To truly consider the nature of man is to look steadily into the heart of contradiction. From a very young age, we are trained to hope; hope for progress, for enlightenment, for peace. But when we remove the veil of illusion and look not at the polished words but at the actions of men and the institutions they create, a darker truth is revealed. The reality is not that goodness is absent, but that it flickers like a weak flame in a cavern of wind and shadows.
The predominant impulse of humanity, if judged by the broad sweep of history and the daily theatre of modern life, is not toward the good, but toward the self.
We see this clearly in the halls of power, where leaders drape themselves in the garments of public service only to gorge on privilege and control. In the boardrooms of vast corporations, where profit is elevated above all else, and the suffering it causes is rendered invisible by distance and bureaucracy. And in our institutions (educational, legal, religious) which were created to elevate the soul but have often become machinery for maintaining status, silencing dissent, or propagating falsehoods. These are not anomalies. They are expressions of what lies within us. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” writes the prophet Jeremiah. “Who can know it?”
One might protest: this is too harsh. Surely man is not evil, only mistaken. But mistake alone does not explain cruelty. It does not explain the cold calculations of the powerful, nor the indifference with which we pass by the suffering of others. From Cain’s hand to today’s algorithmic wars, the pattern is the same: the preference for self over the other, the pursuit of gain over the call of conscience. Saint Paul recognized this anguish when he wrote, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” There is something in us that leans toward the abyss.
Yet we are not monsters. Or not wholly. That is the mystery. For every act of corruption, there is also a quiet gesture of compassion. A mother sacrificing sleep for her child. A stranger giving bread to one who has none. A man weeping not for his own pain, but for the sorrow of another. These moments do not cancel the evil, but they reveal a truth equally deep: we are also made for goodness. The soul contains a seed, hidden but not dead, of love. It is not native to the structures of this world, but it persists.
The ancient parables speak to this condition. The Native American tale of the two wolves captures it in simple beauty: inside each person live two wolves; one black, one white. One represents anger, envy, greed, and arrogance. The other stands for humility, kindness, empathy, and self-control. The child asks, “Which wolf will win?” The elder replies, “The one you feed.” What is this feeding, if not the daily act of attention? To whom do we direct our gaze, our thoughts, our love? Each decision to indulge resentment, each surrender to desire for power, is a meal offered to the black wolf. Each renunciation of self for the good of another, each silent prayer for someone else’s peace, feeds the white.
Eastern thought gives us the yin-yang, the circling halves of black and white, each containing a dot of its opposite. Here we find the same insight, but shaded differently: that evil contains within it the possibility of awakening, and that even the good must carry an awareness of its limits. The white wolf is not naïve. It is good, but it is not weak. The black wolf is not invincible, though it often pretends to be.
The Christian tradition names this conflict sin. But it also names the remedy: grace. Grace is not indulgence. It is not the erasure of evil. It is the call that awakens the better part of ourselves and offers it strength beyond its own. Without grace, the black wolf always wins, eventually. With grace, the white wolf can learn to fight; not with violence, but with enduring truth. “Be not overcome by evil,” writes Paul again, “but overcome evil with good.”
There is no final victory in this world. History is not a march toward perfection, but a battlefield of souls. Our task is not to redeem the world, for that is beyond us. Our task is to resist its gravity. To refuse to participate in its deceptions. To bear witness to another possibility, however small, however quiet.
We do this not by mere intention, but by attention. For evil thrives on neglect. It grows strongest where no one is looking. Goodness, by contrast, requires us to look, to see, to remember. The white wolf grows when we forgive when it costs us. When we speak truth when it is dangerous. When we wait with the suffering rather than rushing to escape their discomfort.
So the question becomes not, “Are we good or evil?” but rather, “To which part of ourselves do we give power?” Each day is a liturgy of choices. Each act of love is a revolt against the dominion of the black wolf. Each refusal to lie, to hate, to dominate, is a blow struck in favor of the white.
The battle is not won in grand gestures. It is won in the stillness of the heart, in the small moments, in the secrecy of the soul. And so, we must ask ourselves again and again, “Which wolf have I fed today?”
The answer will not only determine who we are. But it will shape the world we leave behind.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.