As the New Year begins, Australia is still reckoning with violence that defies easy explanation. Beyond politics and policy lies a deeper question about evil and whether it can truly be overcome.
Australia has entered the New Year still carrying shock after the Bondi massacre. In short, this kind of thing doesn’t happen here. We are more used to sunburnt afternoons, backyard barbecues, and cold beer than confronting acts of terror and mass violence. Our national identity is one of social cohesion, which we mostly get along around the BBQ.
As expected, the infighting followed quickly. Was it immigration? Islam? Gun control? A lack of guns? Political rhetoric? Police response times? The outrage machine is well-oiled. News outlets and YouTube commentators have had no trouble filling airtime.
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In the days following the attack, Bondi Anglican Church minister Matt Graham cut through the noise by naming the core issue plainly: evil. Not pathology. Not policy failure. Not bad luck. Evil. What occurred was a moral atrocity and calling it anything less obscures the truth.
Can government solve the problem of evil? In part, yes. Governments can restrain violence. They can punish wrongdoing. They can protect citizens. These are good and necessary things. But governments are not omnipotent. They can manage behaviour, but they cannot cure the human heart.
We long for three things: safety, justice, and the absence of evil. No political system -left or right can deliver all three in full. To expect otherwise is not enlightened; it is naïve.
This tragedy is a sobering reminder of why Christianity has always insisted that the problem of evil is not finally political, but spiritual. Christ did not come to manage evil, educate it, or legislate it away. He came to defeat it.
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I do not ground this hope in sentiment, but in fact. I believe Jesus Christ lived. I believe he was crucified. I believe he rose from the dead. On the balance of probabilities, this remains the most coherent explanation of the world as it is - broken, beautiful, and in desperate need of redemption.
As we begin a new year, my hope remains the same: comfort for the grieving, justice for the wronged, and that many encounter the compassion, truth, and love of Jesus Christ in a world that continues to ache for healing.
