Dr_lew, I respect you as a really smart person. Why again and again has evil come back to threaten civil society?
Ever since Eve was beguiled by the serpent.
Oh my goodness!
Many answers are possible, I’m sure. That we all have evil in our hearts? This seems sure. The hymn expresses this, “Truth forever on the scaffold, Death forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future ...”
Well, I know that this is an expression of Christian eschatology, but one may see it, as I do, in a more secular light, where it still remains a mystical yearning.