Real Live Preacher---The Nature of Evil; an alt-Christian reflects on his reflections.

I've decided to create a new category for blogging talk about blogs I've read that really snagged my attention, engaged my interest, and evoked a response. 

Sometimes just leaving a comment isn't enough and in fact, I rarely do comment on other people's blogs.  Though I should be less shy than I am about doing this (why? why do I always feel as if I'm taking a liberty?), it wouldn't in any case be enough of a tribute to a piece of writing that really produced a response.

Though my first such venture (below) deals with the most serious topic in the world, I don't plan to limit myself to serious issues.  I'm going to blog about any blog that makes me stop and take a look at the world, test my own reactions, or search for that visceral response.

Otherwise, why read?:

At "Real Live Preacher", my favorite blog about living the christian life in the Modern world, Gordon Atkinson has---as of today---published two particularly intriguing essays on the "Elusive Nature of Evil."  (I couldn't find permalinks that linked directly to them, so I'm providing the category link where they are listed. 

1.  The problem of evil.  The essays intrigued me on two levels:  first, because of the intrisic interest of being privy to a fellow Christian's attempts to come to terms with the mad fact of evil at play in the world; second, because I'm always intrigued when good people are baffled and surprised by evil.  It particularly interests me here because the writer is----as represented---a preacher.

At the conclusion of his first essay, he writes:

[quote from essay by Gordon Atkinson begins]

I am still fascinated and repelled by serial killers. They are the bogey-men of the modern world. Because of them, we still fear the darkness. They are legendary and powerful in our minds, though in person they are weak and pathetic. And having entered the God business, so to speak, the existence of evil in our world has become something of a professional concern. 

What is the deal with these guys?....[P]ain and suffering excite them....How is this possible?

[quote ends]

Serial killers must be held responsible for hurting others, but our growing understanding of the complex nature of their personalities must guide us as we decide how to deal with them.

As a fellow Christian, I honor him for recognizing the need to look behind a truly monstrous series of deeds to see the damaged person who performed it.  It's always startling when you look at a monster and just see a deeply confused, irreparably broken fellow human being.   

At the same time, I am, as always, bemused when people ask how it is possible for a human being to do such acts?

I think this is the natural response of a good person to brutality.  And perhaps the fact that I am continually surprised that we have (relatively) few people in our society who in fact engage in such brutality reveals that I am in fact not a very good person.   

I don't find the nature of evil elusive.  I find it commonplace, dull, tedious even.  I consider what other people call "evil"----that self-serving drive to subjugate, possess, punish, humiliate, dominate others----to be a basic component of the human psyche.

When we see people who have committed truly monstrous acts----I just saw a documentary about John Wayne Gacy---it's almost impossible to say, "There but for the grace of God go I." because every civilized fiber of our being protests the very notion.  If the thought crosses our minds, our automatic response is, "Surely not."  And in fact, we regard them as somehow different from the rest of us. 

But they are different only in degree, not in kind, of course. 

2.  The universality of evil.  It's easy for a 21st Century American to forget for just how much of human history the expression of this drive has been the norm rather than the exception.  That Americans can put this knowledge aside shows how far we've evolved, but I wonder if the ability to put it aside makes it more difficult for us to cope with it when we actually encounter it.

As an alt-Christian, I reject the idea of original sin without quite being able to avoid noticing its universality.  Because it starts out small, and surrounds us on all sides, it's too familiar in its original original state to be very frightening; and it's quite easy to deny.  But it's there, I think, though we've given it other names.  It's the primitive animal part of us that civilization is still just barely learning to control. 

The impulses that drive people like Ted Bundy are, according to me, the same impulses that drive small children to scream and throw things when they're angry or hit other children when they're angry, to break their own toys when in a certain frame of mind, and to relish games involving the pretense of intimidating or harming others.  Aggression and the will to power are ingrained in the human race.  At one point in our history, they were essential to our survival; in the places and times when (most) people have been able to get along without them, those qualities may be mostly dormant in most people, but they are just as present as they ever were.  Every human being comes equipped with a fully operational program for ferocity and ruthlessness. 

The question for me has always been not "how is it possible that there are serial killers", but "how is it possible that there are so few of them"? 

One of my friends calls me a cynic, but I am not.  I simply try to look at the world---and its history---clearly, as it is.  If Adam had not fallen according to the old tale, Christ need not have died.  In the Tao te Ching,  Lao tsu wrote that in order for there to be good, there must also be evil.  Western civilization has emerged from this duality, which it constantly evokes while trying to deny it.

To ask how people can become serial killers seems to me to ignore the broader context.  It's a good question, of course, but to assume that serial killers are fundamentally different from the rest of seems to me to ignore what's happening all around us.   

How can young children, particularly those in deprived circumstances but not only them, turn into cold-blooded killers?  How could Columbine happen?  How did the killers turn themselves into murderers in the first place and how did the schoolmates who had mocked and tormented them manage to convince themselves that that was a good and amusing thing to do?

How do people---especially children, but not only them---find such gleeful fun in violent videogames or "graphic novels" that focus on death, vengeance, and sexual psychopathology?  If we weren't naturally disposed to like it, why would such games and stories have such appeal to those we choose to consider innocent?

It must be quite easy to open the door to the impulses that make a sexual psychopath or a mass murderer because nobody has to be taught how to do it; it seems to happen naturally to some people, and particularly to those whose parents don't see such impulses as automatically wrong; who either give way to them themselves or who selectively permit their expression in certain circumstances.  E.g., A member of a white supremacist group who teaches his children the ten commandments, but also teaches that the command against murder doesn't apply to people outside the tribe of white supremacists. 

3.  How I gave way to the desire for possession and the will to domination when I was five.   When I was a child of about five, I clearly remember giving in to a completely childish version of the desire to dominate, control, and possess.  The child of a neighbor, age three, was a golden haired, dimpled, curly-haired cherub, who looked more than I could believe like one of the Madame Alexander dolls I coveted.  I remember staring at her wishing I could own her.  I longed for her to love me; I was awfully jealous of her older sister, who seemed indifferent to her most of the time, but to whom the little girl always ran when she was hurt or upset.

For the two weeks or so when I was in the grip of this doubtless primitive emotion, I remember fantasizing that something would happen to her---that she'd fall and scrape her knee, that kind of thing---so she'd run to me.  Finally, it happened:  she fell down, her sister shoved her away and she turned to me.  She needed me!  After that, all I wanted was for the same thing to happen again.  I wanted something to happen to make her cry so I could comfort her.  It's not, I think, an uncommon fantasy for adults. 

Don't many people have that fantasy---the fantasy that something terrible will happen to the indifferent loved one so that the loved one will need them? 

There are lots of levels to that feeling, but its components are things like the desire for possession, control, the subjugation of the loved one, and ultimately, dominion (even if exercised in the kindest way)?   

In my case, the feeling was not accompanied by anything I'd recognize as sexual feeling, but later when I developed sexual feelings, the sort of feeling I'd had toward that little girl was one of its components. Stalking, obsession, sexual jealousy, and the whole uglier side of what some people call "love" is all based on this feeling.  It all gets mixed up together in our heads with the desire for power and possession.  It is mixed up together.

In my case, it led to my finally pushing down the little girl myself in order to have the joy of consoling her.  I didn't want to hurt her; but I wanted the consequences.  To me, she was basically a walking, talking doll.  I never thought of her as having feelings of her own; meaning that her feelings were irrelevant to me except as they served my own ends.  There weren't any consequences; she cried, I comforted her.  But because I'd already had a certain amount of moral sense instilled in me by age five, I didn't enjoy it the second time.  Afterwards I felt, not exactly ashamed, but exposed.  And I blamed her.

After that, I ran away from her whenever I saw her.  She'd run after me crying; and I found this distinctly satisfying.  I no longer loved her or wanted to possess her; but I remembered feeling that way and I didn't want to be reminded of it. 

My mother would say, "Why are you being so mean to poor little Amy?  Why won't you let her play with you?"  And I didn't know how to answer. 

Was that evil?  No, because I don't think evil is a thing, but a consequence.  It's the consequence of willingly giving in to your own impulses toward ruthlessness and ferocity in the service of reducing one or more people to objects or something less than you.  I think it was exactly the same drive that allows some people to become serial killers; others to become gangsters; still others to become child or spouse abusers.  It's the same drive that led to the Holocaust and that allowed people to tolerate slavery.  It's also the same drive that leads so-called white collar criminals to feel indifferent to the anguish of people who are deprived of a pension, a livelihood, a lifetime's investment of work.   

All part and parcel of the same primitive drive, I think.

4.  People who give in.  I think if you open the door to that drive, and let it possess you, you and it become inseparable.  It makes you oblivious to the harm you do; it allows you---even while you go on thinking of yourself as a pretty decent human being---to treat other people or another person wretchedly, and perhaps even to relish it.  And if you were one of those born without the ability to feel empathy, or if you learned by example to ignore the anguish of others, you are predisposed to choose your own gratification over the health, safety, and peace of mind of your fellow man.

In other words, I think evil has shades and gradations, but that it all arises out of the same primitive darkness, where the drive to acquire control and possession at the expense of others was essential to survival.   I don't think it's something a person IS; but something a person DOES.  Which is exactly why it's hard on a Christian to move on to the next step:  deciding what to do about it.  Leviticus provides some pretty clear guidelines, but I don't think anyone really wants to follow all of it, and going through the Old Testament and cherry picking the parts you want out of it (which is what christian fundamentalists do) is neither logical nor sane nor in line with what Christ said.  As I've said myself, Christ's statements about the law are ambiguous at best; and he certainly showed by example what he thought about laws such as the death penalty for adultery. 

He was all about acknowledging our common humanity and rebuking the sin (gently), leaving judgment and punishment to God.  That's one absolutely crystal clear thread that runs through all the Gospels if you read them whole and not in pieces.  So the author of "Real Live Preacher" and "Christian Century" is 100% correct that dealing with the perpetrator of an evil act is something a Christian must approach mindfully.  I'd go further and say that for a christian, there cannot be one rule for all; each determination must be made case by case, weighing all factors, and holding in mind at all times the hope---and promise---of redemption. 

So:  To get back to the original point, I don't think there's a special brand of evil unique to serial killers like Bundy.  I think some people are predisposed, due to genetic or environmental factors, to give free rein to their impulses, but if it takes some sort of special training to behave that way, how can we explain events happening right now in Africa and other parts of the world?  Sex is simply one of the ways that violence expresses itself; but whatever its form, it all comes out of the same place.  I really believe that and this is well:  that there may be a few people who genuinely ARE evil---i.e., 100% predisposed to choose it 100% of the time---but in most cases, evil is something people do before they go home to their families and kiss their children good night. 

5.  The concept of original sin.  I believe that it was this perception that led the ancient Hebrews to develop the concept of "original sin."  We are born predisposed to pursue power, control, possession, and domination;  we have to be taught not to.  I see the concept as a shorthand way of saying not that we are born sinful, but predisposed from birth to make choices that place the gratification of our own will over everything else, including---or especially---the suffering of others. 

This is who we are.  When religion and civilization fail us---or when we open the door to our original impulses---we quite easily revert to our original primitive state.  Afterward, we may be astonished at ourselves; we may say, "Who was that?" and argue that we acted while not in our right minds or as our true selves.  I have no doubt it seems that way to the person who has gone over to the old gods, or whatever you want to call it. 

I don't know what to call the thing that drives us except the desire to win, to conquer, to dominate, and subjugate.  My friend said, "Aha; you're an Adlerian," and I suppose it's true in a way.  But if I am, I got there independently, and based on my own observations, not through any process that would pass muster as the basis for a comprehensive theory of human behavior.  It just seems clear to me that if you subtract civilization and the social contract, power in one form or another is essential to individual survival.

The drive to survive---and at a later stage, to prevail----at whatever cost to others seems to me the foundation for the concept of original sin. To me, it just seems that if you don't allow yourself to filter out the things we tend to discount---the violent impulses of young children, our society's proclivity to favor stories about violence, crime, and their consequence; the real violence of certain societies against their own members, and so on---one can't help concluding that those impulses are the natural ones. 

That same friend calls me a cynic; but I don't feel that believing in the non-elusiveness of evil----makes me a cynic toward the individual human beings I encounter.  Instead, it keeps me from viewing even the worst and most brutal human beings as fundamentally much different from the best or from me.  When I have to deal with people who have unquestionably done the wrong thing, I find it quite easy MOST of the time to refrain from judging the person and to stay focused on the act itself.  It helps me maintain my compassion---most of the time, anyway.  Not always, I admit.

I am no fan of C.S. Lewis---I find him (or rather the "good" characters in his various works of fiction) insufferably priggish and judgmental--- but one scene in Perelandra has always stuck in my head:  Ransom's confrontation with Satan and his realization that he is after all just a rather dull, ordinarily stupid brute.  The elegant Mephistopheles so often imagined in fiction---the comic book "evil genius"----those are wishful thinking.  Evil is brutish because it evolved out of our brutish past.  It expresses itself most often in acts that are not really monstrous but pathetic. 

For me, the joyful fact that arises out of the existence of evil is the proof that's all around us that we have an equal and opposite drive to transcend those impulses and to live according to the precepts that Christ (though not only Christ) taught his followers.

It says so much for humanity that we manage so often to resist it and that we strive so hard to be redeemed from it.