesis 1. Both of these obstacles to belief can be dealt with in an unusual way: a brief scenario that attempts conjecturally to interpret Genesis 1 in such a way as not to conflict with the latest scientific views. It may be helpful in dealing with either non-Christians or Christians about to lose their faith, people who believe current science is mainly correct in regard to 1) how old the earth is, and 2) how long ago humans first appeared, but for whom these two things are difficult to square with the Bible. This story will also be helpful to anyone who is confused about why and how radical evil appeared in our world. This scenario differs from the view of many scientists in that it explains the development of life by a means quite different from a Darwinian style random process. Furthermore, it allows for much of both the so-called “Young Earth” and the “Old Earth” perspectives. Most of all, it highlights a strikingly new dimension in the definition of Christian mission.

I am thinking more and more of the possibility (which I think should at least be considered!) that the lengthy “geologic ages” occurred before Genesis 1:1, and that no matter what you think about all those vicious animal fossils that have been dug up, you can’t interpret the non-carnivorous life described in Genesis 1 to be the same thing. Most people unthinkingly assume that way back when Genesis was written there was knowledge of a planet, solar system, galaxy, and indeed an entire universe and that precisely the beginning of all that is what is being referred to in Genesis 1:1. Certainly it is easy for us unthinkingly to read our knowledge today into something that was put together several thousand years ago when Genesis came into oral tradition and was later written down.

Now, I would not be giving this example if I had not discovered that Dr. Merrill Unger, who for nineteen years was chair of the Old Testament department at Dallas seminary, clearly espoused this view way back in 1958 in the pages of the Bibliotheca Sacra, and then, later described it in his Unger’s Bible Handbook. Please understand that the idea that the long geologic ages occurred before the Genesis account of a “new creation” is as an idea, not something I “believe” in the same way I believe some other things. This idea, however, does commend itself to me as the interpretation which is most fair to the Bible. I feel we must be very cautious that we do not find ourselves demanding that the Bible say what we would like it to say, or saying what we expect it to say, or even saying what many people think it says.

This “new creation” concept allows for both young earth and old earth views to be true. But there is something else that is the thing most important for me. If the thousands of forms of life that are now extinct lived before Genesis 1, their pervasively violent, perverted, distorted, carnivorous, predatory character could then be conceived to be the evil work of Satan and his rebel angels after his “fall.” This more concrete idea of a first fall would suggest that the second “fall,” that of Adam, resulted in the rejection of the newly created, undistorted life forms of Genesis chapter one, forcing them out of the Garden of Eden, into the larger planet where they would interbreed and intermarry with the long-perverted other forms of life. Result? A gradual reversion to the pre-Genesis perversity and viciousness that were the result of Satan’s earlier fall. This then provides a rationale for the need for God’s new beginning described in Genesis.

A More Complex Mission

For me, then, this would define a much more complex mission for redeemed man: to destroy the works of Satan. Since God is extensively blamed and his glory stained by common assumptions that there is no Satan, and all evil is God’s “mysterious will,” our mission is to “re-glorify” God. We can do this by seeking, in his name, to restore to God’s original intention, where possible, Satan’s perversions in all forms of life. This includes participating in serious efforts to eradicate diseases caused by viruses, many bacteria, and most parasites. This kind of activity would seem to be highly crucial in restoring the reputation of God, who is now being blamed for all sorts of evil. This basic type of amplification of mission can uniquely empower evangelism. As a Caltech scientist once implied to me, who wants to be in heaven forever with a God with a stained and gruesome reputation?

Insight into the Real Nature of Salvation

A major reason people are leaving the church, losing their faith, and staying away in the first place, is because the church has not adequately stepped up to bat along with civil forces to beat down the corruption, disease, and poverty of at least a billion hopeless people. Evangelicals have misread the Bible. Salvation is not just a “ticket to heaven.” In my opinion a basic problem is our blindness to the essentially wartime calling of those who follow Christ. The church has largely gone AWOL, distracted or preoccupied with programs that serve our own ends. But the Bible does not call us to save ourselves, to solidify our security, or just to talk about world problems. God is asking humans to choose to join him in the battle to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and restore shalom to creation.

Historically, in hundreds of foreign fields, schools and hospitals have portrayed God’s love, just as did the practical dimension of Jesus’ ministry. Missionaries in the past have transformed whole countries in many practical ways. Today we know far more about the problems and far more about the solutions than ever before. Yet the world still sees us as merely religious fanatics propagating a salvation that is not here but only in the hereafter.

Self-Serving Church or Challenging World Problems?

Building the Church in both number and depth is self-defeating if the larger purpose of God’s calling is ignored. It is like recruiting soldiers for a non-existent war. Why self-defeating? The self-serving church may expand by attracting people interested in their own salvation, but if it only serves itself it also crumbles and self-destructs. Isn’t this what happened to Italy, France, England? Is France the end product, where 80% are “Christian” but only 20% believe in God? The church is now crumbling globally (as well as expanding), like salt losing its savor. This is true even on the “mission field,” even where high percentages are believers. For example, Nagaland in India, or the Central African Republic, 97% and 70% “Christian” respectively, yet are also known to be exceedingly corrupt.

We often rejoice over the global gains of the Church, but there is another side! If people are being won into the front door and eventually move out the back door, what could be the answer? We are to be salt and light in this world. That means not just adding members to the Church but glorifying God by our good deeds (Matt 5:16). We are saved by the infusion of God’s power (grace) into our lives precisely so that we can do those good deeds (Eph 2:8-10).

Conclusion

We have greater opportunities and greater obligations than ever in history. Yet the chasm between our unemployed resources and an effective challenge to big world problems is very great. It is apparent that organized believers are largely missing in the conduct of the Kingdom of God, in bringing His will into the dark and suffering places in our world. [A notable exception is the 2008 announcement that billionaire Ted Turner was partnering with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the United Methodist Church to raise funds to stop deaths from global malaria. In January, 2016, the ELCA announced it had reached its $15 million goal of funds raised to combat malaria through its relief and development arm. “Thank you for naming suffering as contrary to God’s will and working to correct injustice,” an ELCA blog stated in announcing the successful conclusion of the ELCA Malaria Campaign (http://blogs.elca.org/malaria/2667-2/).]

The cure for a church that is in many ways staggering, stalling, and sitting down, the cure for our malaise and evaporating faith, is clear-cut definitive obedience. We must face and define the need to get organized answers to this world’s problems as well as getting individuals reconciled to God. In fact, getting people reconciled to God and to his Kingdom business must go together. Otherwise our absence at the frontlines of major global problems means we are misrepresenting God’s will and misusing the wisdom and resources he has given us to act out and speak out his love and glorify his name among all peoples. What kind of a Christ are we to follow? “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8, NASB). If we “declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples” (Psalm 96:3, NIV), we will then build the Church on a solid foundation that will not crumble.

References

Unger, Merrill F. 1958. “Rethinking the Genesis Account of Creation.” Bibliotheca Sacra 115 (January-March): 27-35.

______. 1967. Unger’s Bible Handbook. Chicago: Moody Press.

USA Today. 2008. Ted Turner Apologizes, Joins Churches’ $200M Malaria Fight. April 1. Accessed May 2, 2016. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-04-01-turner-churches_N.htm.

Image: Aftab Uzzaman/Flickr

Ralph D. Winter (12/8/24 – 5/20/09) founded the Roberta Winter Institute.

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Board.

Violence, Suffering, and Evil Are Not God’s Will

People are rejecting the Bible and losing their faith for no other reason than its honesty! They do not realize that the Bible very reliably portrays a nation of people who gradually gained deeper insights, whose flawed words and deeds are not always what the Bible teaches.

By Ralph D. Winter (compiled and edited by Beth Snodderly)

Editor’s Note: Today Beth Snodderly continues her four-part series exploring Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction by compiling and condensing material from a number of Winter’s essays. You can read the previous installments here: Are We Building an Enduring Christianity or Not?, and Emotionalism vs. Intellectualism.

Insight into God’s Character: Violence, Suffering, and Evil Are Not God’s Will

We see two significant barriers to Christian belief: a Bible thought to have feet of clay beginning with Genesis 1, and the rampant violence and evil in this world. The reason I am so concerned to identify evil, and become known as a believer in Jesus Christ who is fighting it, is because a great deal of evil in this world is blamed on God. How attractive is our invitation to people to turn to and yield to their Father in Heaven if they continue to believe he is the one who contrives for most everyone and everything to die in suffering? Unless Satan is in the picture and we are known to be fighting his deadly works we are allowing God’s glory to be marred and torn down.

Violence in Nature

Is it a hazard to evangelism to be unable to explain why God’s creation pervasively contains so many violent elements, so much horrible suffering and pain? Ruth Tucker’s book, Walking Away from Faith, implies that to be the case. Do Christian missionaries need to think seriously about the apparent incongruity between the Bible’s “good creation” and a violence-filled nature? I think so.

The “good creation” of Genesis 1 describes both animals and humans as eating plants, not each other. The wolf lying down with the lamb (Isa 11:6) seems to be the kind of creation that could be attributed to God without qualification. On the other hand, most people have simply grown accustomed to the violence of the streets and the forests. Some people believe that everything—violent, painful, or not—is of God and we will someday be able to see this as part of his “mysterious purposes.” 

But now that we have inklings about how DNA can be altered, is it possible to hypothesize that fallen angels (who are at least as intelligent as humans) have been hard at work in distorting God’s original good creation into the violence in nature we now see? David Snoke, a physics and astronomy professor at the University of Pittsburgh, asks, “Why were dangerous animals created?” He suggests three possibilities: 1) fallen intermediate beings are responsible for dangerous animals, or 2) the Bible teaches that God is responsible for violence in nature, or 3) some process out of God’s control (like an unaided evolution?) is the cause (Snoke 2004, 119). I vote for the first of the three. He takes the second. Darwin, I suppose, chose the third.

But the phenomenal significance of all this for mission is plain. If dangerous animals are part of God’s original plan, and (thus logically) dangerous pathogens as well, we have no “mission” to eradicate dangerous viruses, bacteria, and parasites. And, in that case we have a perplexingly dangerous God to preach. What do you think?

Violence in the Bible

The danger is illustrated by Hector Avalos, former Pentecostal and now Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Illinois, who has lost his respect for the God of the Bible. He says that the Bible ought not to be studied and he is particularly offended by what he sees as the Bible’s “endorsement of violence” (Avalos 2007, 28). But in describing violence, is the Bible teaching it? Have people like Avalos “given up their faith” trying to explain away a number of disturbing things in the Old Testament, as if the Bible asks us to emulate or approve of all the gruesome and barbaric things it reports?

They may not realize that many things in the Bible are the result of a perfectly reasonable, progressively increasing understanding, which the Bible unblushingly reflects without the pretension of insisting that in the Bible there is “no progress of understanding.” At the time the Old Testament was put together as a book, later insights and interpretations were sometimes mingled with earlier understandings. One instance is the startling contrast between 2 Samuel 24:1-24 and 1 Chronicles 21:1-24. I have for some time considered these two passages to constitute the “Rosetta Stone of Biblical Hermeneutics.” In 2 Samuel the NIV says, “God incited David [to do wrong].” In 1 Chronicles the parallel account says “Satan incited David [to do wrong].” As I see it, the centuries-earlier passage speaks from the viewpoint of God’s overall sovereignty, while the post-exilic (post-Zoroastrian) passage adds a new insight. The people of Israel had become aware of the initiative of an intermediate being (Satan) that was created by God, not to be a robot, but with the same kind of freedom that humans have, namely, the freedom to do evil. The Bible does not attempt to pretend that either of these accounts was dictated from heaven.

Thus, here is an example where we do well to “lose our faith”—that is, lose our specious faith in the idea that our Bibles were dictated by God in the way that Muslims and Mormons claim for their holy books, the Qur’an and the Book of Mormon. Rather, we believe that “prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21, NIV). The key word here is “human,” implying limited, though inspired, perspective. In other words, many simplistic views of the Bible may need to be given up. Believing in an inerrant Bible is different from believing in inerrant interpretations.

The Bible is unlike any other religious book in the world. It doesn’t tell us of perfect people. It records horrendous evils and describes people who condone those evils. It even portrays the flaws of leaders. But it doesn’t teach those flaws. It records the literal truth of a chosen nation both seeking and denying God’s will. Does it intend for us to take its every sentence, its every event, as a model to be followed? Of course not. In one sense it mirrors for us how deep and dark our human past has been, how far we have come in better understanding God and his will for us. At the same time, for the same reason, it intends that we not slide back. Most important, we cannot logically criticize it for its honesty and accuracy!

But people are rejecting the Bible and losing their faith for no other reason than its honesty! They do not realize that the Bible very reliably portrays a nation of people who across the centuries gradually gained deeper insights, whose flawed words and deeds are not always what the Bible teaches, and that the story as it leads into the New Testament reveals an archangel adversary who is the most basic answer for the presence of suffering.

Human Suffering

Probably the most vexing and ineffective Christian teaching is what we come up with in the face of tragic and evil events. Why does God allow such things? One young person after his freshman year at college said to his dad, “There is so much evil, suffering, and injustice in the world that either there is no God at all or there is a God of questionable power or character.” This idea is all the more devastating when Evangelicals, having essentially given up believing in an intelligent enemy of God, take to explaining tediously that all this evil must be because God’s ways are simply mysterious. Satan, rampant and powerful in the New Testament, has mainly disappeared from significance following Augustine’s injection of some neo-platonic thought into the Christian tradition.

References

Avalos, Hector. 2007. The End of Biblical Studies. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Snoke, David. 2004. “Why Were Dangerous Animals Created?” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (June): 117-25. Accessed April 29, 2016. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF6-04Snoke.pdf.

Image: Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon by John Martin

Ralph D. Winter (12/8/24 – 5/20/09) founded the Roberta Winter Institute.

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Board.

Was Darwin More Concerned About God's Reputation Than We Are?

By Ralph D. Winter

According to Deborah Cadbury’s book entitled The Terrible Lizard which tells us about early dinosaur hunters, the tumble of new bones being dug up right in England soon became a significant factor in a vast and widespread shift away from what came to be called a “bondage to Moses,” that is, bondage to the Bible.

Cornelius Hunter’s book, Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil, demonstrates conclusively that even Darwin, only a little later, was still concerned about the Christian faith in that he was pained until the day he died by the intellectual task of explaining how a good and all-powerful God could have authored the cruelty which he saw so pervasively in nature, and which many of the discoveries of dinosaur bones dramatically highlighted.

Both Hunter and Cadbury show that in the 1820s Biblical perspectives were major factors filtering interpretations of the bones being discovered of earlier life forms. This was true at Oxford University, for example, which was in that era a citadel of defense of the literal text of the Bible, somewhat of a Moody Bible Institute.

Today we have the wonderful and effective work of the Evangelical pioneers in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, a perspective portrayed magnificently in the Illustra Media video, Unlocking the Mystery of Life. But neither the writings of these pioneer ID people nor this magnificent video reflect any stated concern whatsoever for the perplexing presence of pervasive evil, suffering and cruelty throughout all of nature. Strange, because the lurid presence of evil (“Nature red in tooth and claw”) was a major factor in Darwin’s thinking and the thinking of quite a few other key people who in his day were confused about how the existence of violent forms of life could be congruent with the concept of a benevolent Creator.

Thus, it would appear that some of our present-day creationists are so eager to give God all the credit for all of creation that the virtually unavoidable presence of evil to be seen there has become strangely less important than it was in Darwin’s day and even to Darwin himself. Would it not be very ironic if the man we usually accuse of destroying faith in a Creator God were to turn out to be more interested in preserving the good reputation of that God than are we?

This entry was excerpted from an essay Ralph Winter wrote in the Winter of 2003 entitled, "Where Darwin Scores Higher Than Intelligent Design." The full essay can be read here.

Countering Evil by Eradicating Disease

By Jeff Havenner

Flickr/U.S. Department of Agriculture

Ralph Winter once asked whether pathogenic microorganisms represented "evil intelligent design." My initial thought considering that question was that a "yes" answer gave the devil too much credit. That was my off the cuff response, having never thought much in terms of evil regarding microbial pathogens. My response was like that given in a word association game. Someone says a word and the respondent answers with the first word or phrase that comes to mind. The patterns of immediate answers give clues to the way a person's mind works.

Before we can understand evil with respect to pathogens, we must ask more basically whether science recognizes evil at all. Most practitioners in the sciences have been taught to believe that everything exists as a result of a natural or material cause. Such causes are assumed morally neutral. The understanding of facts or conditions in terms of evil or good is outside of the realm of science. For the microbiologist, the presence of pathogenic microorganisms simply is fact. The fact of pathogens existence and the diseases they manifest represents, at most, some form of species coevolution. Neither God nor the devil are viewed as being behind them.

This view works in an academic sense. Ironically, when pathogenic microorganisms begin interacting badly with human populations and causing epidemic diseases, our attitude changes. Humanity begins to respond to those pathogens as if they are an evil to be combatted and subdued. Just as with word association, our immediate response to disease, our desire to cure it with an antibiotic or other drug or to prevent it by vaccination or even to eradicate it entirely gives us a clue as to how our collective mind seems to work. Whether we admit it or not, we act as if evil does exist as a force that must be fought with intellectual and physical effort. 

Thomas Malthus

Eradication programs are global responses to diseases that are perceived to be evil on a multinational level. The impulse to eradicate disease seems to come from the desire to eliminate a seemingly purposeful enemy of our human existence. This runs counter to what one might expect from a purely Malthusian and Darwinian frame of reference.

Thomas Malthus, an English cleric and 18th Century social theorist, believed that natural disaster, including famine and diseases were acts of God, beneficial in the overall sense to prevent the overpopulation of the planet. The naturalistic view of Darwinian thought was drawn from Malthus and asserted that whatever purely environmental forces do not kill off a species, end up leaving that species stronger over time and can give rise to a whole new species.

The human response to diseases, however, inclines toward preventing and curing them so as to free humanity from their ravages and the deaths they cause. Rather than the reference frames of either Malthus or Darwin, our response to disease thus bears more resemblance to that of Jesus, who, as the Gospels tell us, came into the human world to heal and to cast out evil.   

Reference: A review of Malthus' theories in relation to those of Charles Darwin. 

Jeff Havenner graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in microbiology. He worked at the Frederick Cancer Research Center in oncogenic virology. Following that he was directly commissioned in the US Army and worked at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Department of Rickettsial Diseases.  After leaving the Army he continued his career working in the field of radiation safety and safety management.