David Buttrick illustrates the structure of evil and its systematic impact by telling the story of John Steinbeck's sharecropper in The Grapes of Wrath. The sharecropper wanted to find out who had foreclosed his farm, a act which caused his family great suffering, an evil act from his perspective, an act for which no one was responsible. It was "the system."

- it was not the local banker, because, he was, after all, responsible to the home office;
- it was not the home office, because the men there had a board of directors to whom they were responsible;
- it was not the board of directors, because they in turn were obliged to thousands of stockholders.

Buttrick's conclusion: "In our age of macroeconomics, political action committees, megatrends, and multinationals, guess what? We have suddenly begun to catch sight of the `powers that be,' systems that can be peopled with born-again Christians and yet be outright demonic."