Jeremy John would like to see us deal directly with the concept of evil. Here’s how he thinks about it.
I constantly meet people wherein we eventually have the following exchange:
(them) “Oh, you’re a Christian, doesn’t that make you judgmental?”
(me) “Any value system causes a person to believe that some things are right and others wrong.”
(them) “No, not mine. I don’t believe in Universal Truths. To do so would be judgmental. That is, I judge only those that believe in something. The ultimate wrong is to attempt to convince another of your own point of view. By the way, WTF, how are you a Christian? Hello, Crusades?!?!”
By this point I always feel thoroughly annoyed but I am glued to this same intellectual train wreck, as always, unable to look away.
In order to confront the great injustices of this world, we must first root ourselves in satyagraha, or, truth firmness. That is, in order to move outwards to change the world we must first know what we ourselves believe. Know thyself, as Socrates famously did not say. Or, know the thing you believe, the thing that is higher than yourself.
The second step in Alcoholics Anonymous is to believe in a power greater than yourself. Why is this essential? Because, if there is no God greater than the mewling self, there is nothing other than the satisfaction of desire. Why is this bad, you may ask? Anybody that has ever struggled against addiction, or any uncontrollable self-destructive urge, will know why you must accept something greater than your own desire if you are to overcome it.
What about those that struggle with darker drives? Those Colombian paramilitary soldiers that rape and kill, who played soccer with a man’s head? How do you tell them not to do what they desire? Or, even worse, how do you tell them that what they think is right is actually wrong?
You have three options.
- Kill them
- Incarcerate them (prevent them from crime by threat of force)
- Convert them
How bad does conversion look now, stacked up against its options? Some may argue that it is impossible to convert a murderer, but I do not believe that is the case, as I will address further down.
When we use the word “injustice”, we refer to a state of affairs that is out of harmony, that is dissonant, with a perfect world. This is what, throughout history, people have referred to as “evil.” For most, evil conjures up a comic book villain, fully destructible, and fully mythological. This is the notion known as Manicheanism. To the Christian, evil is a force derivative of good. There is no absolute evil, only good that has strayed from it’s original, created nature. Satan himself was once the morning star, the lightbearer. Therefore, justice resembles healing rather than destruction. We all have strayed from the path of justice and it takes hard work to return. Or, as Martin Luther King puts it, “…the method of non-violence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice.”
On the other hand, lack of conviction will never change the world.
Some find the use of the word “evil” jarring. I believe that we can only root ourselves in goodness when we know what injustice and evil are, but in order to understand evil in a spirit of peace and nonviolence, we must leave behind Manicheanism and understand that no person is fully evil, and all people are originally, inherently good.
Of course, there are many cultures, with many different beliefs. Good and evil must be parsed within the context of cultures and traditions. Many people, when they hear I am a Christian, imagine I am asserting some large body of beliefs that are hidden inside my words like the evils inside Pandora’s Box. Generally, we live in a culture of religious and biblical illiteracy, for the religious and not. What that means is that people in America think they understand the Bible, but they lack even the most basic facts about what it contains.
But one thing I will assert, is that I don’t believe in nihilists. We all have values, whether we value non-judgmentalism or being well-fed and getting plenty of sleep, these are the values that motor our decisions. If someone locks up a nihilist for no good reason or kills his or her parents, he or she will quickly gain a sense of right and wrong, and from that basis, will quickly move to condemn the actions of his or her persecutors. And most would actually march to war over the murder of a parent, the ultimate loss of relativism.
Nihilism is either the product of a privileged culture that has not experienced real injustice, or it is the result of a long personal narrative of deep struggle with such personal injustice that the person in question has lost hope in any kind of justice whatsoever.
Finally, to confront every Christian with the Crusades would be the equivalent of confronting every person who believed in evolution with the social Darwinism derived from the now discredited anthropological eugenics that drove Hitler to exterminate Jews and Gypsies.
In order to condemn the Crusades you must first believe in good, evil, justice, and injustice. I condemn the Crusades as evil from the Christian framework of good and evil. Tell me, why do you condemn the Crusades?
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I have found Jung’s exploration of the shadow to be personally transformative. The shadow is our darkside, deeply imbedded in our psyche, largely unconscious and unknown to us, but apparent every time we lose it, get angry, get forceful. I’m being very simplistic here. It was formed by the wounds sustained in childhood, when we were free, open, joyous and loving and vulnerable. Failure to intergrate the shadow results in projection of the wound onto others – “he’s an asshole”( he hurt me and caused pain ) Full intergration means knowing this part of yourself, delving beneath the anger and… Read more »
Man’s distinction will forever drive peace away.
First of all, there is not all one kind of Christianity. Not all Christians have the same viewpoint regarding the nature of evil relative to good. There are multiple valid theological viewpoints within present-day Christianity and certainly many philosophical viewpoints across the history of Christianity. I know a little how the specific late 20th century American Protestant denomination I grew up in sees these things, but I would be very reticent to speak for Ethiopian Christians, Coptic Christians (did you know they had their own pope?), Russian Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, etc. So, to say “the Christian” view about evil is… Read more »
All babies are born innocent and non-religious; we all know this. It’s interesting how children grow up mirroring their parents, including their religion, which often times is forced upon them to learn and to adopt — little choice to think for yourself at that age. My parents are Buddhists but they never went out of their way to ensure that, we live and breathe Buddhism. I had a pretty non-religious upbringing, therefore I guess I can call myself an atheist. Yet I’m not anti-religion; people can do whatever they want, as long as I’m unaffected. It’s interesting that some atheists… Read more »
Very interesting article (and thread), Jeremy; thank you. 🙂 I’m usually suspicious about believers (I’ve seen so much evil done by them with exquisite alibis), but I’ve come to understand you’re what I could call a “reasoning Christian” 😀 and I like it. We might disagree but A) you won’t think you have all the answers, and B) you won’t need to change me. That’s a good ground for fertile debate. My main issue with your position is that I am a relativist, i.e. I believe that “good” and “bad” are (at least often) relative to the point of view.… Read more »
In order to condemn the Crusades you must first believe in good, evil, justice, and injustice. I condemn the Crusades as evil from the Christian framework of good and evil. Tell me, why do you condemn the Crusades?
I condemn them on the gounds that it is evil to be willing to kill others for the sake of worshipping differently, in order to control ground, and the other things they were willing to kill people for.
hi. i write from chiloe, sourthen of chile. my english is bad, for the moment. i read your articles and coment tomorrow maybe. bye
“… I don’t find the existence or not of god to be relevant to my life in any way.” This makes no sense. Whether or not God exists is the most relevant question in our lives, the primary question. If God does not exist, than we must find our own way in the universe. We must come to our own conclusions about what to do, why to do it, and how to do it. We must decide. If God does exist, then we must come to understand what God is and what (if anything) is the relationship between us. Does… Read more »
Children must learn many things–and ask many questions–before they can even begin to understand what it means to believe in god or not. And with the multitude of religions and philosophies, the question isn’t as easy as you suggest. And so, not being at all simple, many people would be incapacitated if they had to answer that question before asking any others.
I can’t agree that this is relevant – how can you possibly answer it? Pick any god and give us a rational way to test for its existence that doesn’t really on an empowered or mystical observer. This may seem an alien thought to some, but there are those of us that would continue our lives in the same manner even if God was discovered at some point in the future. We have so much to discover – an entire universe to unravel – that it hardly seems a good idea for all of us to focus on such a… Read more »
This is the most nuanced, thoughtful and grammatically correct comment stream that I think I’ve ever seen. The level of depth is unfamiliar, and jarring after a day of surfing blogs for a living. I thought I would rectify this, leveling out the playing field to a more comfortably shallow pitch by making this comment. Always enjoy your columns, Jeremy–I believe I’ve encountered this one before on GlassDimly. Keep’em coming.
Thanks, dude!
To me, “god” is a sound conveying no meaning; I don’t think “god” even qualifies as a concept. For this and other philosophical reasons, the Euthyphro Dilemma being just one of them, I don’t find the existence or not of god to be relevant to my life in any way. So one could call me an apatheist, but I am technically an atheist because I don’t believe in God (a-theist); I have yet to be given a good reason why I should so believe. (For epistemological reasons, I also doubt that if a deity exists that we are even capable… Read more »
You could substitute “God” for “objective reality” in the above, and it’d be just about the same. Not to conflate the two, but I’m just pointing out that reality itself is unknowable, ineffable, in its fullness, like I believe God to be. True: religion is corrupted, but so is the lack of religion, in that case, or the critique of religions. We have to raise our banner somewhere and move forwards with our ideas and beliefs, if we are to be good. I also appreciate Plato’s forms, but I think they take on an existence I’d describe as God-like in… Read more »
I’m not sure what that response means.
Love is the standard by which God’s moral decrees are judge? If love is a standard separate from God, why do we need to talk about God when we discuss morality? Why can’t we just talk about whether our actions meet the standard of love?
If love ISN’T a standard separate from God, then you’re choosing the arbitrariness horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma, which means God could decree that murder and rape were part of the standard of love.
Christianity conflates God and love together in poetry. God isn’t really omnipotent in the sense of being able to do anything, because God has attributes, a nature, which is love. I only step into the horn of the dilemma if I accept Platonic concepts as a priori existent. I believe that moral ideas spring from actions. That is, we know love because it is the revealed, enacted nature of the creator God. A Platonic idea regarding morality is, essentially, a descriptive heuristic device that clusters a series of actions about which a description can be applied. Sure, we can avoid… Read more »
Because, if there is no God greater than the mewling self, there is nothing other than the satisfaction of desire. I see things like this asserted by theists quite often, but, as is the case here, there is almost never any attempt to support this assertion with reasons. It is apparently taken as self-evidently true. Please do a little basic reading on metaethics, Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma before repeating such nonsense. Plato showed in the Euthyphro that even if God existed, God can’t be the ground for morality because either God’s will is arbitrary, in which case… Read more »
Right, Christianity posits that standard as love.
apologies Dr. Benway for misspelling your name.
What is your point? If it is a personal statement of faith and politics and understanding, you’ve made it, and both Dr. Benson and I rushed in to say thank you. If it is conversion, (which I think it is) proving your statements of faith and politics to be the true ones, you lose the beauty of that first point. And both Dr. Benson and I take you up, pointing to the inherent illogic of your ‘truth’. We need you as #occupier, as man, as liberal Christian. We do not need you as stand in for grace. Come down from… Read more »
If you want to leave Jesus out of the conversation, especially because you want to ‘make a point’ and stay ‘rational’, than you’ve just agreed with the good Dr. Benson and I. If you hear my questions about your ‘rationality’ as MY problem with your language, than you haven’t really listened to the questions, and you skip the work of understanding and responsibility by blaming me. If people are inherently good, than ‘evil’ is not a thing we need to root out of them or ‘reform’ them from. It’s a thing we need to prevent, not punish. Yes, there are… Read more »
One last: the reason why I can’t keep Jesus in my pants. Popular Christian theology is dominated by Manicheanists and spiritualists. The rest of us keep quiet about our faith, because Jesus is not super-welcome in liberal circles. Not me. I think my beliefs are good, and my faith is my best attempt at good. If we liberal Christians with reasonable, historically orthodox faith keep quiet society’s view of Christianity is dominated by the televangelists. And that’s toxic, especially for those that are within the religion because there’s something important for them there. So part of my project is to… Read more »
There’s a word for what you’re doing but it’s escaping me right now. You change viewpoint/subject with each point you try to make. Conflating issues and characters. You make an argument based on one quote, but conclude with a different context. You make assumptions about me, and then conclude with yourself. You change the meaning of the word ‘arrogant’ or justify it as being well-intentioned, but stay arrogant. And you don’t really exemplify christian humility by saying “I might be as evil as the evil guy, I better redeem him”. Really? Failure to resist – nazism or the many layers… Read more »
Hey Karin, Love it. I really do. That’s hilarious. Keep Jesus in my pants. Right. First, I apologize for making assumptions about you. I respect you (you’re also an great writer), and I have no right to conflate this conversation with a multitude of others. I’m quite serious about all of us, as individuals, needing to actively choose good and resist evil. I say this in light of the fact that I believe ALL PEOPLE ARE INHERENTLY GOOD. If it seems that I am changing topics then, I fear, you may be missing my whole picture for bits of paint.… Read more »
Bravo, Jeremy. While I’m essentially on the same ‘belief’ boat as Dr. Benway, your writing is still a pleasure and a thing I’m glad to see published. If only because Christianity, too, is too easily dismissed when it is a complex thing. You make a leap that I don’t quite understand, which is maybe why I don’t understand Christianity. It doesn’t seem to me you ever look at ‘evil’ or say what it is, other than ‘the great injustices’. (huh? that says….nothing. yes, we all know them. but what is it, why is it, and what are you supposed to… Read more »
Hey Karen, Thanks for your comments and for your encouragement. So here’s the big picture point of what I am saying. Because all people are good, inherently good, and are capable of returning to good from doing obviously evil things, you can’t kill them, regardless of whether they’ve killed someone else. That’s the point. The problem is that there are things which we understand to be terribly wrong, which I believe are terribly wrong. Here’s a short list. Murder, rape, disappearance and kidnapping, slavery, exploitation, destruction of the environment, robbery, and pedophilia. A short list. Right, so these things are… Read more »
I don’t condemn the Crusades. Condemning the Crusades is a morally useless position. It is easy to condemn an event that took place the better part of a millenium ago, whose history most of us don’t understand and in which none of us played a role. When I look at Christianity, I’m more worried about the beliefs the vast majority of its adherents express today, particularly the belief that certain kinds of victimless sexual acts are, in fact, profoundly harmful and thus deserve to be repressed. If it was only Christians’ BELIEFS, qua beliefs, that were at issue, it would… Read more »
Dr Benway, Thanks for your well-thought comment! I am glad you appreciated my article. To business! I want to first start by repeating that my theology here, regarding human’s essential created goodness, is wholly orthodox from a historical Christian perspective. First, I don’t believe that “racism” is good strayed, but I do believe that a racist is a person who is created good, inherently good, who has strayed from good. But even if you take Arendt’s perspective re: banality of evil, you’re still in my court. If that person would, in a normal social context, behave well, then you’re essentially… Read more »
Dear John, Arendt is not arguing that a person who is essentially good strayed into evil via the influence of the mob. Her summing up of her arguments in Eichmann in Jerusalem made that very clear: a person’s acts in the face of evil define how society is to morally treat that person: whether the person was good or evil in the beginning makes no difference at all to Arendt. As for Christianty versus secularism… The argument that secularism is simply another belief form, like Christianity, is a commonly abused one. While all moral structures – including those of secularism… Read more »
Fair, I won’t try to bend Arendt into something else. Arendt is Arendt and I am me. I haven’t delved into Arendt’s trilogy, just Eichmann in Jerusalem. You’re totally right, Christianity doesn’t strive for rationality, it strives for LOVE. Rationality is just consistency to a set belief framework. I don’t believe in ultimate rationality. Namely, I don’t believe in a rationality free of cultural encoding. But I do believe in pluralism, where people of all different religions, including the one that believe themselves moderately successful at overcoming cultural bias and operate with true rationality, can come together for government. So… Read more »
OK, Jeremy, so if you could please define LOVE? Christians who bash homosexuals say that they do so in the name of love. While you may not agree with their definition of the word, it does seem to indicate that this “love” thing is very, very flexible. Also, I doubt any reflective scientist could ever believe in “ultimate” rationality, or a culturally free notion of rationality. “More rational” versus “less rational” would be the key metric there and the “culture” of science is unique, but it is also one that is open to EVERYONE, which is something that’s difficult to… Read more »
Dr Benway and @Karin, So here’s what’s up really. I think that when we put good and evil onto societal structures, we take away the moral agency in an individual. A squishy understanding of evil! There are people who, in the face of Hitler’s Germany, choose certain death and resistance, and there are those who go into the paramilitary death squads and when, when a severed head is cast at their feet, in order to curry favor with their superiors, kick it like a soccer ball. There are people who, like in Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, choose to… Read more »
Actually, Arendt’s point was that Eichmann was neither stupid no necessarily rule bound. He was simply, banally, evil and for that reason alone deserved to die. I’ve just finnished reading Sebastian Junger’s “War” for a lark and am convinced by his understanding of courage as a form of love of the group. In order to be courageous in a situation like the holocaust, you need to have a much deeper commitment to a much wider group than most humans seem wired to love. The White Rose, for example (and Stauffel of “Operation Valkyrie fame) died for their love of a… Read more »
Agreed, basically. I read texts through my own analytic filter, this is true, but Arendt deeply shapes me, along with other theology/history of the holocaust.
That’s why I think we must base our theology on being exceptionally good people, above and beyond society’s standard. It’s not enough to be ordinary people, we must be activists. Part of why Jesus’ philosophy is attractive to me is because it is precisely something unattainable, morally out of reach. It’s a spectrum that you can’t fully live into. But that’s why grace and love are so important.
Dr Benway and Karin, This comment thread got oddly heated, from my perspective. I was confused by the responses for a little while, but then I realized that I must offer a clarification. My point is not to work toward a conversion of people to Christianity. At least, not in the sense that evangelicals mean it. My point is that we must be converted out of a spirituality of violence and/or oppression into good. I don’t think that’s synonymous with Christianity in a written or propositional sense. However, I do believe in one God. I just think that God has… Read more »