Unitarian Universalist Meeting of
“The Devil Built a Chapel There:
Understanding Evil, the Devil, and other ‘Burning Questions’”
Rev. Kathy Duhon
I
have taken on some huge and difficult topics today – evil, the Devil – so,
let’s start with the ‘burning questions’:
“Did you hear what happened when the first Unitarian moved into
Burning
questions are more our style than talking about evil, the Devil, or even the
KKK. And we are not alone. Liberal religion of all kinds dwells strongly
in hope, and speaks much of love and faith and joy. Certainly, most folks are not comfortable
with the concept of evil or the Devil – our mind tends to go either to the cartoonish images of Halloween or to the grotesqueries of
genocide – and not to want to dwell on either type of image.
The
Universalist side of our tradition dispensed with the theology of Hell,
declaring it to not be Biblically true, nor relevant
religiously. A good God, they reasoned, would
not damn beloved humanity, and they could back it up with Bible verses. Satan was a myth, not a real being. Even though there were temptations and sins,
in the end, all people would be saved – so universalism taught.
When
folks first heard about this theology of universalism, they expressed concern,
like the Baptist minister a couple of hundred years ago, who was traveling
briefly with the Universalist minister Hosea Ballou. He was alarmed at the idea that God would not
condemn the wicked to eternal hellfire and said to Ballou,
“Why, if I were a Universalist, I could knock you over
the head, ride off with your money and horse, and have nothing to worry
about!”
“If
you were a Universalist,” replied Ballou, “the
thought would never even occur to you.” The
argument that folks made against universal salvation was that people would do
evil things if they did not have Hell to worry about. Two hundred years of universalism has not
borne that out, nor do we find all who believe in Hell to be saints.
One
of my teachers in theological school, a Midwesterner, said that when he was
growing up, folks would be concerned about young people when they doubted the
existence of God. Concerned, but not too
worried, because they had faith that a deeper faith would arise out of the
doubting and searching. In our reading,
Joan Chittister wrote about the absence of God and
the dark night of the soul being what can lead you to a fuller faith. On the other hand, my teacher said, if folks out in the
I
remember when, many years ago, I went to the opposite extreme in my faith
walk. I began to wonder if belief in the Devil represented giving credence to something that
it would be better not to even think about. Having a powerful devil figure in one’s
theology seems to imply giving power to evil, at least that’s what I was
concerned about. I knew too many people
who blamed the devil for their faults, were afraid of the devil’s power to
overcome them, and especially, were willing to decide that others were
possessed by the devil. Not only does
this kind of thinking and believing seem magical, it is dangerous – it says
that evil is the most powerful force, and somehow beyond our human abilities,
or even God’s Love.
Later,
I studied about the devil, or Satan, both in theological school, and afterwards
in reading Elaine Pagels’ book, The Origins of Satan, which we heard from earlier. The early Universalists
were not far off the mark of what modern Biblical scholars have to say about
Satan. Satan is a Hebrew word that means
“adversary”, and not really a clear figure in Judaism. This is similar to the word for angel, which
means “messenger”. Anyone or anything
could serve as a messenger or an adversary – it was a way of naming the
dynamics of life, not necessarily supernatural beings. The word devil is related to the word
slanderer, again, giving the sense of naming the struggle, not a spirit.
Demon,
or Daemon, is a spirit, an evil spirit, but comes from a word that had to do
with an outer force. It was related to Daimon, more of an inner force, and sometimes used as a
word for a god, as Homer did. The
Hebrew, Greek and Roman cultures were all involved in developing this idea of
devil.
The
figure of Satan evolved over time, and is considered the Lord of evil, to some
extent in Judaism, but especially so in Christianity. Satan is the dark and fallen angel who rules
Hell and tempts humans into evildoing.
The Devil, the Demon, has a whole history that is alluded to in the
Bible, but actually exists mostly in texts that are not canonical, that did not
make the cut into the Bible, like the Gospel of Bartholomew, with its descriptions
of hell and of Satan’s angels. In that
so-called gospel, we are told that of the 30,000 souls who leave the world each
day, only 3 go to
Unfortunately,
these gloomy and fiery images still dominate many people’s understandings, keeping
them fearful, and feeling fallen. I even
came across a
In our
understanding of the words for devil and the words written about the devil, the
most important argument, I believe, is put forth by Elaine Pagels. The use of the devil concept has been tied to
demonizing, she maintains, to declaring some people to be so “other” that they
are of the devil, of that other force for evil, and
not of us good folks. The most recent
evolution of Satan, and I believe Pagels would agree,
is expressed by Southern Baptist president Jack Graham, who said, “Satan is the
ultimate terrorist”, and went on, “this is a war between Christians and the
forces of evil.” This demonizing is surely
a horrible use of religion, accomplishing the opposite of what we are supposed
to be doing – distancing and disconnecting us from each other, rather than
binding us in love and hope, and in the truth of the interdependent web of all
existence.
With
the concepts of devil, Satan, and Hell so obviously problematic, what about
evil? Those concepts are at base mythic
devices that have been used to help understand and grapple with evil, though
they have been much abused. Our
knowledge has grown, so for example, much of the demonic possession stories in
the gospels were clearly used to explain what we know to be disease and mental
illness. To use demonology to scare
people into behaving may or may not work, and is fraught with problems, but to ignore
evil altogether may be to abandon people to the ‘hellishness’ of ‘devilish’
behavior. Seriously, evil is something
real and sometimes even palpable, and if we take away mythic and metaphoric
ways to capture it, we need to find other ways to speak about evil.
At the
apex of Western religion’s humanistic “onwards and upwards” forever theology of
the early 20th century, we were confronted with the realities of
massive evil in World War II, and immediately began wondering if God was dead,
asleep, or irrelevant. Any modern
theology or philosophy must consider evil, in the wake of recent history.
Liberation
theology came along in the ‘70s and ‘80s and grappled with the question of
evil. Those theologians noticed that
evil is not simply what individuals do, and certainly not what a powerful evil horned
creature out there does or makes us do, but has a systemic, structural aspect
to it. It’s not that society is evil,
per se, as in Reinhold Niebuhr’s “moral man and
immoral society”, but that systems and structures in society have the power to
do much evil, and that we are therefore implicated, and must fight these
systems and structures.
Using
liberation theology to instruct us, we realize that if war is fought using our
tax dollars, then we are responsible for the killing. If people suffer from the lack of adequate
medical care, housing, or food, and we live in a society of abundance where we
benefit at the expense of others, then we are culpable for their suffering. Evil is a complex reality and we need to try
to understand its power in order to defeat it personally and structurally.
To me,
our beginning quote today, “Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil
always builds a chapel there” is not primarily about God, congregations, or the
Devil, but a metaphoric statement about human nature. It implies that wherever you try to establish
anything good, like a church, you are at risk of inviting evil.
Both
governments and religion often end up with power ‘to burn’, so to speak, and
people are persecuted. Our U.S. Constitution’s
first amendment separation of church and state is there to protect both civil
rights and freedom of religion, and also to keep both the state and religion
from the corruption of that dangerous mingled power of state religions. Any group that brings people together has
power, and any power can be corrupted.
In our democratic form of government, we take checks and balances very
seriously, in order to keep power from being corrupted, as had seemed
inevitable in the imperial governments the world had mostly known before our
nation’s beginnings.
We do well
to continue to defend the Constitution whenever we notice its violation, for
power that squelches the rights of the people is power that is evil. Since our President has violated the
Constitution in his administration’s illegal use of wiretapping, discovered
recently, as well as in the internationally illegal and immoral waging of war
in Iraq, and the unconstitutional abridgement of rights through the PATRIOT
ACT, I have joined the many who are calling for his impeachment. Evil is being done in our name, by our
government, and if we are passive, as Bonhoeffer
warned – and he knew, having been imprisoned by the Nazis – we will join the
“fools” who are “capable of any evil” and “incapable of seeing that it is
evil”.
Now
I have come to the crux of the matter, for me.
I have just spoken about the existence of evil out there in the world –
am I demonizing? That’s a burning
question. Were I to humbly confess my
own evil, and I do, I am complicit – I believe we all are – in the great
suffering that is caused and done in our name, with our resources, then I would
be on safe ground, right? But I have
named evil out there, in the way that our government is acting, and I have
witnessed to confronting that evil, mine and the administration’s.
I am
on shaky ground, and I know it. If I
want to continue to love others, and not to make of the other a demon, then I
must continue to affirm the humanity and goodness of those I am calling to
account for the evil that they are perhaps even incapable of seeing as evil,
including our President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and others,
while still holding them accountable for the evil that they are indeed perpetuating. Who am I to judge that evil? That is a burning question. I hope that I am informed by my religion and
my government and my society and my knowledge of history and my ethical values,
but I know that I must also always question my ability to make such a
judgment.
There is
a simple phrase from my past, mostly from my work for prisoner’s rights, though
it comes from Christianity – “Love the sinner, hate the sin”. That is perhaps too simple, and awfully hard
to do. I believe it takes a strong,
vigilant, prayerful, reflectiveness to continue to
oppose evil, while not demonizing the other, but rather, working for
reconciliation and redemption. But this
is the religious task. It also takes
humility and humor, and I am still working on all these things. I will close with a little humor that
reflects upon our religious values in the face of evil.
The
Unitarian Ambrose Bierce created a newspaper column in the 1920’s in which he
wrote some cynical stuff, and invented new definitions for words, which were
insightful, humorous, and perhaps a little wicked. They were collected and printed as The Devil’s Dictionary. Of note are his definitions of Unitarian
and Universalist, which were 2 different religions at the time.
Unitarian (n.) One who denies the
divinity of a Trinitarian.
(Not the divinity of the Trinity, mind
you, but the divinity of the Trinitarian.)
To deny that others can speak for God, as though they are God, is to
confront a most pernicious evil. It is
when people give themselves that degree of absolute power that they can be
absolutely corrupted.
Universalist (n.)
One who foregoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith.
We may
name the evil, confront it, and deny the false faith in a puppet God who does
one’s bidding, but we cannot say that the person we are in conflict with is
possessed by the Devil, or will burn in Hell.
We are working without a net, folks, without a framework of ultimate
punishments or an eternal threat.
How do
we confront evil? With
good, the goodness that is our core, and is at the heart of the universe. We confront evil with the Spirit of Life,
Universal Love, with the God of Truth if that is our foundation, and with our
entire beings. We have all the power
that is needed – and we really must use it to confront the powers and
principalities of evil.
Defoe
is wrong, when it comes to us, here – the devil does not have the largest
congregation among us. Love does. May our power always be turned to the good. Amen.