I turned on the TV this morning (I’m on Spring Break so lots of sleeping, reading, and TV for me this week) and Walker, Texas Ranger happened to be on. Walker was roundhouse kicking some guy, and his deputy was asking some other guy if he wanted a “Hawaiian punch” while dunking his head into, you guessed it: a bowl of punch.

The bad guys depicted on Walker, Texas Ranger and in television and movies in general are so one-dimensional. They’re always the same. They wear dark clothes and they always have scowls on their faces. You never find out if they have kids or what their childhood was like. That pile-drive to the gut isn’t as fun if you know Junior’s waiting for daddy to come tuck him in when this is all over.

There is a big philosophical debate over whether people are inherently good or inherently bad. Personally, I am intrigued by the Christian concept of the “fallen nature” of human beings. We were created good, but somewhere along the way we get corrupted. It just seems to be the best explanation for what I see going on in this world. Despite what Walker would have us believe, I don’t think there are really “bad guys” in this world. These one-dimensional, almost cartoonish caricatures that are only ever focused on doing evil just don’t really exist.

Maybe some people come pretty close. You could probably make a good case for Hitler or Saddam Hussein being pure evil. At the very least they were sociopaths. But those guys were children once too, you know? There was a time when they were five years old and their days consisted of playing soccer and bickering with their siblings. Then somewhere along the way, they fell into a bad business. Maybe it was a calculated plan, or maybe they just got sucked into something and got in over their heads.

Someday I would like to do an informal investigation on suicide bombers. As much as I dislike George Clooney, I was intrigued by the plot line in Syriana that depicted the recruitment, training, and final mission of suicide bombers in the Middle East. I thought that by going into the psyche of a suicide bomber, it provided an excellent contrast to the classic “bad guys” as they are portrayed in the media. These bombers weren’t just evil men. They were barely even adults at all. They were young men who got sucked into an ideology. They were targeted because of their rough backgrounds. They were given food and resources they never had access to before. Their religious training provided a smoke screen for extremist ideologies. And they were promised comfort and provision for their families after they completed their suicide missions. The process is complicated and psychological, but definitely not black and white.

I just don’t believe people are evil anymore. I know it is very easy to believe this. I know. But you start to peel back the layers, and things get a whole lot more complex.

The gray is starting to close in.