Not To Oppose Evil Is Itself Evil

American Baptist minister Nathaniel Manderson (whose podcast is humorously entitled “The Beached White Male”) recently wrote an opinion piece for Salon in which he confesses to believing in a literal devil. He says, “Now, to be clear, as a minister who believes in God, I am compelled to believe in the devil. But I see him much more at home within the evangelical movement than in most liberal causes.”

After giving a list of historic church-sponsored terrorism (“the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the history of American slavery, the attempted genocide against Native Americans and the oppression of women”) he says: “All these evils are or were firmly backed by biblical theology — at least, as many Christians understand it — and, in my opinion, are all fully endorsed by the devil himself. This is now true of the evangelical political movement, which I believe is led by the devil and his followers.”

Wow! Why not tell us what you really think, Nate? The truth is I have been thinking along the same lines recently. It seems clear to me that Evangelicalism no longer follows Jesus. Yet I am not ready to say that its complicity with anti-democratic authoritarianism rises to the level of evil. But I can see how it could lead to evil. Evil never looks like evil when it is starting out. This is how good people are drawn into evil. At the beginning evil appears as good.

That is how the serpent sold Eve on the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He said the fruit was good, and it looked good to Adam and Eve. The apostle Paul said that the devil comes disguised as a messenger of light, and false apostles masquerade as apostles of Christ.  Religion does not help the matter. As Steven Weinberg said, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”

The Salon article caused me to consider anew what we mean by the word evil. It is a concept that is misused and misunderstood. Some see evil as a personal force in the universe, in the form of the devil and his demons, which are understood to be real entities. That is how Reverend Manderson experiences evil. Others see evil as simply the absence of good.

I see both good and evil as aspects of the dualistic realm of human existence. Yin and yang. Before the universe existed there was no evil. Indeed there was no good either. There cannot be good without something to contrast it with, namely evil. There was only Nondual Reality, which for want of a better term we call God. There is still only this Nondual Reality now for those with eyes to see.

God is beyond good and evil. Yet we call God good and not evil. We equate God with light and not darkness. That is because we have no adequate word for the unicity that transcends and includes duality.

Good and evil came into existence with humans. Christian mythology says it began earlier with a fallen angel named Lucifer, who became known as Satan. But who made the angel? The Creator did, of course! The buck stops at the Boss’s desk. As the Lord says in the Book of Isaiah, “I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things.”

Regardless of the origin of evil, we cannot avoid moral choices in this human lifetime any more than we can avoid light and darkness, pain and pleasure, high and low, right and left. Even when we become conscious of our unconditioned Source, we still live in the human condition. Every day we choose between right and wrong, good and evil. To decide not to choose is itself a choice. Inaction has as many consequences as action.

I wish it were not so. I wish I could wash my hands of the whole matter and deal only with spiritual matters. Not vote, not opine, not think of these matters. I wish I could transcend the dualism of the political and moral landscape and remain blissfully neutral. But neutrality is an illusion. There is no such thing. If we decide not to be involved in political or social causes, that choice has consequences. When neutrality benefits evil, then neutrality is evil.

Life is messy. According to Genesis even the Creator got dirty when he knelt in the soil of the Garden and formed humans from humus. As much as we wish it were otherwise, we cannot remain on the sidelines. Not even by retreating to a monastery. Hence the monk Thomas Merton named his book, “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.”

That reality is what led clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer to join the German resistance movement against Hitler. He became part of the plot to assassinate the Führer. He concluded: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” 

Not to oppose evil is itself evil. But the action must be done from that divine Presence that is beyond good and evil. That is how I approach social ethics from the perspective of Christian nonduality.