Surprised by Goodness

By Phillip Hallie
Foreword by Os Guinness
(2002)

Discussion Guide available as an insert or a PDF download.

Since the barbaric attacks on New York and Washington, the Western world has struggled to find an adequate response to such bare-faced evil. But the meaning of evil in the West has been seriously eroded, undermining our ability to respond intellectually and morally even to such stark evil. If we are to respond constructively to evil, we must first regain a realistic understanding.

In “Surprised by Goodness,” philosopher Philip Hallie shares his own struggle in responding to evil. His studies of institutional cruelty and the Holocaust had brought him to the brink of suicide. It was only the accidental discovery of the story of Le Chambon and its Huguenot villagers who rescued five thousand Jewish children during the war that pulled Hallie out of his depression. Mired in the darkness of Nazi cruelty, he was surprised into sanity by the sharp contrast of the true goodness of the villagers.

As Senior Fellow Os Guinness asserts in his foreword, “grappling with the meaning of evil requires that we appreciate not only the evilness of evil but the contrasting character of goodness that evil highlights.”

Category: Readings (No. 32)