Ideological Evil
June 1, 2018 § 2 Comments
In 1391 Christian mobs in Seville murdered 4000 Jews and drove 5000 Jewish families from their homes. Why?
The Gospel of John had told them that the Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of their god. In fact, all the gospels had made that claim, to one degree or the other. And the Church was glad to elaborate.
Some darkness in the soul of Christianity impelled those people to this atrocity, people who otherwise probably loved their dogs and their children. Some failure in Christian thought and Christian institutions allowed those people to ignore “Love thy neighbor” and some other important teachings of their Jesus.
The gospels also painted Pontius Pilate as a hand-wringing weakling, when in fact he was so maniacal and brutal that the Roman Senate removed him from his post as governor of Judea fearing he would foment revolution. Which in fact he did, it turns out. Christian scripture is at great pains to make nice with Rome, with Gentiles, and with empire, while Jesus was Rome’s sworn enemy, ambivalent about Gentiles, and judicially assassinated for rebellion against empire.
Two thousand years later, Dick Cheney celebrated American empire in a Christmas card, claiming he had God’s sanction, perhaps even God’s direction, when he invaded Iraq. He made torturing insurrectionists “legal” when the god he claims to have worshiped is the most famous insurrectionist in human history to be tortured to death.
Hitler had his neo-Teutonic master-race mythology. Lenin and Stalin had Das Kapital.
Human communities can become possessed by an idea or set of ideas that encourage their potential for evil. Demonically possessed.
By this I mean possessed as by an addiction—a compulsion to satisfy a need against their better judgment, even against their “will”. That’s my definition of demonic.
Evil ideologies work like an addiction in the collective psyche. Addicted to the tribe’s desire for solidarity and even identity as established over and against something or someone—the desire for the false security that can be found in “us” and “them”. Addicted to denial of one’s own shortcomings, to projecting them on another—to finding and punishing the scapegoat. Addicted to the will to power.
I think we should be more mindful of ideological evil in our consideration of Quaker testimonies and the testimonial life. This means thinking in terms of the evil ideas that encourage evil acts and that enable passive acceptance of empire, ideologies to which society, or at least some of the communities within society, have become addicted.
Through the Flaming Sword 
In the film _Schindler’s List_ there was one scene that has remained with me as an accurate representation of the pared-down dynamics of evil. Captive in a camp is a young female Jewish architecture student. She discovers that one of the camp’s buildings has a faulty foundation that will inevitably lead to the building’s collapse, if not corrected.
The scene begins with her rushing into the presence of the camp’s commander and his men who listen to her panicked warning. After the commander has heard her out, he pauses a moment to consider the situation, and then he promptly orders his men to shoot her. The scene ends with her being dragged away to be shot, all the while protesting that they don’t understand the danger, that the building will collapse if nothing is done.
Why this particular scene stood out for me as epitomizing evil, when there were so many other scenes in the film where destruction occurred on a larger scale, was this scene’s showing in a stark way the dynamics involved in evil, and not just the consequences. The essential dynamic of evil is the refusal to honor truth when it interferes with whatever one loves instead of truth. It is a rebellion against the Imperative to honor the God of truth through honoring the truth he has enabled us, as humans, to discern. To abdicate our humanity’s gift of the ability to know the truth is to become less than human, as, of course, Fox knew:
“some men have the nature of dogs to bite both the sheep and one another; and some men have the nature of lions, to tear, devour, and destroy. And some men have the nature of wolves to tear and devour the lambs and sheep of Christ” etc. (Nickalls, 59).
Furthermore, the young woman’s inability to comprehend how reason is totally ineffective in counteracting evil is a lesson all young prophets learn sooner or later.
Regardless of the extent of the consequences – whether vast societal destruction or a single lie confined within a single mind – evil is of the same character: the outward consequences are indicative only of its extent but not of its character, for that is determined at its inception, not in its effects. That evil is first acceded to within underscores the inescapability of personal responsibility. Taking personal responsibility is the only hindrance to either personal sin or to the abrogation found in scapegoating and other grander-scaled, collective expressions of evil.
Holding the line, speaking the truth is the Quaker’s obligation in the Lamb’s War. If God is honored in just one mind, the world is not lost, as Jesus showed us on a mythical scale.
I’m glad to see you returning to this subject, Steve, although I’ve been finding your series on the development of modern Liberal Quakerism fascinating and very valuable, and I hope you’ll be continuing it, too.
I think you’re right on when you identify ideological evil as addiction-like. The need to attack a scapegoat, or to fancy “him” defeated in advance by our unbeatable weaponry, can be as compelling as the need for a cigarette, a drink, a fix, an ejaculation: we itch for it, groan for it. Even prayer, the practice of mindfulness, or — like Odysseus, “knowing better,” having our shipmates tie us to the mast as we sail past the mermaids — is often not enough: something in us may outwit the knots in the ropes.
In short, we may need the intervention of a Higher Power to free us from the compulsions that arise from desire, anger, and fear. These “sin-drivers” (see Bhagavad-Gita 3:36-41) go hand-in-hand with disownment of our own Jungian “shadow,” and imputation of its qualities to some designated enemy. To the extent that we do this ourselves, making an arch-villain in our minds of President Trump; or of the Deep State, the “politically correct” Liberals, the Muslims — whoever it is — we ourselves become part of the present massing of thunderclouds within the United States that’s threatening to discharge some high-voltage lightning soon.
And having Quaker testimonies may not help us then. Believing that there is that of God in the other person may not stop me from shooting the bad guy in the heat of the moment, or at least cheering when the SWAT team goes in to shoot the bad guy. In fact the Bhagavad-Gita teaches (2:11-31) that the righteous warrior should go ahead and kill his enemies in battle without qualms precisely *because* there is that of God in every person – the imperishable atman – and *It* does not suffer when the body is slain. Are we so firm in our non-violent principles that we know we won’t falter under extreme temptation and let ourselves become such “righteous warriors?”
This is why I would argue that we need a Savior who is so at one with the God who is Love and Universal Forgiveness that He has the power to take away our vengeful hearts and replace them with lamb-like ones. This differentiates me from all Liberal Friends who think we can prevail against evil without a Savior’s transforming help.
This what I pray for, among Friends and among all people of faith: that we call for, recognize, and welcome the Savior. We can call him Allah if we like, or Krishna or Buddha if that’s what our cultural tradition demands, but there can only be one Savior, whose will is perfectly and forever one with the Creator’s; and He must have this power to change our hearts; and we must prepare to receive this priceless gift by repenting of our past ways — not just past behaviors that have made us secretly loathe ourselves, but all past ways of speaking and thinking.
This is a demanding Gospel, but I believe it’s a Gospel worth dying for. As we die to these old ways, I expect us to enter into eternal life even while we still inhabit these mortal bodies. And I expect us to know that beyond doubt.