More About Evil and Responding to It...
I am going to go back to my Tolkien nerd thing for this one…
The framing story for the Lord of the Rings (LotR) is the War of the Ring—the conflict between the forces of the West and the forces of Sauron.
In relative terms, the West is weak. They are scattered and disunited. Some of them (like Saruman) have themselves turned to evil. The Elves have largely abandoned Middle-Earth. Sauron has a huge army drawing upon the resources of pretty much a majority (in area and population and wealth) of Middle-Earth—plus there is the whole thing where he is a demiurgic being of vast power.
As one of the characters says: Against the Power that arises in the East, there is no hope of victory.
This is, within the context of the book, literally true. They cannot win.
But evil must be opposed. It must be resisted. Not because you think or believe that you can win—but simply because it is the right thing to do. The only thing that you can do and remain true to your principles, to yourself, to what is good.
The LotR is probably one of the most implicitly religious books written in the English language—and this key consideration (and how that actually works out) is why.
In the end, the quest fails… because the people doing it are only mortal. Some fail because they simply lack the strength and the numbers—but the most important and pernicious failure is the failure of will—the inability to resist the temptation of the Ring.
It is only through a seeming accident that Sauron is overthrown, the Ring is destroyed.
You might say that, well maybe they should not have bothered—because they DID fail. It was a forlorn hope—doomed from the start. Should have saved themselves the trip and the pain.
But because they DID try, they did resist, there was an opportunity for success—because you never know what can happen. How the dice will roll. If Frodo had not been there at the Cracks of Doom (and been kind and merciful enough to bring Gollum with him), then there would have been no happy “accident.”
The most important battle we wage is not the battle of blood and iron and violence—but the battle against ourselves and our own weaknesses. Too often we lose—but we do not have to.