I know nothing of Ben Kingsley's spiritual formation, but he made a deeply Christian observation about the nature of man while being interviewed on August 29 by Rachel Martin on NPR's Morning Edition regarding his role as Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann in the recently released film Operation Finale:
But these people — however difficult it might be for us to swallow — were human beings. …For the years of extermination between 1933 and 1945, it was men and women who did this. It was not my duty to humanize anything because tragically, it's already human.
As Kingsley implies, we all have a tendency to distance ourselves from evildoers so that, unconsciously or elsewise, we can categorize them as something other than human. To the extent they are sufficiently distanced, they can be cut off from membership in society.
The problem, of course, is that evildoers, sinners, are in fact fully human and on occasion try to enter human society. That problem was exposed during a discussion the previous evening on NPR's All Things Considered about the comedian and cinéaste Louis C.K., lately revealed as a serial sexual harasser, who had attempted a return to the stage on August 27. During that discussion, Ailsa Chang asked, "And what makes someone deserving of redemption?"
Unsurprisingly, a clear answer was not forthcoming.
In the May 2011 issue of First Things, Wilfred McClay asked, "But how, in a society that retains its Judeo-Christian moral reflexes but has abandoned the corresponding metaphysics, can a credible means of discharging the weight of sin be found?" In this #MeToo moment, we should be grateful that sexism and sexual harassment are being identified as the sins they are. At the same time, we are slowly beginning to realize that the sinners and evildoers are human beings just like the rest of us. If none of them can do anything to deserve redemption, then none of us, no human being, can deserve redemption.
Of course, that's the thing about redemption. "Redeem," properly understood, is not a reflexive verb but a transitive one. One cannot redeem oneself: one must be redeemed by another. If our society has rediscovered the self-evident truth that humans are sinners and evildoers, then perhaps it's ready to hear about the God who redeems sinners.
