Good, Evil, Gods and Devils

A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone

First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday February 19, 2006

Ancient Reading

Romans 12:9-21 (excerpted)

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another is showing honor.  Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve God.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer...Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another...do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought of what is noble in the sight of all...if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Modern Reading

From "Facing Evil"

Edited by Harry A Wilmer

Personal evils are manifestations of the dark side of our individual human life, the negative and destructive elements of our unconscious.  These are the consequences of our own life-experiences which are repressed and are projected onto others.  Thus we see evil in others and not in ourselves.

This personal shadow side is in everyone.  While all of it is not evil, the reprehensible parts are evil.  Hence there is a subjective judgment which is influenced by time and culture.  This evil is manifest in our personal lives, institutions, organizations, groups of people, and nations.  We can do something about this personal and institutionalized evil.  We can become conscious of it, aware that we project it, and heal the split within each of us.

But there is a deeper evil which is neither personal nor organizational.  It is Absolute Evil.  This is conceptualized as the archetype of Evil.  There is nothing that we as individuals can do to eradicate Absolute Evil.  We can, however, strive for good, and try to become aware that evil is deep within each of us.  Armed with this understanding of evil we can work to prevent its destructive manifestations.

There is a tension between the personal and the archetypal evil.  We can do something to eradicate the former, but we can only cope with the latter.  The tension between what is possible to change and what is impossible to change is both foreboding and enlightening.  In facing evil the energy from darkness can become a force for light.

Prayer and Mediation

From Harry Meserve (SLT 496)

From arrogance, pompousness and from thinking ourselves more important than we are, may some saving sense of humor liberate us.  For allowing ourselves to ridicule the faith of others, may we be forgiven.  From making war and calling it peace, special privilege and calling it justice, indifference and calling it tolerance, pollution and calling it progress, may we be cured.  For telling ourselves and others that evil is inevitable while good is impossible, may we stand corrected.  God of our mixed up, tragic, aspiring, doubting and insurgent lives, help us to be as good as in our hearts we have always wanted to be.  AMEN

Good, Evil, Gods and Devils

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday February 19, 2006

One Sunday after church I popped into a nearby convenience store.  When I approached the cashier, he was busily conversing with a woman, who was offering him tickets to an upcoming concert that Citychurch was sponsoring.  Perhaps I was eaves-dropping too intently—or maybe simply wearing a suit on Sunday afternoon misled her—but she turned to me and said something to the effect of “You’re going aren’t you?  You go to Citychurch right?”

Well… “Not exactly.”  She then asked, “Where do you go to church?”  Friends, I don’t want to tarnish any ideas you have of me—but by 1pm Sunday afternoon—after a morning of writing, editing, preaching, teaching, planning and coffee hour-ing, I really am not that interested in talking shop once I leave the these friendly confines.  Nonetheless, I did explain that I was one of the ministers here at First Unitarian. 

Maybe I had sated her curiosity, maybe she was simply focused on publicizing her concert or perhaps she sensed my reticence to engage in conversation—but she let the matter drop.  Part of me felt I had missed a “Teachable Moment” about our church—but a bigger part of me simply was relieved that I might escape without getting the question—“What do Unitarians believe, anyway?”

Although I feel profoundly called to spreading our gospel—our good news—I still find that question difficult to respond to from a standing start.  When I have had some time to develop rapport with someone—even just a few minutes of honest conversation—it is different.  From a dead stop, though, the question of “What does the Unitarian Church believe” is not one I relish. 

This day I didn’t get the question.  I was secretly counting my blessings as I got into my car.  I was “this” close to a clean getaway when across the parking lot I heard, “God loves you.”  If she had left it there I would have made a free break.  She went on to add, “Because the Devil hates us.” 

There are things, as they say, “Up with I shall not put.”  Somehow neither mental exhaustion nor knowing better mattered anymore.  Somewhere from deep inside a reply involuntarily rose.  “I spell my God with two ‘O’s and my Devil without a ‘D’.”   The words escaped from my lips—and I thought, “Did I say that out loud?”

“I spell my God with two ‘O’s and my Devil without a “D.”  Of all the quotes that I am likely to claim as “One of my favorites” that one from Cyrus Bartol probably tops my list.  As I cast that phrase across the parking lot, it was as though I had pushed the time lapse shutter on a camera.  First came the look of curious confusion, next vague recognition, followed by a moment of repeating my words, then a few seconds of perplexed thought, a flash of recognition, concluding in what I suppose was “bemused understanding.

She dashed over to my car, “Wow, that’s right.  God, Good, Devil, Evil…I never thought of it like that.”  I smiled and returned the first half of her original sentiment by saying “God Be With You” and drove off—happy that I had not said aloud my caustic thought, “I am sure there are many things of which you haven’t thought.”

That quote from Cyrus Bartol—“I spell my God with two ‘O’s and my Devil without a ‘D’” seems an appropriate entry into this the third of my series of sermons about the Core Revelations and Meta-Beliefs of this liberal faith.  My premise stems from empirical observation.  Even though this church has no set creed—there are certain beliefs, which resonate and “stick” with us better than others.  Those similarities come not from doctrine or dogma but from key ways we share of approaching and understanding the world and our physical, social and spiritual relationship with it. 

These Core Revelations shape the kinds of beliefs that we hold in common.  Therefore, while it is true when we say that we are a non-creedal, covenantal, tradition—that claim fails to encompass the full range of truth.  The partiality of our understanding of Truth is, itself, a Core Revelation.  That one will wait for another day.  Today I’d like to add the notion that “Good and Evil are Both Real” to our list that began with “Life is a Gift” and our “Direct and Unmediated Experience of the Ultimate.”

What does it mean to say that Good and Evil are Both Real?  Is that common sense or a preposterous thought?

Let me begin by stating the obvious.  We have no problem accepting and understanding “Good.”  Good, after all is “Good” and what else really needs to be said? We know Goodness—and while we may develop some “Entitlement Issues” there really isn’t much that is perplexing about Good.  Maybe, maybe not.

I don’t go so far as many of our liberal predecessors by believing in the perfectibility of humanity.  I deeply believe that Henry Whitney Bellows was right when he observed that “There is nothing so remarkable about humanity as its improvableness “ I take this to mean that “Nothing so characterizes humanity as our improvability.”  You see, human beings possess both a need and the ability to be improved.  We can be moved toward goodness.  We can be lured toward evil.

While we have little difficulty with the concept of goodness—Evil is something all together different.  Our opposition to Evil is not in question.  We are “Again’it.”  Famously, Bruce Clary—a former occupant of this pulpit—once drafted a proposed resolution for our General Assembly of Congregations putting us on record as opposing Evil.  Whatever else might come up—racism, genocide, environmental disaster, whatever—Bruce reasoned it could be subsumed under our “Prime Directive” opposing Evil thus doing away with much of the busy work of our associational gatherings.

Bruce’s direct opposition to Evil not withstanding, the liberal tradition is generally guilty of side stepping the problem of Evil.  Much to our chagrin, disservice and (I would add) irrelevancy, we have given Evil short shrift.  One of the reasons that Liberal Religion isn’t as widely held now as it was 100 years ago is that it failed in relevance for many in the face of the profound evils of the  20^th century.  Things like World War, The Great Depression, the Holocaust, the massive capacity to kill that comes from nuclear weapons and the pervasive, perplexing, nature of human inhumanity have rendered liberal religion irrelevant for many persons. 

Many need something stronger than our resolutions and sympathies when it comes to the tragedy, terror, pain and death that often accompany evil.  I believe we can stand on more solid footing in this regard.  The foundation for that strength, though, may involve giving up a sense of entitlement to moral high ground and admitting that Evil is real and it lives among us.

Theologians use the word “Theodicy” when they talk about the problem of evil. The classical weakness and  limitation of Liberal Religion is that it fails to take Evil seriously.  Liberals generally see Evil as “The absence of Good” or simply an anomaly that will be remedied in time—something like a bug in computer program that can be resolved by tinkering with the software.  In truth, Evil is more like the computer virus that over-rides and rewrites the software making it either non-functional or turning it to malicious ends.  We soften evil in an effort to make our lives more tolerable—and that is works fine until we encounter the real evils of the world.

How do I know this?  Why have I decided that holding both Good and Evil as inherently real is a Core Revelation of the Liberal Tradition when so many before me have been willing to see Evil as an anomaly to be worked out—worked out like one might iron wrinkles from a fine garment?

I wish I could think away—rationalize away—evil.  I simply can’t.  It’s too pervasive, too destructive, too enticing, for me to categorize it as incomplete goodness.  Perhaps it is something of the Taoist spirit in me that will not let one side of apparent opposite claim sole reality.  I think, though, it really comes down to the horror I feel when I encounter the brokenness of the world.  It is inescapable, particularly when that awareness is combined with the honest inner truth that I, too, am capable of doing terrible things.  I would like to believe we live in a world where evil can be overcome by simply doing more good.  I would like to think “Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty” would do the trick.  That approach, though, doesn’t connect with something deep within me. 

I don’t think one can look at what we know of the world today and hold an inherently optimistic view of the human condition.  When we live in a world where violence is used as a method of political communication, where greed so easily blinds people to the common good, where the scale of famine and war and genocide and terror no longer shocks us—how can we deny Evil’s existence.  Somehow I just can’t know these things and think Evil can be remedied by simply doing more good.

So if Good and Evil are both real—what is their core nature?  Let me begin by saying that one of the reasons I like the quip about Good, Evil, Gods and Devils is that the way theism lives in my personal credo leads me away from all personifications of ultimate realities.  As a humanist, one might assume that personifying the forces at play would be natural—I find quite the opposite to be the case.  As a theistic humanist I have a rather clear understanding of what it means to be human—to be a created being—and what it means to not be ultimate—to be created rather than creator.  Things that blur those distinctions of divinity and the human condition don’t rest well with me.  As a theist (I am really more of a mystical deist), as a person of faith I have a growing understanding of the distinction between creation as an act and creation as a fact—creating and created.  I see a distinction between the elements that constitute the creative force of all life and the finite creation of which we all are a part.  I find honoring that distinction to be necessary to my personal beliefs.

The amalgam of Human and Good forming God and Human and Evil equaling the Devil—is, for me, a key to the problem of Evil and the problem of Good.  The anthropologist in me sees goodness personified becoming God and Evil personified becoming the Devil as a natural step in human cognitive development.  The mystic in me resists these personifications as weakening our direct, unmediated, relationship with the divine since through personification we place unnecessary layers between ourselves and the ultimate.

So where do Good, Evil, Gods and Devils shake out in all this?  I maintain that in the Liberal Tradition we start with the experience of humanity and the facts of creation.  Good is the force, the impulse that urges us toward the things that are most authentically human—love, nurturance, protection, community and justice to name a few.  Good leads us to maximize our humanity and seek balance with all of creation.  Evil, then, is the force—the urge that lures us away from maximizing our humanity.  Evil deludes us into behaving as though we are something other than finite, limited, creatures—possessing special knowledge and deserving special privilege—thinking ourselves gods.  Evil lures us away from our fullest humanity—tempting us toward things that are decidedly non-human.  The results of this false tidal pull are many but they are characterized by fear, greed and a sense of being uniquely entitled beings.  Instead of being fully human in balance with creation the evil impulse leads us to believe we are human above the rest of humanity…human above the rest of creation.

Goodness reminds us that birth and death are both real and there is no escape from the latter once we have experienced the former.  Evil lures us into believing that somehow we are peculiarly exempt from the basic laws that govern the world and society.  Good draws us toward seeing our kinship with all of creation—first with other people then with all living things and eventually to understand that we are somehow organic with all that is—stardust.  Evil lures us into living in ways where we see ourselves as absolutely singular—human above the earth, human above other living things, my ethnicity, my family, my tribe, my self as privileged above all other humans. 

The basic understanding I have is that the impulse that draws us to be most authentically human is good—it is the God impulse.  The impulse that lures into believing we are something other than fully human is evil—some call it the Devil.  Today, I hope you’ll remember the sentiments of Cyrus Bartol—even if you forget his name.  When we say that we spell our God with two O’s and our Devil without a D—we really are saying something authentic to the Liberal Tradition. Good and Evil are both real.  Both have their peculiar attractions that can and do resonate in me.  For good and for ill they both are at play in the human condition.

In this church we aren’t terribly interested in telling you how to live your life—we allow significant latitude of belief on that matter.  Still there are similarities of our beliefs, though, that are best constructed from their shadows.  We don’t advocate the abandonment of freedom implied by fate and predestination.  Neither pure optimism nor nihilism resonates well with us.  We may, at times, seem fatalistic but the absolute pessimism of those who see humanity and the created world as eternally fallen find little support here.  The reason these beliefs don’t fit in the constellation of our personal beliefs and credos is because we believe that Good and Evil are both real.  Both are alive.  Both are loose in the world.  Neither is a given.  Both are at play—tugging on us—forcing us to chose. 

In this church we tell you that you will have to decide.  Good, Evil, Gods and Devils—your task is to discern the path that makes the most of your humanity—that leads you to the fullest sense of community.  The liberal religious task calls on us to deepen our humanity, rather than dilute it.  There is enough Goodness in us to seek that path even in the presence of profound Evil.  Our deepest and truest humanity, the still small voice, forever whispers “Choose Good.”  When faced with Good, Evil, Gods and Devils—Choose God…Choose Good…and be prepared to do it again and again and again.  AMEN