Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
March 21, 2004
Reading 1:
from Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris
One of the strangest things
that people say is, “I'm a good person.” I am always amazed when people claim to
know that about themselves. To say, “I try to be a good person,” on the other
hand, makes perfect sense to me.
…
Most of the time, people will not come out and say that
they are good people in contrast to those who are not, but that is often what
they mean. And this strikes me as a dangerous proposition. History demonstrates,
repeatedly, that if enough people begin to define themselves as "good" in
contrast to others who are "bad," those others come to be seen as less than
human. Genocide is justified in the eyes of those who perpetrate it on the
grounds that it is not real people who are being killed; rather, something evil
is being eliminated from the world by those who are good.
I prefer the perspective of the Roman poet Terence, who
wrote: "I am human; I do not think of any human thing as foreign to me." I feel
that it is my business, when I read the news account of some horrible crime, not
to regard my "good" self as completely separate from the "bad" people depicted
in the story but to search my own heart for a connection. I try to see if I can
understand how it is these people have done what they have done. Not to excuse
them, but to draw them closer in order to pray for them and also to pray over
what it means to be linked with them in a common humanity. And sometimes
murderers do help me recognize that my own anger feels like murder; I can
comprehend all too well how my rage, left unchecked, might translate into a
careless or even truly terrible act meant to destroy another.
[I am] Not a "good" person, nor notably "evil" on the human
continuum, but one who struggles with ordinary yet dangerous temptations to
anger and revenge, to pride and greed, the fool's gold of vainglory, and the
improper manipulation of other people to further my own ends. You name it; it's
all there. I don't know much about how to deal with my own evil, but I have
learned enough to recognize that sometimes all I can do is pray.
Sermon:
David Rankin, a late great Unitarian minister once wrote:
I personally have tried every conceivable technique to avoid confronting the
reality of evil. …I gave up newspapers. I read romantic poetry and the complete
works of Emerson. I took up golf and hiking. I saw The Sound of Music three
times. I refused to vote. I listened to nothing but Doris Day records.
In the end, however, David Rankin says he couldn’t remain in denial about the
reality in which he lived, and this reality required of him to live in ways that
resisted evil in himself and in the world.
As our Unitarian Universalist tradition affirms the
inherent worth and dignity of every individual, it is unsettling, and perhaps
terribly upsetting, to look at the shadow side of our human nature and to
reflect on what corruption we human beings are capable of. Our avoidance of
evil as a liberal religious tradition stems from the optimistic view of human
nature of our nineteenth century forbears. Channing, Emerson and other idealists
of the nineteenth century refused to theologically accept that we as humans are
hardwired for evil. They instead believed the essence of human nature is
goodness because we are all created as divine inspirations from a good and
loving God. It’s a lovely theology, but there’s only one problem. How could
human beings commit the most heinous of atrocities time and time again
throughout human history? How could the twentieth century be full of human
extermination projects, mass murders, and genocides of ethnic cleansing? How
could war and terrorism be the answer to many people’s attempts to bring justice
and peace to the world in the 21st century?
I want to suggest today that evil is not only real but it
is embedded in the psyche of every human being, such that we have the capacity
for corrupt and destructive behavior just as we have the capacity to foster
goodness. Evil isn’t something easily defined, but I’d say that evil is any
willful act of human violence or disregard that human beings commit or allow
which lead to the unnecessary destruction or substantial denigration or
dehumanization of other people or a society. I believe that individuals,
communities, nations, and governments all have the capacity.
Because evil exists, an essential part of religion is to
resist evil, to confront it, and to goad ourselves and the greater world toward
goodness. Without evil, one could argue that there isn’t much reason for
churches to exist besides functioning as a country club or a discussion group.
…
My grandfather on my father’s side was a professor at Yale.
In his department of psychology was Stanley Milgram. Milgram wanted to evaluate
human nature and the degree to which Americans unquestioningly follow authority,
regardless whether someone was getting hurt. His experiment was simple. He asked
people to participate in a teaching experiment where one person would ask
questions and the other, behind a closed door, would answer. When a wrong answer
was given, the first person was to administer an electric shock to the other.
They were told that this experiment evaluated the degree to which pain helped or
hindered someone’s ability to give correct answers. However, this wasn’t the
experiment at all, because the person behind the door, wasn’t getting any
electric shock but instead was a part of the real experiment to determine how
far people will go to inflict pain on others while an authority figure stands by
telling them that everything is okay.
Prior to the supposed teaching experiment, the participant
to administer the electric shocks would meet the other person who acted as if he
too was coming in for an experiment and would have a short conversation.
Sometimes the confederate mentioned that he had a heart problem.
The electroshock machine had a lever that ranged from 0 to
435 volts and an indicator that read “slight shock,” “moderate shock,” “strong
shock,” “very strong shock,” “intense shock,” “extreme intensity,” “danger
severe,” and “XXX” beyond that. Sometimes the person behind in the other room
would howl louder and louder as the shocks supposedly increased. Sometimes the
“victim” said he won’t give any more answers and the conductor would direct the
participant to continue the shocks. Sometimes, the “victim” said he wanted out.
Sometimes the “victim” yelled to a certain point, said he wanted out, and then
went quiet as an ominous silence followed the electroshocks. But remember no one
was actually getting shocked. This was all part of the experiment to see how far
the person in the chair administering the shock would go.
Stanley Milgram originally planned to conduct his
experiments in post-war Germany to measure how they differed from Americans. The
experiments were shut down before they were completed. For the results were
horrifying. The vast majority of Americans participating in the experiment
continued to administer shocks to the highest level, even when they could hear
someone yelling out in pain in the other room. A few people refused to comply,
but most trusted the supposed conductor of the experiment who told them that
everything was fine.
I am convinced that the potential for evil is hardwired
into us, as is the potential for goodness. David Goldhagen argues in his book,
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,
that the Holocaust happened only with the willing participation of a huge number
of ordinary German people. The Jewish people had long been deemed not only
inferior but as conniving, evil people. Goldhagen writes, “By sanctioning their
actions with the orders, hence the blessings, of a charismatic, beloved leader,
the German state was able, easily, to enlist ordinary Germans in the program of
extermination, even though, prior to its implementation, most of them had
certainly never imagined that they would be mass executioners. After the years
of turmoil, disorder, and privations that Germans believed the Jews to have
caused their country, Hitler was offering Germans a true ‘final solution.’” We
must never forget the potential danger and evil of prejudice.
Fred Katz, in his book Ordinary
People and Extraordinary Evil, identifies our human propensity for
“splitting,” to separate ordinary, "good" people from those who commit
extraordinary acts of evil. When splitting the world into good and bad, we
idealize the good people as heroes. And demonize the bad people as enemies. In
extreme splitting, there’s no middle ground, no gray area. This is a way to
organize what is otherwise a very complex world. You are either with us or
against us. This splitting gives structure and organization to our lives, as
well as purpose, direction and a clear identity. It protects us from feeling the
anxiety that comes with uncertainty.
Katz insists that the best way to
confront evil is to understand how ordinary people like us can become
perpetrators of evil. He demonstrates how gradual small decisions can lead us to
evil if we aren’t on our guard. The following was written, ironically, in 1993:
The route to evil often takes the
form of a sequence of seemingly small, innocuous incremental steps, in each of
which one tries to solve a problem within one's immediate situation. This
approach to living, so customary in the daily life of most of us, can lead to
ignoring other people's well-being. In the 1980s the stock market insider
trading scandals, coupled with "creative financing" for buccaneering
takeovers, served as examples . . . These persons pursued advantageous "deals"
with vigor and ingenuity, tempted by how small transgressions of the rules
could offer enormous financial rewards. Once engaged in this practice the
financial rewards were so vast, and the means to achieve it so readily
available within their immediate world . . . that some of the brightest
persons fed on an orgy of greed that destroyed many a company and the
livelihood of many an innocent person. In this whirl of self-aggrandizement
the wider society's morality came to be regarded as quite irrelevant. For some
executives their own immediate route to prosperity was all that counted. While
following this route they treated their employees as throwaway property, while
they themselves obtained huge financial gains.
This was written nearly a decade
ago! Why wasn’t anyone listening? We were told by the leaders of both our nation
and our businesses that it was actually okay, that this form of capitalism
really was for the greatest good. In Katz's view, evil often results from
getting too caught up in the immediacy of our situation and ignoring the big
picture. This is a tough learning for us and our nation. We encourage evil when
we compartmentalize our lives. We encourage evil when the values we hold dear in
our personal lives are irrelevant in our work lives. We encourage evil by
leading lives too frenzied to act from a centered place. If we raise our
consciousness about these factors that contribute to evil, Katz argues, we can
change them. If evil is typically done in small, incremental steps, it is
possible for us to raise questions to stop it and to take small incremental
steps toward goodness.
My grandfather and his colleagues were consumed with how to
teach people to do this. The findings of Stanley Milgram were deeply disturbing.
Nothing like them have been done since. For the Milgram experiments never
continued. There was understandable concern over the emotional duress put on
those who participated. The experience could be traumatic. Imagine how you would
feel if you were asked to inflict pain on another person, especially if you were
directed to give an electric shock that your lever labels as high intensity,
danger severe shock, and XXX, apparently meaning beyond severe. Or worse, if you
could hear or see the person yelling in pain, a person who has told you he has a
heart problem. Or the worst scenario of all, you actually agreed to give that
shock of 435 volts. Well, my friends, I want to suggest we often are in that
very predicament.
Whether it is a young John Walker Lindh who converts to
Islam and is persuaded to submit his authority to that of fundamentalist Muslims
or young soldiers who are persuaded never to question the orders of their
superiors or civic-minded citizens who remain silent despite objections from
their conscience, obedience to authority is a difficult issue, especially when
our own country has a history of aiding and abetting those who serve our
interests in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. Our country tends to call
such people freedom fighters when they are on our side, as both Saddam Hussein
and Osama bin Laden were once named and supported by our nation. But when they
oppose our interest, we label them terrorists, and rightly so, when they behave
in ways that wreak terror in the hearts of others. My concern is that our nation
tends to ignore when it is doing the same.
This past week marks the anniversary of our country’s
pre-emptive war with Iraq. We were told that it was necessary to inflict
violence on another country that had not attacked us. We were told it is morally
justified to carry out the ravages of war on a people who have so little
compared to us. The entire justification to go to war was the expressed
certainty that weapons of mass destruction were housed in Iraq, a certainty that
was based on secret information.
I am aware that one year ago this congregation voted
overwhelmingly to take a stand in protest of going to war. I understand many of
your felt we were in the midst of a giant Milgram experiment. Clearly people
here asked, “Shall we follow without questions? Shall we maintain such busy
lives that we cannot be bothered? Shall we ignore the evil-doing of others and
simply hope it will go away? Shall we tell ourselves that whatever evil our
actions hold is justified in order to achieve a greater good?”
The greatest evils this world has ever known have been
perpetrated by people who sanction violence in the name of doing good. Whether
it be crusades of religion or the mass exterminations of the 20th
century, it is the dark side of human nature to fool ourselves that the world is
split between evil and good, that we are wholly on the side of good, and that we
are morally justified in waging violence and war.
-
When you see evil at work, don’t be silent, don’t
acquiesce, whether it’s in you, in your own neighborhood or in national
policy.
-
Be on your guard to fend against the incremental steps
that lead us to treating other people as dispensable or as property.
-
Beware that the propensity for evil is as present in your
own life as it is in anyone else’s.
-
Don’t let your life get so caught up in the immediate
situation as to lose sight of the long-run and larger picture.
-
Remember: no one is all good or all evil, and splitting
our worldview ultimately leads to the sanctioning of further evil.
-
Finally, when you fight evil, don’t fight it on its own
ground. For doing so only draws us into it, stains us, and dirties us by it.
We must fight evil with every positive force we’ve got.
Fight it with compassion of heart, fight it with clarity of voice, fight it with
the goodness of which we all are capable.
May it be so.
Blessed be. Amen.
© Copyright 2004 Alan C.
Taylor, All Rights Reserved.
