On the Origin and Nature of Good and Evil
Podcast: Download (Duration: 13:39 — 12.5MB)
Subscribe: More
We human beings are shaped and molded by the stories we tell one another, including those we tell our children. Some of those stories have been so foundational to our society that we sometimes do not see how deeply we are affected by them.
Take the story of a tree in the middle of a garden called Eden, with an order from God, a talking snake, and two rather normal, curious people. It is one of the most over-interpreted narratives in human history. Into this story has been read the belief that human nature is inherently evil, and the belief that woman is inherently more sinful than man—something my own experience denies. Into this story has been read a belief that sexuality is evil and sinful, and that humankind is a failed experiment, and needs to be fixed. Into this story has been read the belief that Good and Evil existed before humanity, that they are contending forces in the world, with us as the battlefield.
All of this, and more, in one short story from over 3000 years ago. But in this story there is a question that is not answered—or even asked. From where did Good and Evil come? Who created them? In the creation stories that precede this one, at no point does the author say, “And on the third day, God created both Good and Evil.” Both Good and Evil simply exist, an understood part of the universe.
It amazes me that in this foundational story, which has doubtlessly been rewritten time and again from its first telling, there is no mention of the origin and nature of Good and Evil. From that absence comes, I believe, the most profound implication of the story: Good and Evil simply are. There is nothing we can do about them but notice them. Within this story I believe lies a call for a kind of social apathy, a resignation that Good and Evil are forces beyond us that we have no control over, that actually control us.
It is one of the most damaging ideas I have ever come across, and yet it is foundational within our culture.
Our society has built into it the idea that Good and Evil have existed since the dawn of time, that they came into existence with the universe, and that we are trapped between them. Is it any wonder that the world created by this view stands in constant chaos? Is it a wonder that there has never been a time in which war is not being fought somewhere by someone (usually many somewheres by many someones)?
Now, intellectually I can say that I believe these are just stories, told not by God but by a pre-modern tribal people attempting to describe the reality they lived in. But even if I don’t believe in the stories I am still a product of the cultural understandings produced by this world view.
Our worldview was created by this understanding, one that is also found in many other cultural traditions besides Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. If we are going to change this understanding of our world as a battlefield between Good and Evil it will not be through science or rational argument, but rather through different stories, for it is through stories that we humans make meaning of our world.
My former Zen teacher, Joshin Roshi, tells a story of how he came to find the origin of Good and Evil. Let me first explain a little about Joshin, and why he was my teacher. In the late 1960s and 1970s he was deeply involved in protesting the war in Vietnam. I can just imagine him, a young Buddhist monk, a westerner, sitting lotus style at a protest, with the police wondering just exactly what to do with him. Smiling and sitting, offering no aggression, he practiced his pacifism not only in his opposition to the war, but in how he encountered police.
When I was a seminarian, I brought him to discuss meditation with some of my fellow students at Meadville Lombard Theological School, and he told us the story of finding the origin of Good and Evil, although those are my words, not his.
He was part of a Buddhist meditation retreat held in the camps in Auschwitz, Germany, where millions had been executed in Hitler’s gas chambers. The majority of those were Jews, but many on the religious margins also perished there, including a few Unitarians. For several days, these Buddhist monks and teachers sat in the former death camp in silent Buddhist meditation.
Through those days of meditation, Joshin said that he had a realization that profoundly shook his soul. He realized that, if the circumstances of his life had been different, if he had been born in a different time and place, with different experiences, ideals, and values, he could have become one of the guards at that camp, rather than a pacifist Buddhist teacher sitting meditation in it. He realized that he carried within him the ability to commit such evil—as well as the good he had chosen throughout his life. In that meditation, he had encountered the origin of both Good and Evil, within his own heart.
I fought with myself for many years about what the difference between Good and Evil might be, and in the end it has come down to perception. I will admit that it frightens me that the inherent difference between what is Good and what is Evil is not some solid dividing line, or a set of commandments from God, but rather, that most murky of diagnostic tools: human perception. What values we hold and what judgments we make determine what is Good and what is Evil, so it really does matter what we believe. It matters deeply.
The origin of Good and Evil is the human heart. The nature of Good and Evil is human perception.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the board of the church I was serving as an administrator in Galveston Island, Texas “loaned” me to the American Red Cross for a few weeks to serve as the night manager for one of the shelters we set up on the island.
For many, their perception of the storm itself was evil, for all the grief, destruction and suffering that had come with it. For many, the storm also brought forth such a tide of goodness, compassion and charity that it was a blessing to our community in Galveston, because it brought us together and let us learn to care for others. That storm broke our apathy, even if just for a little while.
One night, perhaps three days after the levies broke, the volunteers and many of our evacuees were sitting in the lobby watching broadcasted footage of waters in the 9th Ward, chaos at the Convention Center, and people everywhere trapped on rooftops. We were in two distinct viewing groups, with the evacuees watching in numbed horror, gathered close around the television, and the volunteers about twenty feet back, sitting at the registration table, not knowing what to say or do.
Into that silence among the volunteers, one woman who came from a rather conservative church on the island said, “Well, it’s horrible, but what did New Orleans expect? I mean, eventually God had to destroy it, didn’t he? New Orleans was evil.”
What I thought had been silence before was nothing compared to the climate after that comment. I could see several of the evacuees turn towards us, with hurt, anger, and anguish in their eyes. This woman had just said that they deserved what they had gotten.
As I was trying to think of how to deal with this without yelling and screaming, an older African American woman from one of the island’s full gospel churches said, “Well, Lordy, I’m sure glad I don’t have to believe in your kind of God. The Jesus I know would love all of those people, and would never punish anyone like this. God is good, and a storm is a storm.”
It was like a wash of peace, love, and goodness swept through the room. As I pulled the first woman aside and told her it might be best if she went home, people began to smile. Several of the evacuees came over and sat with the volunteers, thanked the older woman for what she had said, and began to tell stories about the New Orleans they knew—a place of close-knit but poor communities, of families, and of love.
Several of the volunteers got up and stood with the evacuees. From that moment on, there was no longer the previous kind of separation. We were now just human beings, comforting one another. All of that good, sparked by one of the most evil things I have ever heard anyone say.
Why do I call that comment evil? Because my perception, based upon my values, says it is. I’m sure her perception of me sending her home might have been equally evil—in fact, she said as much to me as she slammed the door. I take responsibility for defining what she said as evil. And that is the major difference between the view of Good and Evil presented in the Garden of Eden story and what I am calling a human-centered understanding of Good and Evil: responsibility.
I believe that the commitment to work for justice in the world is a part of our faith because we Unitarian Universalists hold to this kind of a human-centered understanding of the origin and nature of Good and Evil. We understand that, if each of us carries within us the capacity to do both Good and Evil, then that has certain implications for our lives. It means that the possibility of transformation exists for us all, that even someone who has done evil can learn to do good. And even someone who has done good has the capacity for evil.
It also means that the responsibility for what good and what evil exists in this world lies with us. There is not a devil we can blame evil upon, and there is not a God who takes care of making sure good occurs. When our values, principles and ideals tell us that something evil is occurring, it is up to us to speak out about it. And it is up to us to work for its resolution. When someone does something good in this world, it is up to us to hold up their example.
It also means that it matters what people believe, because those beliefs and values determine what they perceive to be good or evil. As important as I believe it is that we address the outward manifestations of Good and Evil that exist in this world, each of us must also continually look inward, and see the complex nature of our own hearts and perceptions—the true origin and nature of both Good and Evil. If we are ever to banish warfare from humankind, it must begin with banishing the conflict that exists within our own hearts. It will require us to forgive ourselves for the parts of ourselves we might not like, and learn to live in balance between our best and worst selves.
If we cannot depend upon a victory of a Good God over an Evil Devil, then we must find the balance of peace within ourselves.
Rev. Pyle holds a Masters of Divinity from the Meadville Lombard Theological School and a Bachelors of Arts in History and Political Science from East Tennessee State University.He completed his Clinical Pastoral Education Residency at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinios.He has served as a minister for congregations in California, Michigan, and Illinois.He also serves as a U.S. Army Reserve Chaplain for the 439th Multifuncitonal Medical Battalion at Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.
- On the Origin and Nature of Good and Evil - March 1, 2018
- Salvation - November 1, 2012
- Prejudice is Part of Human Nature - September 27, 2012
