THE PROBLEM OF EVIL:  The King David Reaction

Steve Prichard, Guest Preacher

August 31, 2008

2 Samuel 11 and 12:  (selected verses)
Ephesians 6:  12-15
Matthew 7: 3-5

“For our fight is not against human foes, but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark world, against the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens.  Therefore, take up God’s armour; then you will be able to stand your ground when things are at their worst, to complete every task and still to stand.  Stand firm, I say, Fasten on the belt of truth; for coat of mail put on integrity; let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace, to give you firm footing.” Eph. 6: 12-15 (The New English Bible)

Let me say first by way of introduction…..as one who has attended hundreds of churches over the course of 78 years, heard thousands of sermons, sung in many dozens of choirs, …. I want to tell you how grateful I am for the opportunity to be part of the ‘household of God’ in this place.  I don’t mean the United Church of Christ in general but this particular church right here on College St.  The spirit of open inquiry; the readiness to speak truth to power; the open invitation to include all of God’s children in its family; the commitment to worship with reasonable minds as well as open hearts; the living of the gospel not so much in what we believe but in love of neighbor, has made me feel at home here as in no other church I’ve attended.  Thank you for that.  I’m deeply grateful.  And…too…..for the chance to share a few of thoughts that have recently been on my mind.

Last week in a joint television interview Rich Warren , the pastor of that huge mega church in California, asked presidential candidates Obama and McCain whether evil existed .  And , if so, what they’d do about it.  Both believed it existed but one wanted to defeat it …. the other wanted to understand it and be humble in its presence.  Evil is a hot topic these days, even on the campaign trail.  So I thought it would be interesting to try and understand it a bit more…. at least one aspect of it.

From the dawn of human consciousness many, many thousands of years ago, ..,humans struggled to find meaning in the mysterious and powerful forces of nature that shaped their daily life.  Bad weather, stars, the sun and moon, ferocious animals, illness, enemies, and especially the personal experience of life and death were first given words … then managed.. by imagining…. .then deifying and finally worshiping those invisible forces and spirits they believed brought them into being.  It was surely here, in the flowering imagination of growing consciousness… the words for ‘good and bad’, …. “God” and “Satan” , were born.

And since the beginning of written history, .. poets, philosophers, theologians, and novelists have tried to understand our place in a moralized world of good and evil.  When I first told Carla about my sermon title she immediately loaned me five books on the topic.  She’s a treasure.  And so it goes.  The list of authors and titles is endless, but surely Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ is the quintessential model. 

Lucifer, God’s favorite angel, had the audacity to challenge God’s authority and so was cast into Hell along with his merry band of fallen angels.  Then along came Beelzebub, who suggested that the way to get even with this absolute authority called God….was to corrupt his greatest creation…. humankind.  So there’s Adam and Eve in creation.  Then comes a snake to tempt them, followed by a bevy of witches to lure otherwise good folks into Satan’s evil ways.  The competing forces of good and evil were now cosmic.  God versus the devil…..‘good’ guys against the ‘bad’ guys, heaven vs.  hell, depending on your level of orthodoxy.  And boy, did the princes of the state and the princes of the church have a field day with that idea.  For centuries they were able to justify unspeakable horrors against dissidents, “witches” and “heretics” during inquisitions and crusades, all in the name of religious purity, orthodoxy and obedience….and yes, done to preserve their power, wealth and a self image as the ‘righteous ones’ while the ‘others’ were,.. by definition, …the evil ones.

Since then, ’witch hunts’ have been a favorite pastime of the rich and powerful.  Even back in the 1680s my great, great, great and so on, grandfather John Prichard was chosen by his congregational church in Topsfield, Massachusetts to serve on the jury in four of the Salem witch trials.  To his church’s glory then and the Prichard family’s embarrassment today he voted to convict three of the women accused as witches.  Thank goodness the Governor of Mass., speaking truth to power , set them all free, much to the consternation of some pious puritans in my great grandfather’s congregation ….who fully believed that Satan, ..embodied in those women, ..was the author of evil and the source of all sin. 
And remember right after 9/11 ?  Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell proclaimed that God was punishing America because we had allowed the evils of homosexuality and feminism to flourish in America.  How insightful of those prominent religious leaders to discover the real source of evil in America.  They were in the great tradition of Senator Joe McCarthy who sent America on one of its most destructive ‘witch’ hunts. 

In radical Islam too, some Imams label non-believers as ‘infidels’ and thus justify any means to destroy them.  History, it seems, makes it abundantly clear that the bifurcation of good and evil has had enormous, and at times catastrophic consequences.  When people or issues are understood primarily in black and white terms, the belief systems that follow inevitably become inclusive or exclusive, authoritative or heretical, you’re either for us or against us.  Even in subtle ways, like our own government’s ‘hyper-partisanship’, … solutions to difficult problems become almost impossible when ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is the song of the day. 

Bill Coffin once said in a sermon..”Many of us have a strong allergic reaction to change of any kind. …..The result is an intolerance for nonconforming ideas that runs like a dark streak through human history.  In religious history this intolerance becomes particularly vicious when believers divide the world into the godly and the ungodly; for then, hating the ungodly is not a moral lapse but rather an obligation, part of the job description of being a true believer. “
To some extent the Godly versus the ungodly is there as sub theme in the New Testament, especially in Paul.  But most of Jesus teachings and the import of all his actions make it clear he sees the source of evil in a much more wholistic way. The distortion of Jesus’ ministry and the polarization of ‘good and evil’ was magnified and institutionalized during the fourth century when the Roman emperor Constantine conscripted the cross and Christianity and made it the state religion of powerful Rome and the cross a symbol of war …instead of the prophetic message of justice for the poor which it had been for two hundred years.  Jesus ministry was not the accumulation of power, ala Constantine… but speaking truth to power.
It’s created an interesting paradox.  Today Jesus is mostly portrayed as meek and mild,….a personal friend who saves us from personal sin and makes us pesrsonally holy. In fact, Jesus was much more the bold prophet who went about confronting the hypocrisy in the ‘principalities and powers’ that cheated the poor, manipulated the money markets, and kept the country folk in deep debt, the orthodox.  It was the abuse of power that troubled Jesus.  Leaders were suppose to promote justice, and to protect, support and further the well-being of their people.  Instead they oppressed and exploited them.  Throwing the money changers out of the temple was just one part of a courageous confrontation of the religious elite who put the poor in a ‘catch 22’ situation.  The priests claimed to provide the only access to God on the one hand, and , at the same time overtaxed the poor so severely that they could never get out of debt.  The Lord’s Prayer in it’s original language makes this clear……‘forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”.  He was not asking for forgiveness of personal sins as we ask today but was challenging the whole debting system of Israel that bilked the poor. 

In the same vein, Jesus seemed only marginally concerned with sexual misconduct…..too often the main focus of sin and orthodoxy in American churches today.  While confronting hypocrisy and duplicity in high places was central to his ministry….. a topic too rarely talked about in American churches today.  “Judge not that ye be not judged”….. “You tend to see the sawdust in your brother’s eye rather than the plank in your own..” he said, in a variety of ways to the religious leaders of his day.  “You who are without sin cast the first stone” he said to the ‘bible quoters’ who called for the woman caught in adultery to be stoned…..” You wonder what he might say to our own leaders who harshly judge China’s human rights behavior while they condone torture at Quantanamo Bay ?  “Go to the closet and pray” he said to the man who stood in public and smugly said “thank god I’m not like other men”.  Could that not apply to smug nations as well….who claim to be the ‘shining light on the hill’… the best democracy in the world, yet go to war under false pretenses and try to impose their way of life on others?  Read the gospels again.  You’ll find dozens of stories and metaphors to make the case… not just for Jesus teaching for individuals…. but for institutions as well.
So back to King David.  He was not only an individual with a problem.  He was the government of Israel with a problem.  David was a good guy .  But David was also powerful, pampered and privileged in a patriarchal society.  Even good guys , and good nations, have a hard time avoiding temptation under those circumstances.  While it was wrong for him to have sex with Bathsheba, the real evil was much deeper and wider.  David, the writer of the Psalms,…. turned smug.  To cover his tracks he used his political power to label Uriah as disposable and had him killed.  In that process of ‘avoidance’ he created a vacuum of unintended consequences .  Not only did he betray his God and his personal ethic, he betrayed the people of Israel.  He failed to model the justice and care all his people which he had promised to do in his “installation “ covenant before god.  So, he lied,.. corrupted Joab his colleague and the officers of his own army,… killed an innocent man …...all so he could label himself and his greed as OK.  Don’t you think his troops on the ground might have gotten the message from this story that torture or killing the innocent was OK for them as well?  Well, …maybe David was trying to protect his legacy, as they say..

I like the way Shakespeare put it in Measure to Measure:

But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.

Everybody, even good guys, which is how most of us define ourselves, have the capacity to be drawn into actions or behavior that are hurtful, unethical or cruel in relation to others.  There is no clear line between good and evil.  All we need is anonymity, separation from our connected community and the right circumstances.  In the privacy and the anonymity of your automobile have you ever had the urge to run a crazy driver off the road after he carelessly cut you off on interstate 89?  We don’t do it,…most of the time, but the shadow of the action is there for the taking. 

Our unconscious not only holds all the curiosity and the energy of imagination for our creativity, it also has the capacity for greed, violence, revenge and extreme self-centeredness ….hard-wired by our primitive past.  Our laws and social strictures help to direct that energy to keep us whole and in balance…..but greed and aggression are always there… waiting for the right invitation. 

So the unconscious is a two edged sword, as King David, John Edwards, Ted Haggard, Bill Bennett, Bill Clinton, and the otherwise good soldiers at Abu Gharib and Mai Lai in Vietnam found out about themselves.  Almost any good person…or organization, or nation can go bad given the right circumstances.  This was made very clear in the research findings of the Stanford experiment back in the 1970s.  Otherwise good students, playing the role of guards to ‘student’ prisoners, so easily became cruel and sadistic in their treatment of their classmates labeled “criminals” …the experiment had to be stopped.  That situation and many others just like it are documented in Phlip Zimbardo’s recent book called “The Lucifer Effect”. 
Many people have difficulty with this earthier, morally gray image of human beings.  They much prefer a nobler, less primitive image of ourselves as rational, good , kind and exercising ‘free will’.  And of course much of that nobler image can be true of us as well…. given the right circumstances.  But the Jewish holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Sudanese Darfur and our own slaughter of native Americans we labeled as ‘savages’, should keep us humble and always alert to the evil capabilities of civilized mammals. 

Just as King David rationalized his labeling and lust by sending Uriah off to be killed in a staged battle, nations and religions rationalize their behavior and withdraw their legal protection and support of “others” by labeling them as heretics, aliens, foreigners, queers, poor, perverts , non-believers etc. .  Then they can feel justified in withdrawing their rights and stop caring about them as human beings.  Even the mis-labeling spin in political campaigns opens the door to evil.  The authors of these ads hope you will dislike and judge the other candidate as ‘bad’ as shown in their distorted light.  It tends to play on our worst fears and biases in order to divide us. 

It is my belief that the minute a person or group fails to stay open to the truth or withdraws their empathy - ie love of neighbor as oneself …..a vacuum in the relationship and the caring community is created.  Evil is what rushes in to fill that vacuum.  If we are sufficiently aware of the broken connection or the violation of truth we can sometimes repair it.  If we can’t, all the things we’ve described above begin to happen.  We label, ..or mislabel it with our imagination, not the truth, so we can manage it…correct it…criticize it….out there, while we protect our ego as the one without the problem.  Like a father I worked with in counseling who was very critical of his 15 year old son’s occasional lateness, calling him ‘undisciplined’ , stupid and obstinate.  When the father was able to look at his own chronic lateness in family therapy (he hadn’t gotten his taxes paid on time or a birthday remembered for years) he stopped acting as if it was only his son’s problem and learned to live with the occasional lateness as a normal part of adolescent development.  It wasn’t long after that he could tell his son… how much he loved him. 

Occasionally even governments can do this as well.  Many pundits expected a blood bath in South Africa when apartheid ended and the ANC took over.  But Mandela didn’t label the Afrikaners as the bad guys,…. didn’t send them to prison as he was sent,…. nor did he try to wreck revenge on them or impose his will on them.  Rather he worked to understand them, include them, even promoted their national rugby team, all in an effort to include them , even forgive them.  Like Jesus, he saw them as persons of value, children of God and therefore sacred.  …. And a bloodbath was averted…and healing was begun.
I think that’s what the church,… at its best,….does for us.  It helps us heal the divided self.  It creates a communal space where we can become whole again.  Like no other institution in our culture except the ‘good’ family, the worship experience organizes our emotions and actions toward what is good and loving.  Sermons hold up a mirror to our souls by telling us insightful stories of others .  The church has a ritual of confession….. and when we’re ready to see …. holds up that mirror to our motives, thoughts and actions so we can see our failings on the ‘s inside instead of seeing them in others.  The church, at its best, plans, promotes and encourages our participation in activities that make real the ‘empathy enhancing’ commandment to ‘love our neighbor as our selves’. 
That’s what Nathan did for David.  He didn’t punish him, label him as bad or ignore his sin.  Rather, in an empathic way so that David could hear it… and take it in, ….he told him a story that …like a mirror ….allowed David to let go of his denial and avoidance and see inside himself …….come back to his true self.  That’s what Jesus tried to do as well.  Not just for his disciples but for the religious leaders of all of Israel and for the Palestinian peasants.  He held up the mirror of justice and love to both individuals and the powers and principalities.  Like Nathan, Jesus told them stories of … lepers, tax collectors,.. the disabled,.. the lame , ..the alien Samaritan, and humanized them as ‘caring’ neighbors’.  He talked, walked and ate with prostitutes and religious dissidents , the so-called socially despised in order to demonstrate that they were God’s children too.  He modeled empathy that stripped away the dismissive labels of his time. 

We can too.  We can’t defeat evil, but we can keep ‘evil’ in check both within and without by ‘fastening on the belt of truth’ and then ‘the mail of integrity’, as Paul puts it to the Ephesians.  I think that’s what John meant when he talked about being ‘born again’.  It’s this experience of healing the divided self , …personally and socially.  So when John said, “You will know they are my disciples by the way they love one another” he was also telling us how to keep the evil of the world at bay and live in the Kingdom of God on earth.  AMEN