Confronting Evil

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