Each week on The Bulletin, Russell Moore, Mike Cosper, and Clarissa Moll discuss the media’s top headlines—the people, events, and issues that are shaping our world. In this conversation, The Bulletin talks with best-selling author and Bible teacher Beth Moore about the new hit movie musical Wicked and the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the suspected murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Are the wicked truly evil or simply misunderstood?
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full episode.
Clarissa Moll: When it comes to these headlines [about the acquittal of Daniel Penny and the arrest of Luigi Mangione], the central question of Wicked has been applied over and over. Were these men inherently wicked, or did the situation in which they found themselves compel them to wickedness? Is this a fair question, or is it a false dichotomy? Are we actually wicked, or is wickedness thrust upon us?
Beth Moore: I’m thinking off the top of my head of Psalm 51: “In sin my mother conceived me.” In other words, we are born into wickedness by nature. Even in the very beginning of Ephesians 2 is that we have all been “children of wrath.”
“Wrath” is a strong, strong word. So we would, biblically speaking, very much believe that we were born with a very sinful nature, yes. Now, can circumstances take that and make it something that becomes overwhelming to us and turn us into something that we might never have otherwise been? That’s another matter, and for much greater discussion.
CM: In the case of Luigi Mangione, folks have responded very powerfully to the story of the manhunt. For example, while some were condemning him as a cold-blooded killer, others have been flooding the Macy’s website to buy his look-alike Levi’s jacket and lauding him as a folk hero.
While there is clarity mounting that he might be the shooter, people are really struggling with seeing this young man as wicked. Why do you think so many people respond to a complicated story like this and try to make it simpler, perhaps, than it actually is?
BM: Right now, it would be hard to sever that response from what our culture is like. In the politicization of absolutely everything, I’d have trouble trusting that it is the heart of what would be normal, rational judgment. There might be side taking otherwise, but I’m talking about the kind of side taking we’re seeing right now. I think it is very much a part of this present mood that we’re in.
Russell Moore: I also think there’s a line here. You think about the way the Bible talks about us as both created and fallen. If you think about the pop culture version of it—the Wicked movie and, before that, John Gardner’s Grendel and other things—it would take villains and put them in the protagonist role to show, kind of, this is how that person developed into this.
Something about that is, I think, embedded in the way God made us to see even villains as created in the image of God. But another part of it I think is sort of cynical and self-justifying when it becomes this attitude that, Well, we’re all just as wicked as we can possibly be.
We’re just pretending in various ways. So you can’t expect anything other than just the most base motives in people, which then gives me the justification to think, I’ve got to be just as wicked as the next person if I’m going to survive. I mean, that’s a mindset you see in so many different aspects of American life right now.
Mike Cosper: It’s interesting. I see it a little differently. The other way to think about it is that Wicked in particular is a product of a therapeutic culture. The dangerous message of Wicked is that once you understand somebody’s origin story, you realize that the evil they do is a result of their victim status.
At our core, at our inmost being, we’re creatures who are fallen and prone to sin. And the question then becomes what we do about our agency. I think there’s an aspect of these narratives—whether it’s about the shooter, whether it’s about Wicked—it robs people of agency.
Because it says, Well, they do these evil things because of what’s happened to them, because of where they’ve come from, rather than saying, I don’t care where you came from; you don’t shoot somebody because you’re unhappy with your health care coverage. That’s evil. There are lines we do not cross in civil society. And that seems to be lost a bit in this conversation.
RM: And it’s powerful because it is partly right. There are many situations where I will say, I don’t approve of what that person is doing, but I get it. It makes me think of when Joseph is receiving his brothers at the end of Genesis and he forgives them and says, You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
And many lives have been saved. Only Joseph can say that. The brothers can’t say that. The brothers can’t say, Well, in the end it all worked out, and kind of hand over their agency. And so I think there’s a sense in which we do need to look at people and say, in a lot of instances, they’re picking up what they learned.
We do need to understand that as we try to help them and disciple them, but never in a way that says you’re a victim of fate.
MC: And for every story of somebody who suffered something terrible and then did something terrible as a result, there are plenty of stories of people who suffered unimaginable suffering, and out of that experience, their contributions to the world were constructive and good and loving and for the common good, for human flourishing.
CM: When we think about the outside world, we have to consider that our culture does not operate according to the standards of the Lord, that it does not perceive sin the way we perceive sin. Taking this conversation into the church, though, we often tend to want to say as a method of defense that leaders are misunderstood. When we look at a pastor who maybe is an excellent speaker, we’re willing to push aside the things we don’t care for about him or explain them as, Well, he’s misunderstood, and that’s why he gets angry easily, without evaluating him with the clarity we might use to look at someone in the headlines.
BM: Yes, we have seen this so clearly. In recent years, it’s always been there, but this is not a recent thing. Social media just puts it out in front of us. If someone is particularly gifted, we sometimes act is if that means that in all areas of their lives, they are overtaken by the Spirit. In other words, if they can speak with what appears to us to be the anointing, we assume that every part of their life is like that. We’ve got to know better than that. There is the community life of the saints where there has to be the involvement of others close around us, where there is no elevation of leaders above the community.
I am already flagging when there is a leader who is unreachable, when there is a leader who is so authoritarian that no one will ever challenge them. I’m like, Listen, we might admire someone we cannot question, but we cannot love someone we cannot question. I truly believe that—we will never be able to trust someone we can’t question.
RM: There’s a kind of cynicism that assumes that if we only knew the real story, we would know that everyone is a villain and is out to get something. So there’s that kind of cynicism that people are trying to counteract, and there are bad actors who will use that. There are people who will exploit that.
CM: What would you say to the listener who says, I understand that I shouldn’t give the knee-jerk reaction on social media, but I’m nervous about being considered judgy? How can Christians practice real biblical discernment and avoid the twin dangers of moral relativism on the one side—the sort of Wicked mentality—and then simplistic judgment?
BM: I love where Hebrews says that we grow into maturity where we can distinguish between good and evil. It hits me profoundly because it’s conveying that discernment is something that comes with maturity—that in our more childish distinguishing, it’s like, This is all good. This is all evil—but as we mature in the faith, it’s a little more complex than that. It is a matter of discerning, by way of the Holy Spirit within us.
RM: It’s kind of unique how that requires both maturity and childlikeness at the same time. And so you’ve got that kind of language in Hebrews. You also have Solomon when he’s asking for wisdom: I am but a little child not knowing how to go in or to go out. So with the wisdom that’s granted to him, he’s able to deal with that situation with the two mothers who have a dispute over the child.
He’s able to understand enough about human nature, about what it means to be a person, to be able to ask the right kinds of questions to get to a discovery of what’s really going on with that person. We’re not always going to know. And so it’s important to have that sense of I’m not infallible in my understanding of somebody else’s heart. God is, and so there’s a limit to how much I can see and how much I can know.
