Sermon Archives : Earlier Sermons
Sermon on Evil
February 3, 2002
A member of another Unitarian Universalist congregation once gave me a working definition of evil. We were in my backyard. We stumbled onto some wisteria. His face grew contorted and even a little red. He pulled at the vine. He told me all about the vicious root structure. And then he said it, holding the vine in his hand with contempt. "This is evil." I'm telling you, he meant it. I was most struck by his dramatic characterization of this plant as evil. I didn't tell him how I love the color and fragrance. In fact, I had thought, previously, of planting some.
He had obviously been fighting the classic battle. He knew himself to be good. He labeled the enemy "evil." And he wasn't sure who was going to win this fight. As I said, I was struck by this. Cleaning up my yard, on another occasion, my own battle with the creeping wisteria brought his words back to me. But, still, "evil"?
This week I got a glimpse of his conviction in my own encounter with evil. Another parasite. Also a creeping one. Very difficult to get free of its dependence. Lice. Interesting that parasites can inspire such demonization. Some of you know what I mean about this.
Of course I'm kidding. I don't think lice, or any other non-human part of creation, is inherently evil. Yet I am willing to kill the hideous creatures. And other things. This is the nature of the interdependent web. As Dr. William Jones, Unitarian Universalist professor of religion, points out in the most recent issue of UUWorld, "the interdependent web is predatory, not cooperative." I would say it's important to remember that the web can be both.
So we throw this word around. In fact, lately, evil seems to be more easily used than before. Even by religious liberals. And we're the ones who question its very existence. We're the ones who banished the devil and closed the gates of hell. But the devil is not so easily silenced. And hell, in the century following its realization in the crematories of world war two, has a stench that is not easily sanitized.
It is good, sometimes, to laugh about lice, or roaches, or other relatively comfortable topics-because when we get to the real heart of the matter, there is little left to laugh about. We still live in a world that has in it survivors of the Holocaust. Many of them, alive or not, have left testimonies that chill the heart. Our intellectual and spiritual forebears, those who knew nothing of the Holocaust, left us a legacy of hope for the progress of humanity. There's no denying the progress. And there is no denying that humanity remains a species capable of unfathomable evil.
Our President emphatically reminded us, just this week, that "Evil is real." I agree with him. And I agree that, as he also said, "it must be opposed." Evil, however, is not simple. I do not believe we can put it in a box, or within a particular national boundary, and tie a neat little ribbon on top. In fact, fundamentally I don't believe evil can be perfectly judged by humanity. What I mean is that finally evil is a mystery. Just as goodness is a mystery. This is not to say we shouldn't make judgments about what is good and what is evil. We must. This is an area, though, that requires great care and the utmost humility.
Let's look at some of the questions about evil. A good place to start would be with a definition of evil. Or the criteria used to judge something as evil. Morally reprehensible or sinful are not very helpful distinctions. We all have judgments about what is morally reprehensible-it would be nearly impossible, though, to come to a consensus. I would use the lowest common denominator approach. It's really not a bad approach. If we can garner consensus here, even at this level, we have moved in the right direction. My criteria would be: "Is it life-affirming or life-denying?"
Life, in this case, does not only mean my individual life-though this is something I must remind myself over and over again. I cannot pretend that survival will not be a factor in the judgments I make-however, part of being human is rising above mere survival to seek a larger sense of Life. So when I ask whether something is life-affirming or life-denying, I look for the larger view. And hope that I am not blinded by my own drive to survive.
Many make the distinction between natural evils, or acts of God, and human-made evils-tornados and atomic bombs. It makes little sense to me to call the wind evil. Or the shifting plates under the earth's service. Tragic, yes. And the source of great suffering. But, evil doesn't fit here. This tells you something about what I believe about Life and God. Whatever God is, or the Spirit of Life, it is benevolent, a force of good. This also tells you something about what I don't believe. I don't believe that behind every natural occurrence is the hand of an all-powerful God.
This raises the question of the source of evil, the evil human beings do. Is it inherent in human nature? Does it dwell outside of us in some tempting devil, as depicted in so many religious traditions? In Unitarian Universalism, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Is it consistent to also affirm the inherent evil, or potential for evil in every person? What does that do to inherent worth? Would it make more sense to say that what is inherent in people is goodness and evil comes about as a result of outside forces? Another possibility, of course, is that evil does not really exist-that what seems like evil to us is actually good that we do not yet understand.
In Elie Wiesel's terrifying account of the Holocaust, Night, one of the men in the barracks with him at Auschwitz tries to explain it this way: God is testing us. He wants to find out whether we can dominate our base instincts and kill the Satan within us. We have no right to despair. And if he punishes us relentlessly, it's a sign that He loves us all the more. In other words, what appears to be evil has a greater good. In the case of the Holocaust, that explanation seems somehow more difficult to bear than the suffering itself. How can we face the torture and murder of six million people and not attribute evil? In mentally sane people, such unspeakable acts are an affront to Life.
The knowledge of them is difficult to hold. Even as Elie Wiesel and his father had witnessed life at Auschwitz for several days, even after one of the SS guards had told them outright that holding onto new shoes would be reason enough to be shot dead "like dogs," even still, Wiesel tells of the powerful denial the prisoners tried to maintain. He tried to comfort himself by saying that what he was seeing and hearing simply was not possible. It is hard to understand how someone could survive such evil. Even how we survive knowing it.
Much has been made of the horror of ordinary people participating in such evil. This must be the most disturbing aspect of Nazi Germany and the world's response to the effort to exterminate the Jews. So many participated-either actively or with their silence. If we ever doubted the reality of the potential for human beings to do evil, we cannot face the last century without full and devastating knowledge of the reality of evil.
Its source? Maybe inherent in human beings. Maybe the effect of systemic forces upon us. Finally, I would say, that evil is like goodness in this. Its source is a mystery. The nature of Life, containing as it does so much beauty and goodness and so much suffering and pain, is a mystery.
I believe we can understand, though, how it happens. How it is possible for Hitler to lead a nation to believe that a race of people are themselves inherently evil and deserve to be killed. How Osama bin Laden and others can convince young and educated people of the inherent evil in the West, and lead them to give their own lives for the cause of the destruction of the West. Frankly, it is the same way we in the West can convince ourselves to fight this war on terrorism.
Don't misunderstand me-I am not equating the morality of these things. I think there is a world of difference in the attempted extermination of the Jews, the effort to destroy, or at least inflict terrible suffering on, the western world through terrorism, a radical difference between these and our own efforts to protect ourselves against terrorism.
What is the same, though, is the way we characterize the other. The way we create an enemy, or an axis of evil, by dehumanizing a person or a group of people is the same. I'm not certain this is not absolutely necessary for our survival. But I want to call it what it is. And I guess, fundamentally, I believe this is evil, or this causes evil.
A classic definition of sin is separation from God. Because I understand God to be the holiness, the beauty, the life force, in all of creation, then I would have to say that sin is our separation from each other and from the rest of creation. As I said earlier, acts that constitute the denial of life. Paradoxically, it is impossible to have life without denying other life. That is the reality with which we live. And I do not believe it is evil to live. But surely all of us can acknowledge that the way we live takes more life than we truly need. And that in our living we are often careless or thoughtless, about the life we deny.
I do not believe that this puts us on a par with Hitler or bin Laden. It is important to understand that there are degrees of evil. I am not so interested, though, in the complex debates about whether Hitler or bin Laden were more purely evil. In this month's Atlantic Monthly, historian Ron Rosenbaum examines the arguments concerning Hitler's culpability based on his status as a true believer. The argument goes that if Hitler, or bin Laden, truly believes in the righteousness of their actions then we cannot consider them as evil as if they led evil campaigns cynically, for the pure sake of evil. There is something to learn from such arguments-however, I also believe they can distract us from the more important, and potentially transformative, work of examining the evil that is subtler, more disguised, and that lives within us.
The most important question we can address concerning evil is what will our response be. There are two important responses I would like to offer. First is the importance of our own mindfulness concerning the ways we ourselves and those around us dehumanize others, perpetuate evil by categorizing others as less than human. In her book, The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels makes this point. She chronicles the evolution within Christianity of the idea of evil and the way the demonization of enemies has become common practice. In the recent "UUWorld" article on evil, William Jones suggests that demonizing an enemy, even a Hitler or a bin Laden, constitutes a victory for evil. We have thus, he argues, joined them in their dehumanizing evil.
The more appropriate response, Pagels argues, can be witnessed in the lives of Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther King, Jr, who, she writes, "stood on God's side without demonizing their opponents. Their religious vision inspired them to oppose policies and powers they regarded as evil, often risking their well-being and their lives, while praying for the reconciliation-not the damnation-of those who opposed them.
This is a Universalist response to evil. It embraces inherent worth and dignity as eternal and universal possibility. Reconciliation is always possible. If, on the other hand, we seek damnation for those who do evil, we contribute to the power of evil-we perpetuate the separation of one from another, the notion that God is more on one side than the other, that some are inherently more worthy. Surely we can see the irony of such an approach in responding to fanatical religious fundamentalism.
Finally, I would offer, that in spite of the reality of evil, in spite of our own participation in acts of evil, still we must find, wherever we can the goodness and beauty around us. Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and theologian, who experienced evil in his life, said beauty and love are the voices of Life that call to us, even in the deepest moments of despair (Beach, 89). I cannot imagine a stronger response to evil and despair than an affirmation of love and beauty.
Our affirmation, our faith, must not be blind to evil. We have seen that a blissful ignorance can support the work of evil. As Edmund Burke said in the eighteenth century, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." With full knowledge of the real and potential evil of humanity, we must still affirm the real and potential goodness.
As a religious liberal, this is where I start. I could easily make a case for organizing my life around evil. There seems to be some momentum in this country right now for that kind of approach. I believe, though, that if that is where we begin, if that is the center of our response to life, then we will contribute more to evil and despair than to beauty and love.
If, however, we find the faith to organize our lives in response to beauty and love, then we will contribute to the beauty and love we experience. It's true, of course, that there are times and places with little love, with little hope, with little joy, with little peace. But I also know there are times and places with more love, with more hope, with more joy, with more peace. I want this to be the song of my heart.