What Evil Lurks?
July 1, 2007
First Universalist Unitarian Church, Wausau, WI
Richard E. Olson

        At first I thought it was good thing. But then I thought, on the other hand, maybe it’s a bad thing. I mean the fact that there is so much out there on this topic.  Usually, when I do a service, I find myself looking for one more source of information, one more story, one more angle, one more notable quote.  But this time, with evil as my topic, that was not the case.  In fact, I found so much information I find it hard to limit myself.

        It is not easy to characterize evil, or maybe it is.  Let’s take a couple of seconds to all close our eyes and picture evil.  Did you picture a person, maybe Jack the Ripper or Hannibal Lechter?  Did you picture a place, such as Europe in the early part of the 20th century or Cambodia in the late 1970s?  Did you picture a color, red perhaps, because of the images of the devil and hell we have seen?  Did you picture a slave on an auction block?  Did you picture a baseball bat hitting the head of a gay man?  Did you picture police dogs attacking black children in Alabama?  Are you comfortable telling others what you pictured?   
 
        Several years ago I was involved in a group in which the opening activity was to define the word evil.  I paired off with Sue Stoddard.  It wasn’t an easy task.  All we could come up with is that evil is the absence of good.

        Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines the adjective evil as: morally reprehensible, sinful, wicked, arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct, causing discomfort or repulsion, causing harm, marked by misfortune.  The noun evil is defined as:
the fact of suffering, misfortune and wrongdoing, something that brings sorrow, distress or calamity. (pause)  Such a broad definition of evil makes it a word easy to toss around.

        And it seems to me that we do hear the word tossed around these days, but then I guess we always have. Demagogues like to use it to demonize their opponents, whether these opponents are real or invented for political gain.  I have heard politicians refer to other nations as an axis of evil or an evil empire.  Claiming that others are evil, whether they be individuals or groups, is a powerful weapon.

        In an effort to rally hatred toward Jews in early 20th Century Europe they were depicted as evil.  During the conquest of the Americas the indigenous peoples were treated as savages who needed to be saved from their evil ways.  

        Throughout history, mentally ill people have been treated as if they were possessed by evil spirits, justifying ill-treatment.  It is so easy to cast others as evil, or being possessed by evil.  It has the effect of casting ourselves as good.  

        Recently I came across a web site that listed the top ten most evil people that history has known. Who do you suppose tops the list?  (Pause)  Actually, according to this list, Torquemada, the renowned Spanish Inquisitor, holds the dubious honor.  His cruel and sadistic methods to force people to convert to Christianity resulted in the death of many innocent people.

        Second on the list is the Romania despot Vlad the Impaler.  Adolph Hitler ranks third, which he may find disappointing.  Other names on the list include Ivan the Terrible, Adolph Eichmann, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-Tung, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin and Genghis Khan.  

        The web site, which is called, The Scales of Good and Evil, also has a list of good people. This list includes the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, Moses, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi.

        Several people have responded to the web site, suggesting candidates for both lists.  On the evil list, I might include Chemical Ali, the man recently executed for gassing thousands of Kurds-not that he acted alone.  

        One of my favorite stories about good and evil is a story written by the Italian author Italo Calvino, titled The Cloven Viscount.  The story tells of a viscount who decides to join the troops in battle.  His lack of skills in warfare cause him to quickly be the target of a canon ball that splits him in two.  Shortly thereafter, one half of his body returns to town, his evil half.

        The viscount goes around town committing one evil act after another. Naturally the people avoid him and hope for his demise.  Sometime later, his good half appears.  Unfortunately the townspeople come to resent this purely good side as much as the evil side.  An interesting twist to the story is that both sides fall in love with the same woman.

        The story ends with a battle scene between the two. Both stab at each other with a sword, but they never aim for the solid side, rather they aim at the cape the covers the missing side. Finally they end up entangled in a physical battle and then the doctor sews them back together.

        A similar version of the alleged dichotomy of the good and evil that resides within us all, is an episode of Star Trek called The Enemy Within.  In this episode Captain Kirk is transported back to the Enterprise but, due to a malfunction of the transporter system, only his good side arrives.

        He goes about demonstrating compassion, love and tenderness. This, however, interferes with his ability to lead.  In the mean time, his evil side arrives at the transporter room.  This Captain Kirk goes about the ship exhibiting hostility, lust and violence, also interfering with his ability to lead. The two Kirks meet on the deck and are ultimately joined together.

        Too often too many people claim that evil is merely the opposite of good.  I don’t see it as black and white, as yin and yang, as good and evil. I believe we are the sum of our parts, a composite of not only good and evil but many other manifestations.

        Samuel D. Proctor, professor emeritus of Rutgers State University, defines evil as, and I am quoting, that “condition that falls short of the good, that opposes the good, or that defies, threatens, jeopardizes, or defeats the good.”

        It is conflict and war rather than concord and peace.  It is racism and xenophobia rather that appreciation and understanding. It is hunger and want rather than adequacy, ignorance and dullness rather than enlightenment and curiosity. It is the terror and havoc of an earthquake, the destruction and waste of a wild flood, the spread of the AIDS virus, a solemn funeral of a child struck by lightning, or a lynching victim hanging from a tree.
 
        But let’s remind ourselves that good and evil are value statements, and can be relative to any situation; there may or may not be a universal definition of the two.

        For example, war may not always be seen as evil.  At times it is heralded as so good that it is sanctioned by God.  Many people agreed with the Nazi views of the Jews and did not believe it was evil to exterminate them.  Furthermore, let’s be reminded that it wasn’t pacifism or good deeds that won that war, but rather grenades, tanks, bombs and murder.

        Also, some argue that natural disasters and diseases are not always evil, that they are at times nature’s way of controlling the world’s population.  Those who say this often go a step further and contend that this is God’s way of punishing us for our evil ways. One of my major sources for this message today is a book titled Facing Evil: Light at the Core of Darkness.  It is a compilation of papers that were presented at a symposium, some of which were included in a Bill Moyer’s television special titled Facing Evil .   

        In the Preface to the book, Dr Harry Wilmer, author of the book Practical Jung, and philosophy professor Dr. Paul Woodruff, cite several dangers when discussing the topic of evil.
The first danger they cite is that we only see the shadows of evil cast by other people. According to the two, Americans tend to associate evil with Europe, especially with the activities of the Nazis.

        Maya Angelou, who was present at the symposium, supported this observation, saying that in our willingness to look elsewhere for evil, we ignore the evil of slavery, which is an integral part of our own history.

        The second danger Drs. Wilmer and Woodruff cite is that we fail to think about the evils that we, not other people are engaged in.  They add that ignoring the evils all around us is a way of being engaged in them.  We have to ask ourselves, what is our duty when facing evil?  How much can I , can we do?  When faced with evil, humans tend to respond in one of three ways; we fight, we flee or we freeze.  All too often it is the later.  

        Drs. Wilmer and Woodruff’s third danger is that we overlook the price of repaying evil with evil. What will the price be on the world stage now that one of the world’s great democracies and defender of human rights has openly engaged in torture?  

        A fourth danger is that in looking at evil we come to imitate it.
Is this why we fight fire with fire, terrorism with terrorism? terrorism? 

        The concept of evil, or a so-called battle between good and evil, is deeply rooted in theology, especially the Judeo-Christian theology with which, to some degree or another, many of us are familiar.

        One of the most well-know stories from Genesis tells of Satan tempting Eve with the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a tree God has forbidden them to eat from.  We all know the myth.  A few verses later, evil shows its ugly face when Cain murders his brother Abel because he feels rejected by God.

        Throughout the Hebrew scriptures the influence of Satan appears over and over again. But, according author and scholar Elaine Pagels, in these scriptures Satan acts as an agent of God.  In her book The Origins of Satan, Pagels writes that the term Satan describes an adversarial role and that the term Satan is not the name of a particular character.  She goes on to say that, and I quote,  “Although Hebrew storytellers as early as the sixth century B. C.E. occasionally introduced a supernatural character whom they called the Satan, what they meant was any one of the angels sent by God for the specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity.” (end quote)

        In one scene, from the book of Job, we find God in collusion with Satan.  In this scene,  God is found bragging to Satan about the loyalty of his subject Job.  Satan challenges God to allow Satan to put Job to the test, to see how deep his loyalty to God really is. Satan puts Job to the test and Job remains loyal.      

        This brings to mind another time Satan challenged God, this time however, Satan challenges God to a baseball game.  Smiling, God proclaims,   "You don't have a chance, I have Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and all the greatest players up here."

"Yes," snickered the devil, "but I have all the umpires!"

        Satan is invoked many more times in the scriptures, not just in the Hebrew scriptures but in the Christians scriptures as well. The synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John make good use of the Satan metaphor, often invoking it to describe or justify the hostility between factions within the Jewish faith.  The tension between we, the good, with God on our side and they, our evil enemies, urged on by Satan was the catalyst for much strife during biblical times. It still is today.  In fact, and especially in the book of John, these scriptures continue to be used to vilify the Jewish people for the death of Jesus.

        The images of light versus dark and of the cosmic battle between good and evil are at the cornerstone of Judeo-Christian theology. But this battle is not limited to theology, we also find this battle prevalent in folklore, children’s stories, history,  literature, both classic and modern, poetry and film.

        Shakespeare wrote of this battle in several of his works.

        The evil that Kurtz embodies in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, is a cold and calculating sinister one, one that other characters even  admire. This same character appears in the movie, Apocalypse Now. This time the setting is not the Congo but Vietnam. The theme is universal and transcends time.   

      
        Recently we rented the movie Pan’s Labyrinth. It deals with the later years of the Spanish Civil War, which like most civil wars, brought our the worst in many people.  One of the main characters in the movie is a captain with the fascist forces that won the war under the leadership of Francisco Franco.  I have never seen evil depicted to such a degree as we see in this captain.

        I am currently reading The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. It is a story that juxtaposes the preparation for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with the murder and cremation of possibly hundreds of people, mostly woman by Herman Webster Mudgett.  Better know under his alias of  Harry Holmes, Mudgett lured people to his hotel in order to carry out his fiendish plans. He holds the title of America’s first serial killer. Harry was a smooth talking, handsome man, who especially had a way with innocent women who had been lured to Chicago for employment because of the World’s Fair.  However, Harry had a darker side. We all do. Let’s face, it we did believe in a devil in hell, we all have thoughts we wouldn’t want him to know. But thinking and acting are two different things. 

        Well-known psychoanalyst Karl Jung wrote and spoke of this darker side to humans, calling it a shadow, a shadow we all have.  For Jung this shadow is everything in us that is unconscious, repressed, undeveloped and denied.  It is the dark rejected aspects of our being.  It is also, however, our positive and undeveloped good.

        According to Jung it is important for all of us to come to terms with our shadow for it is most dangerous when unrecognized.  When we fail to recognize our shadow we project our unwanted qualities onto others or become dominated by the shadow.  The more we are aware of our shadow the less it dominates us.  While some may deny having a shadow, Jung maintained that the mixture of this good and evil is present in us all. 

        Here is another idea from Jung, and I am quoting:  “It is a fact that cannot be denied; the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.”  (repeat).            
  
        I am far from being an expert on Jungian psychology.  But I think he makes a solid point.  When we fail to recognize our shadow and we fail to attend to the darker side where evil lurks, we risk acting out of those evils, and our own wickedness will kindle that in others.  

        And maybe that is where our duty lies. Rarely can we quarantine the evil that plagues humanity.  But we can quarantine our own evils.   We can inoculate our shadows with kindness and compassion, with generosity and forgiveness, with community and good works, with understand but with resolve.  We can fight the desire to fight fire with fire, we can point to our own shadows before we point to those of others and we can imitate what we admire in others not what we condemn. 

        We will never eradicate the illness of evil that inflicts us.  But we can palliate the effects and minimize the spread of it.  And we can, and we must, diagnose and nurse our own shadows, for the sake our own health, the health of those we love, and the health of humanity.