Summary of Vocal Ministry, September 15, 2019
Scott Holmes
I have been wrestling with what it means to confront evil
for many months now. This is not a message I want to give, but it has
persistently returned, and now it is easier to try to give it than to remain
silent.
Like many of you I came to Quakerism and silent worship to
escape harmful doctrines and theologies. It is so healing to be silent in a
community focused so completely on love. As Quakers we are always asking to see
“what love can do?” (William Penn) Our beliefs in the possibility of perfection
and in continuing revelation help me become a better person and aim at an
unfolding and loving relationship with the Divine. This faith pushes back
against doctrines of human depravity and legalistic truths set in stone
millennia ago. Our practice of silent waiting worship has felt like a spiritual
refugee camp where I am welcomed in a loving community and learn who I am.
As Quakers we lift up examples of people “walking cheerfully
over the earth, answering that of God” in those we encounter. (George Fox) We
believe that “only Light can drive out darkness.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) We
are introspective and self-critical – looking to remove those things in our
life that distract us from the Divine. “May we look upon our treasure, the
furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try to discover whether the
seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.” (John Woolman) Our
commitment to “simplicity” is a theology of subtraction. Historically Friends
have stood against many evils such as slavery and racial inequality. We protest
against evil, and we try to uproot it in our lives. We “speak Truth to Power”
to name and dissolve evil.
But what are we really protesting against? We are we trying
to remove from our lives? What do we do when we are “walking cheerfully over
the earth” and encounter evil? What is evil and how do we confront it?
I have encountered pure evil: behavior aimed at destroying
and demeaning human life. I have seen deliberate, unadulterated, unapologetic
evil. In my experience, this kind of evil is rare. More often, evil is allied
with good. It is not just day or night, it is twilight. We live in the mixture
of good and evil, and the light does not drive out darkness in twilight. Most
of my life is lived in twilight. Good aims are advanced by evil means. Evil
aims are wrapped in the language of goodness.
As I have wrestled with this question two stories have kept
coming back to me. The first is the story of Jesus’s encounter with evil before
he began his ministry. (Matthew 4, Luke 4:1-13). In this story Jesus encounters
the Devil in the wilderness where Jesus was fasting and hungry. The devil
offered bread and material comfort. The devil offered power over the kingdoms
of the world. And, the devil tempted Jesus to call upon God to save him from
harm. Jesus rejected material comfort, political power, and the temptation to
call upon God like a Genie in a bottle. Our relationship with the divine is a
radical act of loving obedience to the Divine. And so it is evil to command the
Divine for our benefit.
The other story comes from the story of the “Grand
Inquisitor” written by Dostoyevsky in his novel the Brothers Karamazov. In that story, Jesus returns during the time of
the great inquisition when the church was killing heretics. The institution of
the Church gave the people material comfort and assumed complete political
power. Before executing Jesus, the Grand Inquisitor explained that people were
burdened by the freedom of creating their own loving relationship with the
Divine, and preferred to follow rules that felt like they created a divine
relationship – instead of following the suffering path of love on their own.
The people laid down their freedom before the Inquisitor and traded it for
bread. The Inquisitor took political power and power over the divine and
“corrected” the radical idea of living free relationship with the Divine. This
kind of evil is totalitarian. It gives people material comfort and some power,
and confuses ideology with the Divine.
I can see these evils working themselves out in my life, in
my community, and our society. My striving for material comfort separates me
from other suffering human beings. The power of my privilege increases my
material comfort, insulates me from the truth of the suffering I cause, and
gives me a false sense of control. I fall into a doctrinal or ideological view
of the Divine that creates a self-justification for these other evils rather
than following a radical path of freedom and love. I give up this freedom and
bind myself to systems, institutions, corporations that increase my power and
material comfort while distancing between me from the harm these entities cause
to other members of the human family. I also see this totalitarian impulse in
our destruction of the environment, the violent inequality caused by our
malignant capitalism, and in our politics of hatred.
So what do we do about this Evil? I don’t know. I still have
a lot of learning to do about this. But I have learned a few things which may
be helpful. First, I need to be careful when fighting evil not to become evil.
It is so easy to vilify people, demonize them, and cast them as less than human
– less worthy of love. It is easy to believe that the tactics of evil are
effective and are justified in the pursuit of goodness. The way of truth and
love can look like a silly, ineffective detour and waste of time. Second, I don’t
want to act from a place of fear. Fear is a useful feeling. There is a lot of
wisdom in fear. But it is not the basis of right action. When it comes time to
make a decision and act, I should not act from a place of fear. And finally,
when faced with evil it is important for me to name it and stand against it
fiercely, militantly, without yielding. All the various evil efforts to
dehumanize and destroy our human family must be named and opposed
unrelentingly.
When Jesus sent his disciples out to heal and teach about
the radical power of unconditional love, he told them he was sending them out
as “sheep among the wolves,” and told them to be as “wise as serpents and
innocent as doves.” As a Quaker I feel like I have the “innocent as a dove”
part down, and I need a lot more of work on how to be as wise as a serpent
without becoming the evil I resist.
Scott Holmes
September 15, 2019
