I want to talk about the second reading this morning, because I think it talks about a problem that we are dealing a lot with in the world today, and that is the problem of evil. Paul tells the church in Rome to “hate what is evil” and “do not repay anyone evil for evil,” and to be good to those who do evil to you in your life.
But what is evil? How do we identify those who are evil? Initially, I think it seems pretty simple. Evil people are those who commit violence. Those who murder, those who deliberately cause pain and suffering to others, those who attack first. Evil people are those who attack innocents - who abuse children, who attempt to wipe out entire ethnic communities. Evil people torture animals, traffic women, use forced child labour. Evil people cause the death of others who have done nothing wrong.
In our Gospel, for instance, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew clearly thinks that the Jews were evil - that the elders and chief priests and scribes were evil for causing Jesus to undergo great suffering and be killed. What can be more evil than causing the death of God’s Son? In fact, for centuries, the Christian church has considered Jews to be evil - in the Middle Ages, priests would encourage Christians to hunt down Jews on Good Friday, burn down their houses, and kill them on Easter, sometimes by stoning them. Up until the middle of the twentieth century, it was perfectly acceptable for Christians to say that the Jews killed Jesus and that’s why the Jews in turn deserved to be run out of every country they ever tried to live. They were evil and we are to hate evil.
But I have questions about whether it is really that simple to answer the question of who is evil. Because while Christians thought the Jews were evil, Jews have thought that Christians were the evil ones. And can you blame them? If it is evil to kill innocent people, and to burn down their houses, and if it is evil to evict entire populations of people from your town, and to take over their businesses and steal their money, then Christians have, through the centuries, committed evil against Jews. Hate what is evil? We should be hating ourselves...
But again, it is not that simple. When Christians were first starting out as a community, we were persecuted by everybody - by Jews, by Romans, by pagans. Christians were the ones being killed, and were the ones having evil done to them. The Christian martyrs were thrown to the lions for their faith - adults and children alike. So how shall we identify who is evil?
There was a really interesting study on mice that was published earlier this year. The study took a group of newborn mice, and exposed them to trauma. Basically, the newborn mice were dunked in ice cold water, and then not allowed to cuddle with their mothers afterwards. So, as was expected, these mice grew up exhibiting what we would call symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Depression, heightened aggression, anxiety, poor stress management. That is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that they took the sperm of the traumatized male mice, implanted it in mice that were raised in good conditions, and the mice that resulted from that breeding also exhibited depression, anxiety, and poor stress management. And when *those* mice bred, their offspring showed these same PTSD symptoms. The trauma visited on the original mice - the evil done to them - passed down through three generations. The aggression level of these mice was higher for three generations. Trauma and evil became encoded in the genetic material and passed down.
So how do we identify evil? How do we know who is evil? When a child’s parents are killed in a bombing, that child’s genetic material becomes encoded with evil. And that child grows up to be an adult and passes that genetic material on to his children. Who, because they are now victims of trauma, visit evil on those around them. Who pass it on to their children. Who grow and visit evil on others. When you think about the evil that is perpetrated on a national and individual scale, when you think about how that evil gets encoded in the genetic material passed on through the generations, how can we know who is evil? All of us have this genetic predisposition towards evil because all of us, at some point in our past, have parents or grandparents or great grandparents who have had evil done to them. We are trapped inside this system of evil. Are we to hate ourselves?
The reality is that evil encourages evil in response. Those who have evil done to them, revisit that evil on others in turn. How can we expect anything else? Survivors of child abuse go on to perpetuate that abuse on children once they themselves become adults. Hutu and Tutsi tribes kill each other because, well, they each killed the other first. Israel takes over Palestinian land and Palestine bombs Israel and Israel bombs them back and Palestine bombs them again. It is like talking to children who are fighting and trying to figure out who started it. Evil engenders further evil. The question is not who or what is evil. The question is how can we stop it?
Paul gives some good advice to the Romans. The first important thing is “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” Given how encoded evil is in us, it is so important to ask for blessing first. Given that the persecutors include us, blessing is far more powerful than cursing. Shall we curse ourselves because we persecute others? Shall we curse others because they were first persecuted and that’s all they know to do? Only blessing can upend the cycle of evil and persecution. And when we understand that the evil people perpetuate comes from evil done to them, we are so much more inclined to ask for blessing for them than curses. When the football coach abuses his players because he was the victim of abuse as a child, can we say that evil started with him? Or do we see that evil was done to him and he is living out that evil in a new way? Should we curse him, or ask for blessing for him to release him from that cycle so he can step outside of the evil done to him, and outside of the evil he has done to others? When we see young Palestinians putting on bomber vests to attack Israeli buses, shall we curse them? When we see Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian children, shall we curse them? Will cursing make things better? Or will it only perpetuate the violence and trauma and visit evil on yet another generation, to be passed on to their children and their children? Only blessing can cut short the transmission of evil.
The second thing Paul says is, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” Now Paul says that you should do these nice things because doing nice things to evil people “heaps burning coals on their heads” - it just rubs in how nice you are. But I think there is a better reason for feeding your hungry enemies. Because they are hungry. Because they have no food. Because somewhere, at some point in time, somebody took their food. We are to give something to drink to those who are thirsty. Why? Because they are thirsty. Because somewhere, at some point in time, somebody took their water. So shall we continue to visit evil on them, by reinforcing the trauma done to them in withholding food and water? Shall we continue to curse them, and in doing so curse their children and their grandchildren? Or shall we act against our genetic inheritance, and bless those who are as much victims of evil as we are?
Evil is a tricky thing. Knowing why people do evil things is tricky. Knowing who is evil so that I can hate them, knowing who deserves to be cursed instead of blessed, is not easy. I no longer feel competent or qualified to make that call. The more I learn about people’s situations, the less certainty I have. Who started the evil first? Who suffers the most from it? We can’t be certain of this. But I am certain that God calls us to be people who refuse to inflict evil on others. I am certain that when Jesus was on the cross, he prayed that God would forgive the individuals who put him there. And I am certain, as Paul is, that God calls us to bless, not curse, and that God will overcome evil with good. Thanks be to God. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment