NPR (National Public Radio) journalist Scott Simon has always avoided using the word "evil" when covering terrible events around the globe. He claims he was "of a generation educated to believe that 'evil' was a cartoonish moral concept." But then he watched, with his daughters, some of the sickening images from the chemical weapons attack in Syria in April 2017 that killed scores of people, many of them children. Simon writes:

We watched in silence. I've covered a lot of wars, but could think of nothing to say to make any sense. Finally, one of our daughters asked, "Why would anyone do that?" I still avoid saying "evil" as a reporter. But as a parent, I've grown to feel it may be important to tell children about evil, as we struggle to explain cruel and incomprehensible behavior they may see not just in history. … but in our own times.

I've interviewed Romeo Dallaire, commanded U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 when more than 800,000 Tutsi Rwandans were then slaughtered over three months. Dallaire said that what happened made him believe in evil, and even a force he called the devil. "I've negotiated with him," he told us, "shaken his hand. Yes. There is no doubt in my mind ... and the expression of evil to me is through the devil and the devil at work and possessing human beings and turning them into machines of destruction. ... And one of the evenings in my office, I was looking out the window and my senses felt that something was there with me that shifted me. I think that evil and good are playing themselves out and God is monitoring and looking at how we respond to it."