Sixty-seven years ago on a chilly winter night in the little French mountain town of Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon, a cold, hungry woman knocked on the door of the local pastor, Andre Trocme’. She was a Jewish refugee fleeing the Nazis, and she asked to come in.  Knowing the danger to himself, Pastor Trocme’ welcomed her in, but the act of courage and kindness did not stop there.  The entire village of Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon became a refuge for Jews during the war, using songs as signals for when it was safe to move from countryside hideouts back to their homes.  They saved 3-5,000 lives, as many as the population of the village.  Even as collaborators in occupied France turned over 83,000 Jews to be sent to Nazi death camps, not one villager in Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon betrayed the Jewish refugees under their care, even when the pastor and several other villagers were arrested and the pastor’s cousin was killed.  Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon has been called a conspiracy of goodness, right in the midst of an ocean of evil.

It is nearly inevitable that Nazi Germany will come up at some point in any discussion about good and evil.  Nazi atrocities were so horrendous that it chills the soul to consider them. At the same time we are amazed by acts of goodness and heroism such as those of Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon.  There are examples like this within our own religious heritage.  Martha and Waitstill Sharp were recently recognized as Righteous Among the Nations for their work to help Jewish refugees in Europe.  They helped develop what is now the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, the symbol of which is now the symbol of our whole faith: the flaming chalice.

Unfortunately, Nazi Germany is not the only example of unspeakable evil in our world, and the realities of good and evil are often far more complex and nearer to home.  Good and evil can be found in kind words and cruel comments, gestures of generosity and self-serving lies.  Often we find both in the same people, including ourselves.  We affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, but then we open the newspaper to Columbine, Virginia Tech, Rwanda, or Iraq.

Especially after the World Wars of the last century, liberal theology was challenged and often accused of lacking a theory of evil.  It is true that the Unitarian and Universalist traditions in America emerged partly in response to a theology of total human depravity; the idea that all human beings are born into original sin, depraved to the core, and fully deserving of eternal hellfire.  Only by the unmerited grace of God are a few chosen and saved from the fate we all deserve.  Instead, Universalists proclaimed a God of love who would ultimately draw all unto himself, while Unitarians said we must recognize our God-given capacity for goodness and reason, not only for evil.  Both movements had optimistic hopes for human potential and for the future of human society, which seemed to be dashed by the horrors of 20th-century war.  Of course, neither tradition denied the existence of evil in the world, and if there were any who truly embraced the inevitability of human progress onward and upward forever, that certainly does not characterize Unitarian Universalism today.  We may hope and strive for a better future, and we may refuse to despair or give up, but we are aware of the ambiguity of progress and we acknowledge growing threats to our own existence, many of which are of our own doing.

We are not so naive as the caricature of liberal religion would have it, but many of us are still unsure of what to think about good and evil, especially the concept of evil.  Perhaps for that reason I was approached to lead a study group this fall on the book “People of the Lie” by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck.  In this book, Peck argues for a clinical definition of ‘evil’ as a condition that might be diagnosed.  On the whole our group was glad that has never happened, but nonetheless the book sparked some fascinating discussion, contributing to this sermon.

So what would a Unitarian Universalist theory of good and evil look like today?  We use the word ‘good’ in many ways, but one thing most of these uses have in common is that they have something to do with life, especially human life.  We might speak of some inherent beauty or goodness in the universe, but even then, we see through the lens of what we perceive as living human beings.  Scott Peck is not alone in defining good as that which promotes life and the qualities we value as living beings, such as awareness, autonomy, relationship, learning, pleasure, growth, and love.  Evil is what destroys these qualities of life.

At this level, evil includes what is sometimes called “natural evil”, such as natural disasters, disease and death.  For those who attribute the creation and functioning of the universe to a benevolent, all-powerful God, natural evil raises the question of how such a God could allow so much evil in the world.  The problem is especially severe for those who believe God intervenes to protect us–why in some cases and not others?  Survivors of diseases or disasters often give credit to God for saving them, but what does that say about those who don’t survive?  We never get to hear from that perspective.

There are some common ways to try to escape from this classic problem of evil, either by casting everything on the mystery of God’s ways–who are we to question what God is up to?–or by saying God chose to give us free will and it would negate that gift if God saved us from the consequences of our choices.  Since our choices obviously don’t cause most natural evil, the free will of Satan or some evil being is often added to the equation.  To many of us, natural evil appears more like the result of purely natural processes than the mysterious workings of God or the choices of a cosmic demon.  Most Unitarian Universalists either find the idea of an omnipotent personal God to be implausible, or we believe that God is part of the unfolding of the universe itself, not an external being who intervenes from time to time.  There is no official Unitarian Universalist doctrine of God, and we hold ourselves open to the truth whatever it may be, but most of us are more concerned about the problem of human evil than the actions of cosmic spiritual beings.

I should mention that in “People of the Lie,” Scott Peck primarily addresses human evil, but his experience of witnessing an exorcism convinces him of the reality of Satan and of demonic possession.  He acknowledges that an atheist who was present did not perceive the same thing, and he saw nothing clearly supernatural, but the faces and voices of the patient seemed too demonic to be human.  There was a time in my own life when I believed people could be possessed by evil spirits, and I saw the world quite differently.  In retrospect what I see is the complexity of human personality, the continuum of mental health and mental illness, and susceptibility of the human mind to snap under intense pressure.  There can be some benefit to naming and rejecting evil patterns that we discover in our lives, but it is not necessary to believe they are independent beings, even if it sometimes feels that way. Again, I hold myself open to whatever is the truth, and I would not recommend fooling around with exorcism or ideas of the demonic, but I no longer consider any aspect of human behavior to be the workings of evil spiritual beings.

Of course, it only makes human evil more troubling if we can’t blame it on the devil. Philosopher Eleonore Stump tells of horrendous atrocities such as a Muslim woman in Bosnia who begged the men who raped her to let her nurse her crying baby, only to watch them cut off the baby’s head and throw it in her lap. “We ourselves--” she writes, “you and I, that is–are members of the species that does such things.”

Few of us would remotely dream of doing anything so awful, but many of us have hurt another person, and all of us have told lies or misled another person at one time or another.  Some of us have experienced schadenfreude, a sense of pleasure at the suffering or downfall of someone we dislike.  Most of us have done something we feel bad about, and nearly all of us are numb in some degree to horrors we know are going on in the world, from as many as a million Iraqis who have died as a result of our nation’s actions, to tens of thousands of children who die of hunger every day.  It is too much to imagine, too much to bear, and we would probably go insane or cease functioning if we could feel the impact of what goes on in the world every day.

Human evil is real, but how should we understand it?  Religions such as Zoroastrianism and many forms of Christianity see it all as a cosmic battle between good and evil, either an even match or one the good side is destined to win.  Humanists are more likely to see harmful and altruistic behavior as rooted in our evolutionary history and in the functioning of our brains, about which we still have much to learn.  In Eastern religions, good and evil are often seen as more intertwined, like Yin and Yang, or as the result of our grasping desires and our illusions that we are separate, eternal beings.  Clearly, there are ways that good and evil are intertwined, as there is no death without life, no pain of loss without the joy of relationship.  Human beings clearly have a capacity for both astonishing good and unspeakable evil, as well as everything in-between.

Much of Scott Peck’s book examines what he sees as the characteristics of human evil, including dishonesty and deception, fear of self-examination and resistance to spiritual growth, narcissism and spiritual laziness, and blaming or scapegoating of others.  Evil can be subtle and confusing at times.  Many of the people Peck described as evil were outwardly respectable or religious, justifying themselves while blaming others.  “It is characteristic of those who are evil to judge others as evil,” he writes.

This raises a dilemma.  How can we identify other people as evil without participating in evil ourselves?  I’m not sure we can.  Evil in human life is very real, and it must be identified and named, but I cannot consider it appropriate to name people themselves or groups of people as evil.  Evil can be located in patterns of thought or behavior, and some people embody these evil patterns to a great extent, but I still believe that it is important to refrain from naming people themselves as evil, even though I’ve done it myself out of emotional reaction or sloppiness.

Is this just a matter of semantics?  Hitler still had to be stopped and murderers and rapists still belong in jail, whether you identify them as evil people or as people who embody patterns of enormous evil.  But I still say no, there are reasons to make this distinction.

It is too easy to dehumanize people by considering them evil, and this dehumanization itself is the greatest source of evil in the world.  If people as people can be considered evil, then groups of people can also be considered evil.  Too easily we may feel justified in killing and even relish or glory in this killing as a way to vanquish evil people.  If killing is ever necessary to protect against greater killing or harm–and it is certainly not necessary as often as we do it–it is always tragic at best, never something to glorify or celebrate.  As Sophocles once said, “All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.”

Naming people as evil violates our own principles, cutting us off in denial of our interdependence and of their inherent worth as living human beings.  Even in cases of extreme evil, naming people themselves as evil oversimplifies human complexity.  It leads us beyond justice into vengeance, and it prevents any possibility of redemption, forgiveness, healing or restorative justice.  It blocks us from useful understanding of why perpetrators of evil act as they do or how they see the world, and it prevents us from more correctly naming and responding to evil.  For example, if we name torturers and terrorists as evil, rather than torture and terror, then we are tempted to think the solution is simply to eradicate the perpetrators, quite possibly generating more torture or terror in the process.  If the evil of Nazi Germany was just Hitler, than we may miss the broader pattern and be blind to creeping fascism in our own society.

Naming other people or groups of people as evil also allows us to place ourselves in the contrasting role of goodness, blinding us to the potential for evil in our own thoughts or actions, and often projecting what is bad in ourselves onto the other as a scapegoat.  Carl Jung described evil as the “failure to meet the shadow” within us.  People who most embody evil often are the most self-justified and the most unaware of the dark side of their lives.  Honesty and love are the greatest defenses against evil, and both tend to fall by the wayside when we see ourselves unambiguously on the side of good in battle against evil people.

Finally, naming people as evil distracts us from identifying how evil ideas or practices spread or what conditions promote evil in the world.  It doesn’t excuse evil acts to realize that they always have a context.  I once browsed a book in a bookstore that attempted to describe the twenty most evil people in history.  The one thing they had in common was that they all had completely unchecked power over some group of people.  Total power may not always be abused, but if we want to prevent extreme evil, we should always favor strong checks and balances on military and political power.  We should beware of powerful authoritarian structures, especially in the light of disturbing psychological studies that showed how easily ordinary people will obey perceived authorities even when they believe it means harming another person. There is more we need to learn about individual and group psychology of good and evil behavior, and I hope we will.

Some evil patterns in the world, such as environmental destruction or the failures of unregulated markets, are rooted in “prisoner’s dilemmas”, in which the seemingly best actions for individuals are contrary to what is best for everyone as a whole.  There are no perfect solutions to these problems, but we can advocate for social structures and incentives that recognize these problems and promote the common good.  Prisoner’s dilemmas are also helped by people being in ongoing relationship and being aware of their interconnectness.  Fostering healthy forms of community can spread practices of goodness, as happened in Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon.  Individually, those villagers may not have been unusually virtuous, but the leadership and conditions of the community were right to bring out the best in them.  Are we creating a community that has the capacity to be a conspiracy of goodness even in an ocean of evil?

My college chaplain was fond of a Bible passage that called us to be “as wise as a serpent but as innocent as a dove.”  Something like that is what we need.  We must not be naive about evil, and there are times to name it clearly and oppose it firmly.  Mistakes, moral dilemmas, and ordinary human flaws are generally not worthy of the word evil, but some things are, regardless of circumstance or intention.  Rape is evil.  Torture is evil.  War for misleading reasons is evil.  The idea that the world is divided between good and evil people is an evil idea.  Cycles of revenge are generally patterns of evil.  Excessive concentration of wealth and power is evil.  Total human indifference to the suffering of others is evil.  These things are evil not because some authority says so, but because they lead to destruction of what we value in life–beauty, loving relationships, mental well-being, spiritual growth, and opportunities to fulfill our best potential as human beings.  When we see evil, we must not sit back and do nothing, but neither should we fight it by evil means or let ourselves become blind to the potential for evil in ourselves or our allies.

Evil will never be eradicated from the world, but neither will goodness, as long as there is life.  Open your eyes to the beauty, love, courage and kindness that enrich our lives, and let gratitude feed your desire to produce more of the same.  Even if life does not go on forever, even if life is afflicted with pain and tragedy, there is value in our lives here and now, and our thoughts and actions affect the lives of others as well as our own.  Without going into the metaphysics of free will or the mental processes of choosing, we do make choices, and our choices can make a difference. When Andre Trocme’ chose to open his door, it was probably the result of earlier choices he had made to honor life and respect human worth.  “I do not know what a Jew is,” he is quoted as saying. “I know only human beings.”  This was the true message of the songs of the villagers that saved so many lives.

Choose reverence for life, a humble commitment to truthfulness and honesty, compassion, courage and love, and you will be choosing to bring more goodness and less evil into the world.  In this holiday season and all year long, what more can we ask for, what more can we sing about, what better can we do?  May it be so.