“Evil: When Bad People Do Bad Things”

When the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts announced the ruling which legalized marriage between same sex partners a few weeks ago, there was a lot of newspaper coverage – which ran from jubilation to horror. The Globe ran a front page article which covered the reaction  in two churches. 

The first church they covered was the  First Parish, Unitarian Universalist, in Milton where the announcement was greeted with applause. (much like it was received here)  The Rev. John Robinson affirmed the ruling, saying that love between two adults should be celebrated and honored. 

The view was different at New Covenant Christian Church in Mattapan, where Bishop Gilbert Thompson rebuked the decision, declaring that heterosexual marriage is "the only union that creates life…. We are,” he said, “standing against demonic forces that are out to destroy not only marriage, but family." After the service, one parishioner said she believed the SJC decision was a "sign of the end times."

The first time I bumped into the idea of the “end times” in the form of a real believer was in the seventies when I was putting up posters announcing an upcoming event of  the Bridgewater Association for Nuclear Disarmament. One downtown Bridgewater proprietor, (whose establishment is no longer there) refused the poster saying that he wasn’t opposed to nuclear war because it signified Armageddon which was intended by God. He was not afraid of it.  He believed that the Good would ascend to heaven beforehand in the Rapture, and so he needn’t worry.  God would send judgment upon the earth and punish those who do not follow.

This man and I appear to live in the same culture, the same world – and insofar as we are talking about mundane geographical location, we do. But the framework of our belief systems that dictate how we see and interpret the world are so radically different that we may as well be living on different planets. The belief in a living satanic force isn’t uncommon.

I don’t know how many of you got an email after 9 – 11 called “The Face of Evil.” It contained a news photograph of the immediate aftermath of the twin towers after they fell.  There was fire and debris were everywhere; crowds of people running.  At the top of the picture in the billowing smoke, you could see the outline of an evil-looking face – Satan overlooking the wreckage.  The message was obvious – the hijackers who directed the planes into the towers causing the deaths of 3,000 people, were victorious emissaries of Satan.

I believe that it isn’t necessary to presuppose a supernatural source of evil. As Joseph Conrad said, [humanity] alone is capable of every wickedness.” And I am pulled to Agatha Christie’s observation that “Evil is not something superhuman, it is something less than human.”

 But belief in evil forces tied to Satan is not rare in the human experience.  And one way or another, everyone who lives and breathes must contend somehow with the existence of evil.

 Every day the newspaper brings us news of new unspeakable acts that have been done to human beings by other human beings. How do we make sense of the wanton shooting jag that John Malvo, and John Muhammad carried out in the Washington DC area, terrorizing people of all ages and nearly paralyzing the city? 

 How do we explain the attractive 29 year old suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who walked into a crowded restaurant and blew herself up, killing nineteen?

 Or Dylan Kliebold and Eric Harris in Columbine, Colorado, who made a game plan well in advance, gathered weapons, and carried out a shooting spree, killing or wounding classmates, teachers, and school officials indiscriminately? How do we make sense of this?

 And the matter of John Geoghan and Paul Shanley and other clergy who used the power and prestige of the church to prey on young boys, shattering the lives instead of blessing them.

 Where do we file the case of Karen Robideaux, the young Attleboro mother who starved her 11-month old son Samuel to death last year and then carefully, secretly buried his body in the woods of Maine?

Not so long ago I had occasion to meet a couple of times with someone at Bridgewater State Prison who had committed a premeditated, unspeakable act for which he seemed to feel no remorse. I came away shaken both times after our meeting – not because he was murderous.  It was because I liked him.  This leads me to believe that if I were to sit down to lunch with  Malvo, Muhammad,  Kliebold & Harris, Geoghan and Robideaux, most would seem unremarkable to me –  many of them likable.   I’m sure our malevolent brothers and sisters are much more like us than we would care to admit in our heart of hearts. And that is a scary thought.

 How do we make sense of this matter of human evil? Why do some people do evil deeds where, in the same circumstances, it appears that others would not?  Where does the force that drives these actions come from?

My UU colleague from Stoughton, Jeffrey Symynkywicz writes:

“It’s so much easier merely to frame the questions than even to try to deal with them. It is so tempting to take refuge in the maxim of the ancient Christian saint who said, “a comprehended God is no God”—that God’s mysteries are unknown—and that questions like that of evil are beyond our human powers to understand… That’s part of the price we pay for being alive as human beings, and if we would, like Jacob, wrestle with angels, then we must be willing to wrestle with the demons among us as well.”

It is our human nature to want to ascribe evil to something outside of us, to a supernatural force. One reason is that this helps us to distance ourselves from evil, makes us feel safer and gives us a somewhat comforting sense of control.  We can believe that we personally are not susceptible to evil of such magnitude, that it has little or nothing to do with us and it is unlikely to reach us in our little niche of the world.

Another reason that we are pulled to believe in some force, some devil, that can twist a soul beyond recognition, is that – if that is the case, then when we do encounter it, it is easier to know what to do. We can fight evil with much more force and certitude if we believe it is actually the devil we are defeating no matter what face it wears.

The Calvinist and Congregational settlers who founded this country brought their belief in evil of this sort with them. 

How we understand evil matters. 

Historically, liberal religion, with its stress on the enlightenment use of reason in religion, has looked for other causes, more rooted to natural law. If there is no supernatural evil force than there must be other causes of evil.

At the turn of the 18^th century both Unitarians and Universalists were proponents of a new view  that poverty, injustice, ignorance, despair, hopelessness, lack of work, disease and other human factors are themselves evils that cause the human heart to become twisted.

This understanding of evil has made social justice the work of religion and replaced mere acts of charity or conversion to help the poor. The work of Unitarian minister Joseph Tuckerman among the poor in Boston redefined evil in this way.  Listen to his words as he talks about the chasm between rich and poor, and listen to the way he uses the word evil:

 “ . . .This horrible contrast of condition, which all large cities present, has existed too long. Shall it endure forever? My friends, we all, as well as others, have hitherto been dreadfully insensible to this sorest evil under the sun. Long use has hardened us to it. We have lived comfortably, perhaps luxuriously, in our dwellings, whilst within a stone’s throw, were fellow-creatures, the children of our Father in Heaven, as nobly born and gifted as ourselves . . .We have passed them in the street, not only without a tear, but without a thought…

…Shall this insensibility continue forever? . . .Do not call the evil remediless. Sure I am that, at this moment, there is enough of piety, philanthropy, and moral power in this community, to work deep changes in the poorer classes, could these energies, now scattered and slumbering, be brought to bear wisely and perserveringly on the task. Shall we decline this work?. . ."

 The influence of this liberal understanding of evil has been profound and much good has been done in the cause of justice as a result. Liberation movements, work with people with mental illness, jobs programs, improvements to education to help people out of poverty. But there is a downside here, as well. Liberal religionists are often accused of going after the root causes of evil much more vigorously than they go after the “evildoer. The are accused of being soft on punishment.  Conservative exasperation with this liberal tendency can be seen in the case of Cardinal Law and pedophile John Geoghan.  In his deposition on his actions in the Geoghan case Cardinal Law stated, “I viewed this as a pathology, as a psychological pathology, as an illness.” Thus Law failed to punish Geoghan’s evil actions. Though Law might be seen as a conservative, this mistake came out of a liberal religionist impulse.

 It is not unusual for liberal religionists to avoid or lighten punishment where obvious causative factors are evident and if rehabilitation is seen as possible.

 Conservatives feel that liberals grossly underestimate the power of evil and our ineffectiveness in dealing with it. They believe that one reason the world is going to hell in a handbasket is misplaced liberal compassion.  It is naïve, they say, to view the world in terms of healthy and unhealthy instead of in terms of good and evil.

 But the more traditional view of evil has its own slippery slope.

 The problem with believing in evil as an independent force is that it invites us to hate.  For is not hatred of the devil the only response that is possible?  This wreaks havoc, of course, with our religious teachings. For have we not been raised to believe that the means must be consistent with the end we desire?  And does not Jesus counsel love?  And it was Muhammad who said that" To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil.

 I agree with Coretta Scott King, who said “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, "Hatred is at the root of evil everywhere - racial hatred, ethnic hatred, political hatred, religious hatred. In its name, all seems permitted. For those who glorify hatred...the end justifies all means, including the most despicable ones.

 The problem of evil, so far, has been an intractable one. Both of our understandings of evil leave quite alot to be desired. They are imperfect and remain in the realm of mystery.

 The problem of evil is not important only to religious scholars and those who work in law enforcement. We are, right now, less than a year away from our next national election at a time when our country is very polarized and just about evenly divided.  Comedian Al Franken authored the following only slightly exaggerated conversation which he calls “Our National Dialogue on Terrorism. If you listen closely you will hear these two very different interpretations of evil contributing to our terrible impasse:

Our National Dialogue

On Terrorism

                    By Al Franken

Why do they hate us?

             They hate us because they’re evil.

 That’s it, huh? That’s the entire story?

           Yes. They’re evil. And they hate us because of our freedoms.

They hate us because of our freedoms?

              But really because they’re evil.

 I know they’re evil. I was just thinking that maybe if we under­stood what specifically seemed to trigger

              Why are you apologizing for the terrorists?

 I’m not. They’re evil. You have no quarrel there. It’s just that maybe if we understoo—

            Why are you on the terrorists’ side?

 I’m not! I hate the terrorists. I was just saying we might be able to prevent the next—

             Three thousand Americans dead. How can you defend al Qaeda?

 Believe me, I was not defending them. What they did was horrific and inexcusable. They’re evil. I was just

             Then why are you apologizing for them?

 I’m not. I’m trying to say that maybe there are lessons we can—

             Why do you hate America?

 The current polarization in our country has a significant religious component. It is true for this or any conflict that no good solution can emerge if we do not listen and take one another seriously, each as possessors of some truth.

 That said - liberals will stay dedicated to their commitment to seeking root causes for evil that has been at the heart of their tradition – there are often obvious reasons that evil has rooted - no matter how uncomfortable this may feel for conservatives. 

 At the same time liberals need to have a balance such that their compassion isn’t blind. A reason is not an excuse. Acts of wrongdoing do need to be punished, as uncomfortable as that may feel for liberals.

 In the face of great evil let us remember that it is our humanity is at much at stake as our lives. Let us think and feel compassionately during the challenging days that lie ahead. Let us listen to each other even when it is painful.  My daughter sent me a postcard recently which said on it simply, “Let us not become the evil we deplore.” That is a cautionary statement that stays with me when I am tired.  And I think of the words of Jeffrey Symynkywicz – “may we always remember how large our souls truly are – and may we choose to fill our souls with works of beauty, love and justice.”