“Why Evil Inevitably Defeats Itself”

Psalm 1

May 24, 2009 + Memorial Sunday

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

David Brown

More and more in recent years I have noticed something: more and more people tell me they don’t watch news on television or read it in newspapers. I certainly understand the reason. Most of the news is just plain depressing. Who wants a steady diet of bad news day after day, week after week, month after month?

That thought inspired a Midwestern entrepreneur a few years ago to put out a newspaper that would only contain good news. Great idea, but the newspaper only lasted a few issues. Bad news sells; good news bores. Bad news is like an auto accident. We just can’t keep from looking at it. Still, it wears us down, doesn’t it? Sometimes we have to turn it off or tune it out just to keep our mental balance.

Consider the high burnout rate among those who do front line duty against drugs and crime and violence. Police officers have a particularly hard time keeping perspective. Some become cynical and adopt the very posture they oppose. They are the corruptible ones. Others lose faith in the basic goodness of humankind. They are the hardened ones. Others get worn out and leave the profession. Too often, they are the compassionate ones.

The same thing happens to those who are family counselors dealing with abuse, drug counselors dealing with all the various addictions, the other helping professionals trying to bring some measure of peace into troubled lives. One of the things I have learned over the years: those of us who do such things have to take care of ourselves or we will be consumed by the misery in this world. We can be driven down by the overwhelming negativity of the very thing we are fighting.

We need to keep our faith in the message of that wonderful old hymn we just sang (“This Is My Father’s World”): “But though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” I want to believe that and I think you do, too. But sometimes it seems that in the ongoing struggle between good and evil, evil has all the advantages. Evil is industrious while virtue is often apathetic. Evil is cunning while virtue is easily conned. Evil is often profitable while virtue is said to be its own reward. Evil is attractive and exciting to the senses while virtue tends to be colorless and dull.

Several years ago “The New Yorker” magazine carried a cartoon in which two middle-aged women were depicted discussing a married couple sitting near them in a restaurant. One of the women says, “Oh, she’s such a perfect saint. But, of course, he’s much more of a real person.” A great teacher of preachers, William Muehl, was led to observe: “Most of us quietly suspect that the saint is some kind of traitor to the human race, while harboring (at the same time) a sneaking respect for men of evil reputation and women of easy virtue.”

That seems a bit strong (to me) but I have noticed in contemporary films and television shows that outlaws, bandits, harlots, and pirates seem to be the heroes and heroines, with exciting lives to live and little if any consequences to their wickedness. That’s really nothing new. Any first year college English major could tell us that Satan in Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is the most interesting character in the whole poem.

But more than being fascinating, evil is also destructive, and destruction, by its very nature, is quick and easy. Let’s be honest with each other: haven’t we wished that there was some button we could push and evil people will simply disappear? Of course, we have. But that would put us in the same league as the evil ones, wouldn’t it? I don’t want to be like that as tempting as it is. I want to maintain my own integrity in the face of any evil that would try to destroy it. And I have an idea you feel the same way.

Still, looking around the world, it is easy to give up or give in when we see the destructiveness of evil. A family can spend twenty years trying to raise a child to be a decent human being and then your kid goes off the tracks. We ask “What did I do wrong?” and there is no satisfying answer.

Or we watch as a promising politician, who seemed to have so much good to accomplish for all of us, surrenders to temptation and, in a moment, a career of public service is over.

Or we watch pictures of some demented pipe bomber blowing himself and dozens of others to bits, all in the name of some perverted faith.

Seeing this and so much more, how can we keep our faith in the words of the hymn: “(That) though the wrong is oft so strong, God is the ruler yet?” How can we continue to believe in the final triumph of righteousness short of some grand reversal at the end of history? Do we have to join the ranks of the conservative Christians who believe that the only way goodness will prevail is for God to wipe the slate clean in some cataclysm of destruction and start all over again? Personally, I don’t believe that but I know many of us in the Liberal Churches have to wonder whether God is still on the side of goodness. What can we believe in a world like ours?

Believe me, I know how tempting it is to surrender to cynicism and despair in the face of all the evil we see in our world but I still believe in one basic, absolute truth: evil finally defeats itself. That’s right. Evil defeats itself. Evil sows the seeds of its own destruction. Evil has a remarkable tendency to shoot itself in the foot or some other more tender part of its anatomy. Why? Because evil is (by its very nature) a separating thing and goodness is a unifying thing.

Think of the course of history in the twentieth century. If evil could keep itself together we would now be totally under the rule of the lawbreaker, the despot, the tyrant, the conspirator, the deviant, the violent one. But we aren’t, are we? And why is that? Because goodness has a redeeming power that can defeat evil despite evil’s impressive arsenal of weapons.

Evil breaks apart. Evil separates itself, not only from the good, but from other evil as well. Evil is not only destructive, it is supremely self-destructive. Dr. Samuel Johnson, venerable British sage, put it well when he wrote: “Wickedness would have long ago overwhelmed the world, did not those who practice wickedness grow faithless to each other.”

To make my case I want to recall two clichés. The first cliché suggests that there is “honor among thieves.” Do you believe that? I don’t. If that were true it would mean that thieves would treat each other better than they treat their victims. They would respect each other’s rights and make no infringements upon each other’s territory. That’s nonsense, isn’t it? Even though movies like “The Godfather” attempted to demonstrate the code of honor that criminals live by, the true reality is to be found in the movie, “Goodfellows,” which revealed the brutality and complete lack of honor among thieves and murderers. Thieves care little about each other and are willing to sell one another for any price.

A better cliché to describe the criminal world suggests that “thieves fall out.” That is inevitable. It goes with the nature of thievery. In fact, it goes with the nature of all evil. Evil is anti-social in its very nature. It is based on the worst of human motives such as greed, avarice, and personal gain. Evil cares only about me and mine, never about you and yours. Since the thief or evildoer is primarily interested in private gain, he or she is seldom, if ever, capable of basic trust or enduring loyalty.

Trust and loyalty require that to have a decent society, we must try to act in the best interests of others. But evil sees other people as victims to be fleeced, conned, abused, and taken, not as people of worth and value. So evil generates no trust, it creates no community, and it promotes no loyalty. Which, thank God, means that in the end thieves’ fall out. Like Bernie Madoff they are finally revealed to be what they truly are: pirates in pin-striped suits.

Evildoing, in the long run, becomes a very solitary and lonely thing. The wicked can only make temporary alliances. Sooner or later, they fall out with one another. This explains why a Hitler and a Stalin could sign a non-aggression pact with each other but couldn’t maintain it for more than a year. This explains why “partners in crime” is actually an oxymoron. Those two words cannot coexist in the same sentence. Evil doesn’t have partners; it only has co-conspirators, and when push-comes-to-shove evildoers will always betray one another.

And here is something else: evil has no center, no core. It is always cut off. We who know something about theology should understand that. For centuries we have been saying that sin is separation, separation from God and separation from our true self. In other words, to be sinful, to be evil, is to be a broken person. All we have to do is focus the light of truth sharply enough and long enough and evil will fragment right in front of our eyes, the way that scripture always said it would.

I have told you before that I am a fan of old movies. But today I want to demonstrate I also like middle-aged movies! Two come to mind. The first is “A Fish Called Wanda.” It’s a movie about the theft of diamonds, perpetrated by three ugly men and Jamie Lee Curtis (who is not at all ugly to look at). The plot is interesting, filled with several amusing twists and turns. But the movie ends strangely, almost amorally. Nobody gets caught. The diamonds are never returned. From the standpoint of justice, the crime is really quite successful. But there is no hint that the criminals ever get to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. The whole plot concerns the breakdown of community among the thieves. This one turns on that one. That one turns on the next one. Finally, none are left except Jamie Lee Curtis and the judge she corrupts. They fly off into the sunset together, but only a fool would believe that they will live happily ever after. Sooner or later, one of them will betray the other. Appearances to the contrary, evil is very fragile.

But when people stand together in the face of evil, goodness grows stronger and stronger. It grows like trees planted by streams of water. As a demonstration of this I ask you to recall another film, a much better film, a lovely film: “Driving Miss Daisy.” In it there are only two characters that matter that much. Miss Daisy, played by Jessica Tandy, is a nearly 80-year-old widow of the Deep South, very Jewish, cussedly independent, innately crotchety, and severely frustrated because she can no longer drive her own car. Her son provides the services of a chauffeur named Hoke, played by Morgan Freeman. He is nearly 70, very Black, functionally illiterate, but possessing enormous dignity.

For much of the picture, Miss Daisy does not like Hoke, precisely because she does not like the fact that she needs him. Her dislike, coupled with an innate sense of racial superiority, leads her to treat him in ways that are not always sensitive or kind. Then one evening Hoke is driving her to Sabbath services at the Temple and they are caught in a traffic jam. “Stalled” would be a better word. Impatiently, Miss Daisy urges Hoke to get out and see what the problem is. When he returns, their conversation goes something like this.

“Miss Daisy, I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to go o Temple tonight.”

“Of course I’m going to temple. Why wouldn’t I go?”

“Because the Temple’s been bombed. That’s why all the cars are stopped.”

“Bombed? Don’t be ridiculous, Hoke. Who’d do such a thing as bomb the Temple?”

“I reckon the same ones, Miss Daisy. The same ones.”

In the face of such evil there is a coming together of a Black son of a slave and a White daughter of Israel. Slowly they begin to realize they have more in common than they had in conflict. A friendship is born and goodness is affirmed. And in that growing friendship and goodness is the promise of the ultimate defeat of evil.

“For though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”