So, how do we conspire against evil? How do we actively resist? In this three-part series (Part I can be found here and Part II can be found here) I have tried to "set the table" for this post by reviewing the notion of the banality of evil. I'm more a preacher than a theologian and most of my posts here are sermons. But these thoughts have been nagging at me - and trying to write it out is helpful to me; maybe a few readers too.
Along the way I mentioned a previous series of posts on The Book of Revelation and on Walter Wink. In one of those posts, I quoted Wink as writing these words:
The Church has many functions, not all related to the Powers. With reference to the Powers, however, its task as we have seen is to unmask their idolatrous pretensions, to identify their dehumanizing values, to strip from them the mantle of respectability, and to disenthrall their victims. It is uniquely equipped to help people unmask and die to the Powers. (emphasis mine, page 164)
He goes on to talk about homelessness and how we tackle this problem.
No social struggle can hope to be effective if it only changes structured arrangements without altering their spirituality. All our letter writing, petitioning, political and community organizing, demonstrating, civil disobedience, prayers and fasting move to this end: to recall the Powers to the humanizing purposes of God revealed in Jesus. We are not commissioned to create a new society; indeed we are scarcely competent to do so. What the Church can do best, though it does so all too seldom, is to delegitimate an unjust system and to create a spiritual counterclimate. We may lack the wisdom to determine how homelessness can be solved; and our attempts as churches to feed, clothe, and house the homeless may only obscure the true causes of homelessness and fill us with false self-righteousness. But what we can do is create an insistent demand that homelessness be eradicated. We are not "building the Kingdom" as an earlier generation liked to put it. We simply lack the power to force the Powers to change. We faithfully do what we can with no illusions about our prospects for direct impact. We merely prepare the ground and sow, the seed grows itself, night and day, until the harvest. (Mark 4:26-29) And God will - this is our most profound conviction - bring the harvest. (page 165)
We humbly plant seeds. We don't "fix" the problem of evil like it's a widget. No technical fix will work on this ultimate adaptive challenge, the human condition. But we can name, unmask, and engage the powers. This is what Jesus did all the time in his ministry and we are called to follow him on this path.
Perhaps the best example I know of from human history of resisting the power of evil came from the people of Le Chambon, France during the Second World War. I want to focus here on the pastor of that congregation, Pastor Andre Tocme. I wrote about him in this post from 2017. For anyone who doesn't click on that hyperlink, read this much at least:
When people insisted, after the war, that the people of Chambon had done something "good" they refused to accept praise. They insisted that they were simply doing what had to be done. "Who else could help them? Things had to be done and we were there to help, that is all!"
If you read any connections from this three-part series with the times we are living in right now, then thank you for being an astute and careful reader. But in truth the current context simply clarifies some things I've been thinking about in a lifetime of pastoral ministry. I was raising these same questions in a series of blog posts here during my sabbatical in 2017. But as often happens, I got back to work - back to the daily routine. One nice thing about blogging is that there is a record though and I realize that some of the biggest questions are ones that I circle back to over the course of my ordained life. As Eliot put it, we shall not cease from exploration... [and] we do sometimes find ourselves where we began and recognizing it for the first time.
I'm now back in a parish, in time when our nation and world are facing incredible challenges. I don't think it's helpful to call a person evil, no matter how badly they behave. It's simplistic and unhelpful. It often leaves us paralyzed. I've tried to uncover some truths here and likely I haven't gotten it all right because these are difficult questions. But I've come back to the notion that the Church matters, and right now the Church has to figure out how to resist evil or what Walter Wink called, "the domination system." We have to figure out how to name, unmask and resist those powers that destroy the creatures of God and steal human dignity.
Perhaps the counter to the banality of evil is the banality of good, or something like that. It's not flashy. The people of Chambon refused to accept praise because they "were just doing what had to be done." So it is with us. I like that Wink quote as well - the Church is not equipped to even begin to solve the problem of homelessness. But we can and must move beyond charity. We insist on human dignity, no matter what.
We are called to be faithful, not necessarily successful. We are called to trust God but in the meantime to act in good faith, trusting that our small deeds can ripple out and ultimately change this world. The arc of the moral universe is indeed long (long long) but it does bend toward justice. We are called to live like we actually believe that to be true.
