Evil? Evil acts are directly experienced and directly intuited as outrageous.
A woman is beaten and robbed by some men who follow her home
because she won some money at a bingo game.
An older couple is mugged in a shopping mall
on their way out of a movie and beaten so badly
that they lose their health,
they can not walk and enjoy the same activity
that they once had.
Some fanatics highjack airplanes and crash them into a sky scraper
to make a political point.
A child is kidnapped and killed
after ransom is paid, because the criminals want to cover up their crime.
A super power bombs a civilian population
to make a political point.
We know evil when we see it.
Human beings
whose consciences are still alive
and not jaded too much with compromise and rationalizations
respond to such actions with revulsion,
and justifiable anger.
Most people do not make abstract calculations in ethical philosophy
when a baby is killed
when they look at pictures of victims of Buchenwald or the Gulag,
when they see contemplate the televised face of a mass murderer
whose crimes are being detailed on your nightly news.
We have a direct intuition. Evil.
Even if we use other words....
more scientifically sounding words,
words like sociopath, psychopath, peripheral damage,
we search for a word that expresses moral outrage
and that word is evil.
That was an evil act. That was person is evil.
Horrid, cruel, bullying, violating all standards of human decency.
Evil.
We know evil when we see it, experience it.
But does Evil really exist?
And if evil exists, is it simply an Abstract Principle?
You know Abstractions,
like Truth, Freedom, Good and Beauty.
Evil as abstraction? An intellectual category?
Or is Evil a force?
Many people have imagined that
In fact the majority of our fellow Americans,
United States, North and South America,
believe that evil is a force, a intentional conscious force,
that seeks to disorder the known universe,
and thwart all that is good.
When we put it that way,
Evil as a force,
a conscious force that has the power to destroy,
tempt innocent souls,
and corrupt the way ward mortal,
then we realize that we are talking about something divine.
Evil as the Bad God,
Evil as the Destructive Force,
The Dark Side of the Force for Star Wars fans.
The idea of that evil transcends the evil act is found in many cultures,
and takes many forms.
Native Americans generally assume that everything inherently
has a good side and a bad side.
The Chinese have similar ideas.
Thus for Native Americans and the Chinese
evil does not contend with the good, for they are flip sides of the same coin,
but we choose ------ choose good over evil.
wisdom over stupidity, prudence over waste.
Yes, the people of this world have many ideas of good and evil.
But today I am taking up one very special idea of Evil,
Evil personified, Evil incarnate in the Devil.
I will tell the story of Satan.
Three religions
Zorasterianism, Christianity and Islam have a doctrine of the Evil One.
All the other world religions repudiate this idea.
What about Judaism?
The story of Satan originates in Hebrew Scriptures,
but medieval and modern Judaism have rejected the idea of a Devil,
and regard the mention of Satan in their own Bible
as an ancient story that has nothing to do with a Devil.
And the Jews are right.
There is mention of an angel named Satan in the Hebrew Scriptures
the Satan mentioned is one of God's angels, not a rival deity.
Satan's job description is the prosecutor.
For example, in the Book of Job,
we read "One day the divine beings presented themselves to the Lord.
God asks Satan where has he been,
and he reports that he has been wandering up and down on earth,
and God asks Satan, have you noticed by servant Job
There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man
who respects God and shuns evil.
The Satan challenged God,
this job has good reason to respect God,
you have protected him, and his household,
you have blessed him and he is prosperous.
But says Satan, if you took his privileges from him,
then Job will blaspheme you to your face.
And God gave Satan permission to test Job.
Not a nice angel,
but not a Rival to God intent on Evil either.
In other books of the Hebrew Bible we find a similar story.
Satan the accuser undermines a rebellion against the Jerusalem priests,
Satan the accuser meets a man on the road
with the intent to kill him for his misdeeds,
Satan always plays the role of the prosecutor, trickster,
making trouble for human beings but under authority of God.
That is in the Hebrew Scriptures,
there are writings written by Jews
that did not make it into what we call the Old Testament,
the Rabbi's rejected these books
because they taught lessons the Rabbi's didn't like,
and told stories that the Rabbi's did not want told.
One of these rejected books is the book of Enoch,
which details a rebellion of the heathen against God,
which is joined by some of his angels,
according to the stories in Enoch these angels are defeated
and kicked out of heaven, sent to hell.
These stories are not in the Bible,
but they are very much a part of myth of the Apocalypse.
that is reflected in some of the writings of the New Testament.
The
New Testament gospel of John accuses the Jews
of being seduced by Satan, and being enemies of God.
thus they reject Jesus, the Christ
because he is good,
and they are evil.
Several weeks ago I preached a sermon contrasting the gospel of John
to the gospel of Thomas.
I pointed out that John is the favorite Gospel of Orthodoxy
In this latter day narrative
Christ is portrayed as the Living God come to earth
The subtext of John is the root source of Christian anti semitism.
According to John's Gospel the Jews killed Jesus,
Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ
put John's attack on the Jews on the big scene.
Gibson protests that he isn't anti Jewish
No but the completely false story Gibson presented was a slander of Jews
and it was based on a book written 1900 years ago.
According to John the Jews were under the sway of Satan
the Pharisees had made it rough on Jesus
from the beginning of his ministry,
had plotted to kill him,
and finally had him executed
because he was Good and they were Evil.
That the Pharisees themselves were victims of the Romans
and many of them were executed is conventionally left out of the story.
John is a political manifesto, the Christians were declaring themselves good,
and the Jewish religion that had rejected them evil.
Later the same tactic was used by the early Christians against other rival religions,
worshippers of the ancient Greek gods,
were labeled Satan worshippers,
worshippers of the ancient Italian gods, were called pagans,
and worshippers of the devil.
and on and on it went.
The ancient Jews told a story of human origins,
human beings discover the tree of knowledge,
and loss their primordial innocence,
they are sent out into the real world of work and pain,
and that is what made Adam and Eve human.
That is way Judaism still understands the story found in Genesis 2.
it is the story of how we learned to tell the difference between good and evil,
and that is a good thing.
But in time, the Christians re interpreted this story.
In the new story the Good God had created a good earth,
but Adam and Eve listened to the serpent
who we are now told is really Satan tempting our first parents.
although their is nothing in the text
to prompt such a fanciful interpretation
Adam and Eve sin, which Christians tell us means to choose Evil,
and are expelled from the Garden.
They go to Hell,
and all descendants of Adam and Eve will go to Hell
unless they become Christians,
Christ according to the stories,
was crucified and was resurrected on the third day
in the time between his death and his rising,
he went to hell to rescue all who had died
before he was born.
So, Christianity weaved a new story,
it isn't plan old Judaism,
it is Judaism reinterpreted with a New Deity Added.
God is opposed in by a divinity who is immortal,
can read your mind, and tempt your most inner thoughts,
is the ruler of this world, as well as Hell,
and who, these devil affirming Christians tell me,
has most of the world's people under his thrall.
Liberal Christianity which arose about the time of the American Revolution
was a radical break with this old story of Damnation.
when we think of these religious liberals
who affirmed the Jewish humanity of Jesus,
the ethic of love and community renewal,
the importance of covenants, that is
promise making communities like this congregation.
and emphasized deeds not creeds
We might forget that all of these affirmations
were based on a rejection of Hell,
and Satan,
and Evil as a force transcendent of human will.
The liberals preached that we humans made our own societies,
shaped our own histories
and we were responsible for the evils there in,
and we were called to clean up our own mess,
before we enjoyed the pleasures of a good life,
and a just society.
The religious liberals also asserted the unitary nature of reality.
God was good, and reality was good said the liberals.
Evil existed not as an independent force,
opposed to God,
but as a turning away from goodness,
evil was a perversion of an essentially good thing.
The liberal instinct underlies the American experiment.
While the Calvinist and Catholic
united in assuming that people needed to be supervised by their betters
the democratic ideal assumes that people of good will,
and with the right information can reason together
and arrive at profitable solutions.
That a republic based on balance of power,
will be able to root out corruption and liars,
and maximize commonwealth.
Based on this world view the liberals worked hard to create public schools,
worked long to eliminate poverty,
worked to overcome ancient prejudices against women,
and to overcome racism and homophobia.
Unitarian Universalists have long rejected the notion of an Evil One,
and divine principle opposed eternally to the Good.
But we know that evil exists,
there are evil acts, there are evil people,
there are evil results.
If we reject Evil as a force
if we say that Evil does not exist as a Cosmic Force,
independent of the Creative and Sustaining force of the Universe
we are not denying that evil acts are committed.
and that some people are devoid of human goodness.
Just as death is part of life,
and pain is a necessary function of feeling.
and lovers eventually suffer the loss of the beloved,
and sorrow punctuates all lives worth living.
and just as when a tree is bathed in sunlight,
it casts a shadow.
evil is part of the same reality as the good.
it is deformation, a corrupt and decayed form of the good,
but not a separate spirit,
an opposing Divinity.
Philosophers define evil as acts in which an intelligent being
intentionally inflicts suffering on another sentient being.
We need to put forward that definition,
because so much of our problem
when we think about evil flows from lack of clarity.
we hate evil acts and we are repulsed by evil people
and so our definitions are formed in that fear and loathing.
But we need clarity to over come evil.
the mosquito who bites you isn't evil,
it is doing what it was designed to do.
Even the virus that makes you ill isn't evil.
Its by products are stuff of life,
even if they are toxins to you.
Evil is an intentional act of cruelty.
The medical worker often inflicts pain,
but that pain is necessary for the healing process
the intention is not to cause suffering.
We could say the same for the judge, or clergy person,
the social worker, or counselor,
the teacher, and even the parent.
often they must say things that do not please others.
but if the intention is do justice,
or create understanding,
or set necessary boundaries
so that a good result might occur.
We declare their acts to righteous, and them to be leaders.
An act is evil when it has as its intention controlling the other, diminishing the other,
humiliating the other, violating the other,
to cause suffering.
It arises from a breakdown in human community,
it manifests itself in damaged people
and it in turn damages others,
abused people have often been abused.
Evil people are people who have committed evil acts
over and over and over again,
until acting in an evil way becomes their nature
until bullying, brutalizing, uncaring conduct,
overwhelms their human goodness,
and they are defined by their evil.
Do I believe in the Devil? in a divinity called Satan.
It is an ancient story, it informs our literature and art
the Fallen Angel,
the Dark Prince, the Polar Opposite of God,
But it isn't a very good story, and it limits our ability to do something about evil.
