Courage under fire and grace after it. What Americans learned from a firefighter and a first lady
Even though likely still in shock, Melania Trump was able to see unadulterated evil, terrifying and ugly as it may appear up close, for what it is.
In his spiritual autobiography "Confessions," St. Augustine of Hippo wrote that "evil is nothing but the removal of good until finally no good remains." In his later work "The Enchiridion," he observed that God, who is supremely good, can bring good even out of evil.
I recalled these timeless thoughts on the nature of evil and the reason for its persistence as I read the words of one person intimately close to the horrific tragedy in Butler, Pennsylvania last weekend, and reflected on the actions of another.
In her first statement after the assassination attempt on her husband’s life, former first lady Melania Trump said something profoundly beautiful: "political games are inferior to love." Those last three words – inferior to love – resonated, for so much was said with so little.
Even though likely still in shock, she was able to see unadulterated evil, terrifying and ugly as it may appear up close, for what it is. It is the presence of nothing, only the absence of goodness. This is an important insight at a precarious moment in the great American experiment.
Mrs. Trump’s words show how to lower the temperature of our national discourse. If evil, like a shadow to light, is the absence of the good, then goodness, while still so much more, is at the very least the absence of evil. This means evil is defeatable by displacement.
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In a finite world, every act of goodness crowds out the space for evil in a zero-sum sense. Choosing good halts the diminishment of the transcendent that, by definition, is evil. And the greatest restorative good of all is love, as the former first lady so succinctly suggested.
As befits a firefighter, Corey Comperatore’s loving choice came not in words, for he had no time to reflect, only action. As soon as shots were fired, he used his own body to shield his family from a barrage of deadly gunfire. In the end, he traded his own life to save the ones he loved most dearly.
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Perhaps Mr. Comperatore thought about it a thousand times before, so at the time of choosing it was muscle memory. Every husband and father prays he has that valor within him, that he would choose the greatest love – to lay down his life for his family – if ever the time came.
The Comperatore family need not wonder whom their father and husband loved, or how greatly. Love, a volitional act, is willing the good of the other; the more selfless the act, the more pure the love. In the end, Mr. Comperatore loved with a self-emptying heart, as purely as any mortal man can do.
In a tragedy’s aftermath, Mrs. Trump counseled a nation on how to avoid future evil. When evil is inevitable, a hero firefighter showed his countrymen how to make greater good out of it.
St. Augustine is proud of both of them, a fact he can share directly with Mr. Comperatore.