SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY
A Dialogue Sermon on the Nature of Evil and What to Do About It
James Ishmael Ford
18 September 2005

The Text
(T)he devil is more than just a figurative way of describing a compulsive reaction to this contingent world into which we were thrown at birth. There is something demonic about the contingent world itself. This is a place where things we don’t want to happen, happen. Cars skid on ice and swerve off roads into trees instead of reaching their destination. Floods, bombs, and earthquakes destroy in moments what years of labor have created. At times I feel hemmed in on all sides: inwardly subjected to the urges of an organism that is programmed to survive, outwardly overwhelmed by the tragedy of a suffering world. No matter how sincerely and passionately I choose to do good, I keep doing the opposite. I make a declaration of my most deeply held values, only to find myself furtively betraying them. I take a vow to dedicate myself to the welfare of others, but remain resolutely committed to my own well-being.
Stephen Batchelor
Living With the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil

I’ve heard this story in various versions, but somehow was pleased to discover the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti was one of those who told it. Once “the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, ‘What did that man pick up?’ ‘He picked up a piece of Truth,’ said the devil. ‘That is a very bad business for you, then,’ said his friend. ‘Oh, not at all,’ the devil replied, ‘I am going to let him organize it.’”

This is a popular view of evil today: organization, institutions, government. And, no doubt, there is some truth here. We can take an insight, a part of a greater dynamic whole, and quickly squeeze the life out of it. All of us have seen how bureaucracies can become like feudal fiefdoms, often losing sight of the original intent for their creation. Of course in the wake of our recent horror in New Orleans and so much of the Gulf coast it’s easy to see how we actually need such things as collective responses to many of life’s difficulties. It’s so often complicated.

I like this little story because it shows up how easy it is to simply shift responsibility. Such a human thing, don’t you find? It’s real easy to call human organization the work of the devil, or to cite another example, to reduce our current global conflict to simply being a war between good and evil. It’s much harder to look closely to see what it is that is actually going on. There are real reasons for this inclination. Often it’s too messy, often it means accepting personal responsibility, complicity; and it’s so much easier to go for the quick fix, the nostrum, or the slogan. The catch is that these quick fixes rarely fix things.

Today I’m going to suggest our liberal religious inclination to dismiss the idea of evil falls into that category of facile reductions. Evil is a difficult concept, no doubt. Today I want to explore the idea there is in fact something worth calling evil, and then from that perspective to explore just a little how we might deal with it. Additionally, because we are a free tradition; I really want this to be a dialogue sermon; an opportunity for us to share our collective wisdom about this complicated issue. Finally, I’ll try to draw it all together with a little story.

Over the course of the last century there has been a relentless tide toward disbelief not just in any entity that might be called the devil; but also toward disbelief in the existence evil. First it was very easy to let go of the idea of what had been called for ever “natural evil.” Outside of a few fundamentalists who see God’s punishment in natural disasters, most of us in our culture today accept nature is nature, and rain falls on the just and the unjust, alike. This idea has, to my mind, been correctly thrown onto the trash heap of intellectual history. What has been distinguished just about forever as “moral evil,” however, continues to be a more complicated subject.

On the one hand our Universalist forbearers declared there is no permanent or abiding evil. Even the devil, they proclaimed, would someday be saved. This sense which birthed in the optimism of the European enlightenment has continued to evolve within our liberal spiritual communities. I found one of our better contemporary Unitarian Universalist thinkers Edward Frost describes this trend concisely.

Today theological “(l)iberals, rejecting the biblical myths and supernatural concepts of God, Satan, and Savior, have brought ‘evil’ within reach of possible human control by replacing it with psychology, sociology – and even cultural anthropology: that is, what is considered ‘bad’ in one culture might well be ‘good’ in another. ‘Evil,’ then becomes an anachronism, for the (spiritual) liberal, evil (frequently) becomes a quaint idea that we need to get over, since it impedes our modern attempts to understand ‘correct,’ ‘heal,’ or otherwise fix what is wrong.” This is a common perspective among us. I know I find a great deal of resonance with it, and think there is some truth here.

Edward, did I say he’s really smart, goes on to suggest this is an attitude we may need to reconsider. Not, I hasten to say, as a call to belief in some malign entity, a literal devil that wanders seeking whom it may devour; but an acknowledging there are in our human relationships things that happen that are not only not good, but so profoundly unhealthy that in fact perhaps they need to be called evil.

I found one book on my summer reading list was quite helpful in sorting this out. It was by one of my principal guides on the spiritual way, at least through his writings, the English spiritual thinker Stephen Batchelor. In Stephen’s recent reflection Living With the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil, he observes.
“The devil is a way of talking about that which blocks one’s path in life, frustrates one’s aspirations, makes one feel stuck, hemmed in, obstructed.” Stephen goes on to explore the mythic and etymological sources we work with. “(T)he Hebrew Satan means ‘adversary,’ the Greek diablos means ‘one who throws something across the path.’” These are terms and definitions with which we in this room are all more or less all familiar.

Stephen then further enriches our possible understanding of this complicated thing. He tells us “In India, Buddha called the devil Mara, which in Pali and Sanskrit (the ancient sacred languages of Buddhism) means ‘the killer.’” Adversary. That which is thrown across our path, Killer. When we speak of evil, these are the things we’re engaging. We’re exploring that which sours the milk of our lives, that which leads us, you and me, and everyone like us into those webs of obsession and hurt, to do things we know are not right, which sometimes betray even our highest ideals. There is something, not out there, but in here, fundamental parts of our being, yours and mine, that we ignore at our peril.

This is the question I want to engage. Of course there are larger issues of good and evil, of war and genocide, the betrayal of the earth itself. But here I’m suggesting we can find the source of all the ills of the world in our individual hearts, yours and mine. If we look at ourselves, and discover our depths, our possibilities and our limitations; then I think we find ways to act in the world that deserve words just as powerful as evil; with grace, in holiness, creating the kingdom of God, or my preferred terminology the republic of heaven. So, you might ask; how?

I have several thoughts about this. One you’ve heard before. It is the most consistent message I have to share from this pulpit: we are all connected, deeply, profoundly, intimately. And most importantly we, you and I and every blessed thing and person on this planet and beyond have no existence separate from that fundamental truth: we are all interrelated, we are all intertwined, we are all woven out of each other, you and me and the whole world.

While there is some curious and doubtless necessary biological need that causes us to think of ourselves as separate entities with its powerful urge for individual survival; this sense of an isolated self is only functionally true, only partially true. That isolated self you or I might feel our selves to be is always woven out of the mysterious whole. Or, as William Blake sang it, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

Another of my heroes is Bernie Glassman, founder of the Zen Peacemaker Family. He spells out a truer reality. “If I thought my arms were not part of me but separate, then if one arm starts to bleed, it’s possible that the other arm could walk away, saying ‘I don’t want to get bloodied. I’ve got other things to do.’

“Once the transformation into the oneness of life, of that one body, happens; it’s impossible for that other arm to walk away because it knows that if it doesn’t do anything, it’s going to die, the whole body is going to die… (So the question is) ‘how do I nurture this one body? How do I keep on?’ Not ‘How do I end all the illnesses that are going to arise?’ but ‘How do I prepare the one body to be in a more healthful situation so that it doesn’t cause as much damage?’ How do I turn from evil to good?

Here is the good news. We don’t find our way by cutting ourselves off from one another. I’m not suggesting running off to a cave, or any form of renunciation. Well, one renunciation: giving up our thought we’re separate. We find who we are by opening our hearts and our minds as widely as possible.

Evil is contraction, cutting off. Evil is taking a part of our nature; that which separates, divides, and makes sense, and acts as if protecting that part is the most important thing in the world. All evil births within our feelings of isolation, when we think we’re cut off. Conversely, the good is found in opening ourselves to the farthest reaches of our true nature, to the farthest reaches of the stars themselves.

The question is how do we deal with this complicated situation where we are at once psychologically separate but at the same time in the most genuine ways, one? The relentless temptation is to cut ourselves off, to embrace what I would call the diabolical life of separation. It’s amazingly easy, and we do it in so many ways. Sadly, it’s easier to believe in our separateness than to face our connections. It’s the cheap way; the easy way.

But embracing isolation has horrific consequences. Stephen Batchelor observes “Acts of genocide, child abuse, and terrorism are perpetrated by educated, civilized, and religious people. The willingness to violate others furtively behind closed doors or defiantly in the name of a higher good (the survival of a nation or the truth of a religion) is readily concealed behind a smiling or pious exterior. When these evildoers are exposed, the world heaps scorn and hatred upon them, apparently unaware of the violent impulses from which its own reactions stem.” And this is my point today. Evil exists in our hearts, yours and mine, small seeds that only await the right situation to become poisonous flowers. It’s not about something far away. It’s about a potentiality we all possess.

Fortunately there are ways through this maze of our human hearts. My colleague Mary Katherine Morn offers “(I)n spite of the reality of evil, in spite of our own participation in acts of evil, still we must find, wherever we can the goodness and beauty around us.” And, I find, the way through is both hard and not terrible complicated. As we open ourselves to that goodness and beauty, curiosity rather than certainty, to openness and wonder rather than closed and defended systems; we really can find a way through. It’s a path, it’s a way. We discover and we forget. We open and then we close. But if we persist we and the whole world gains. It’s a practice of constantly building bridges from our isolated being; out, to the world that is our family.

To attain wisdom is to open our hearts and minds to change. This is our liberal spiritual way; it is the path we bring to this hurt world. Certainty is the devil incarnate. And curiosity is the mind of sanctity. And I must admit here I find how much I’m curious about your thoughts. I suspect now is a good time to throw the conversation open. What do you think about evil and how we might best engage it?

Congregational Reflections
In conclusion, let me tell another story. Once upon a time two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in forty years of farming side by side, sharing machinery, and trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch. The collapse of their relationship began with a small misunderstanding but it quickly grew into a major difference, finally exploding into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence.

One morning there was a knock on John's door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter's toolbox. "I'm looking for a few days work" the man said. "Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there. Could I help you?"

"Yes, I have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That's my neighbor. Last week there was a meadow between us and he took his bulldozer to the river levee and now as you can see it’s a creek. I have a pile of lumber curing by the barn. I want you to build me a fence - an eight-foot fence - so I won't need to see his place anymore."

The carpenter said, "I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post-hole digger and I'll be able to do a job that pleases you."

The older brother had to go to town for supplies, so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then was off for the day. The carpenter worked hard measuring, sawing, nailing. About sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job.

There was no fence there at all. Instead it was a bridge - a bridge stretching from one side of the creek to the other! Frankly it was a fine piece of work with handrails and all - and the neighbor, his younger brother, was coming across, his hand outstretched.

"I’m amazed,” his brother declared. “You build this bridge after all I've said and done." The two brothers stood at each end of the bridge, and then they met in the middle, taking each other's hand.

They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder. "No, wait! Stay a few days. I've a lot of other projects for you," said the older brother. "I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but, I have many more bridges to build."

I suggest we get to play all the parts in this little story.

In conclusion, I have prayer: may our community of faith be about connections, about building those necessary bridges across the chasms of isolation, from heart to heart – reconnecting the whole cosmos, healing the hurt of the world

Amen.