My title this morning comes originally from Shakespeare. But some of you may know it as the title of a Ray Bradbury fantasy which takes place just a few days before Halloween. (Bradbury is a UU, by the way!) The form wickedness takes in the book is fantastic, but the motives explored, and the resolution suggested, give us food for thought.

With one exception, all of the mystical experiences I have had in my life have been strikingly positive. Once, however, in my twenties, I woke up out of a dream in which something evil was trying to get a grip on me. The experience was so real that I bolted from my bed and grabbed my Bible. Life-long Unitarian not withstanding, it was the only thing I could think of, in my sleep-drugged mind, as a protection against evil! After some minutes, my panic receded, and I started thinking clearly about what I had experienced. The dream was a warning about someone I was associated with -- accurate, I believe. I came out of that night with a definition of human evil which, with some additions, has served me well since.

Before that experience, as a raised Unitarian Universalist, I tended to disbelieve in evil, and to consider the propensity of humans to do harm to be simply the result of ignorance and inadequately loving upbringing. I still believe that these are powerful factors. But human nature is more complicated than that. Perhaps the nature of the Universe is too.

Theodicity, the study of evil in our larger reality, is a huge and controversial subject. I want to focus this morning upon human evil on the personal level, and what small steps we might take in our lives to reduce our own contributions to it. It seems to me that the attitudes which make us vulnerable are related to a false sense of self, and of self in relation to the world. The most common of these attitudes, at least from my vantage point, are the following: 

1) the need to deny the limits of our human life situation -- to cling to what gives us pleasure or power, and to deny pain; 

2) refusal to accept responsibility for ourselves -- our beliefs, attitudes, or actions;

3) The inability or unwillingness to empathize with others, choosing to be an "island unto oneself" rather than a part of the interconnected web; 

4) making an idol of "respectability;" and

5) resistance to creativity in the name of control.

1. Denying the limits of our human situation.

Ask a Buddhist what is wrong with the world and why there is suffering, and this is the answer you will get. The first two of the four noble truths are that suffering exists, and that its cause is clinging to what we like and avoiding what we don’t.

In Ray Bradbury's novel, people are unwittingly drawn into nightmarish evil with the lure of their secret desires: the desire to be a different age, the desire to partner the most beautiful woman in the world. Desires to control, to possess, to cling. To escape death. But the girl who had been a fifty-year-old woman just a few moments before finds no one who knows her. The whole complex fabric of her life is rent beyond imagining. Desire turned nightmare. A carnival of Fausts. Bargains based upon the illusion that a life run according to our desires can somehow fill the void within us. It has been said that lust is insatiable because it is an attempt to fill such a void, a void only love and self-acceptance can fill. The lust for power is no exception.

Scott Peck, in his controversial book on evil, focuses on the issue of truth. Evil people, he says, are "People of the Lie." In Peck's model, most of these lies are unconscious, chosen below awareness in order to protect a person from facing the reality of his or her human frailty. But many of the people he studied were casual about deliberate lying as well, in order to maintain control or to protect image or to get their own way. The evil in such people makes them resistant to therapy. The last thing they want is the spotlight of truth turned upon the inner workings of their psyches.

All of us have some defense mechanisms which protect us from feeling too devastated by certain kinds of criticism and awareness of our own limitations and fragilities. Peck's evil people were generally so deprived of love in their youngest years that they had no core self-esteem or basic trust to support them through facing unpleasant truths. There was in fact no authentic self, only a constructed "false self." Everyone and everything is sacrificed to the unconscious intent of protecting this false self from being revealed for what it is.

A psychologist who has studied the life of Hitler points out such a dynamic. A seriously abused child, Hitler had nightmares even at the peak of his power, nightmares of his father lurking in the corner. He would screech and turn blue with fear, and beg to be protected. In his waking life he could not remember. If he could have faced the truth of his experience, very possibly six million Jews would not have died.

We put ourselves greatly at risk when we try to avoid facing pain at any cost. There is no way around it. The only way out of the painful brokenness of our lives is through the pain. All of us, to some degree or another, have tried to avoid that reality. So doing, we have risked our souls. A great many people live their lives with the conscious or unconscious assumption that "the truth could destroy us -- our relationships, our sense of self, our beliefs, our sense of what the world means." As Unitarian Universalists, however, we generally come down on the side of the fence which is posted, "The truth shall set us free." This fundamental philosophical attitude is not easy, as it requires courage, effort and discernment. It is, however, crucial to our ability to contribute to life-affirming rather than life-denying energies in our world.

2. Refusal to accept responsibility. . 

Peck says about his subjects that nothing that happened could be their failing; their viewpoint required there be some other cause. They were incapable of honest self-reflection, or of admitting to self-doubt.. These activities would expose the hollow, false self, and the acute lack of self-esteem hiding underneath.

Most abusers justify their abuse on the grounds that the other person’s behavior is responsible, rather than their own. Even so-called "normal" people will often obey an authority figure when to do so goes against what they know to be right. Abdicating one’s conscience to anyone else, peer group or pope, can set the stage for evil.

Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, in their books on conscious relationship (Conscious Loving, The Conscious Heart) point out how often both participants in a disagreement make a run for the victim role. One of their principles for healthy relationship is that each person takes full responsibility for everything that happens in his or her life. A disclaimer -- in an abuse situation, it is very important not to "blame the victim." But it is also disrespectful to assume anyone is totally powerless. This can be a fine line. But this principle is not about what others "should" do -- it is about out examining our own core attitudes.

Our Unitarian Universalist heritage is full of exemplars who have taken responsibility for their own lives and for improving the state of their society. Even when we have been victimized, few of us choose to adopt a "victim" identity for the long-term. Our movement began with people who challenged outside authority in the name of individual conscience, and we have made that concept a central part of our covenant. Each of us is challenged to continue wrestling with what it means to be proactively responsible persons, partners, parents, and prophetic members of our communities.

Peck says that for people whose purpose in life is self-protection, empathy is an impossibility. No one else has reality. If one cannot allow one’s own pain, one cannot allow anyone else’s, either. I think of the song "I am a rock, I am an island." If I do not experience you as a part of myself, then it is much easier for me to hurt you.. The connection between cutting oneself off from others and inadvertently, if not deliberately, serving evil was one of the insights I had that night in my twenties.

Usually such lack of connection is a result of being harmed emotionally early in life. It appears, however, that rare people are born that way. Recently, I read a novel by Canadian writer L. R. Wright, who described with chilling reality the interior life of a young girl. She was what is called a sociopath. She honestly did not understand why she was supposed to feel the pain of others, but she wanted to stay out of trouble, so she tried to figure out how to behave so that she didn’t appear different. In the end, she killed her brother, who threatened the island of peace she had managed to construct for herself -- peace from her own raging, unsolaceable hurts. For paradoxically, being open to the hurts of others frees us -- frees us to put our own in perspective, frees us to escape the isolation created by unspoken pain and grief -- frees us to be comforted, and to move on.

Most of the great religious teachers through history taught that we are interconnected with one another and with the universe. UUs cannot claim a corner on that sentiment! But adding our seventh Principle in 1985 strengthened our ability to be life-affirming. It brought the Universalist strand of concern for the salvation of all closer to the center of our faith. We do, sometimes -- individually and collectively -- veer away from community into forms of individualism which can be destructive to the interconnected web -- of our families, our congregations, our world. If we would serve what is life-affirming, we need to be aware of this balance, lest we inadvertently serve "evil."

4. Making an idol of "respectability". 

This attitude is perhaps the reverse of destructive individualism. It results from constructing a life based upon outer expectations, usually perceived as being defined by our communities and culture.

The people Peck studied were quite "respectable" people. Simone Weil wrote that while "Imaginary evil is romantic and varied, real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring." Peck suggests that psychiatry has failed to identify a pathology of evil because so much of it masquerades as respectability. Take the trials of war criminals after World War II. Observers became vividly aware of the horror that can lurk behind "respectability." As Thomas Merton put it, "now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared."

In our day, we must question once again the actions of the "sane" ones which are causing destruction in our world. We must wonder about the fighter pilots, asked if they were aware that there were people down below when they pushed the button to release their bombs -- pilots who say, "No, I am just following instructions -- I’m just pushing a button."

When Jesus of Nazareth challenged the "law" in the name of the "spirit," he was challenging customs which had deadened compassion and sapped the vitality of the human soul. As often as I have heard conservative Christians mouth self-righteous excuses for hard-hearted attitudes, it still astonishes me that people believe Jesus would have supported such a pinched, petty and fear-based way of living.

When people serve the idol of "respectability," authenticity goes out the window. The temptation to lie about one’s actions and feelings is powerful. Families or communities can live in a trance, wrapped in protective myths confirming their own superiority and virtue, while shame runs rampant behind the scenes.

In ministry, we often speak of wounded healers. There is no shame to being wounded. When shame is imposed, and the wound hidden, it festers. None of us are free of woundedness. Few of us are free of unhealthy shame, the shame that makes us want to hide rather than expose and heal our wounds. But hiding has consequences to ourselves, and to those we love. That is the danger of too much "respectability."

Perhaps our special gift to society as Unitarian Universalists is that we are generally skeptical of "respectability," in its superficial sense. Yes, sometimes we have carried that skepticism to a reactive extreme. And we are not free of our own "politically correct" self-righteousness which needs rigorous examination. But I believe we have something prophetic to offer our larger society, even as we look more closely at what our own blindered "respectabilities" might be..

5. Resistance to creativity in the name of control. 

Henry Nelson Wieman, a UU Process theologian, describes evil in classic religious terms by identifying its fundamental characteristic as resistance -- as inertia against the unfolding of creativity within our lives, against the power of the Spirit moving us towards new life, towards love, towards risk, towards openness, towards truth. The Truth can indeed make us free. But we need to beware our human tendency to make an absolute of the limited truth we have managed to grasp at any point.

The universe is not tame. We cannot keep Divinity in our pockets to call on at will. "Not my will, but Thine" remains a core religious truth -- as long as we don't become overly confident that we know what the Divine will might be in any given situation! One doesn’t need to believe in a "personal" God -- the image of aligning ourselves with the river of Tao works as well.. Our efforts to open ourselves to the Creative energy moving in our lives are partial and incomplete at best. We need to keep wrestling with our understandings of truth., goodness and love in every new situation.

If one studies people considered saintly through history, one is often struck by their uniqueness. St. Francis of Assisi is a good example. Though their visions may be similar, their personhood is distinct and creative. I've noticed that tendency among the more ordinary good people in my life, at least in liberal religious communities. It seems that our spiritual goal is to become utterly ourselves, not carbon copies of anyone else. To be what we were made to be, and to accept that reality with humility and love. To be co-creators of a future which includes genuine new possibilities. I believe that Unitarian Universalists have a tremendous potential to be life-affirming in this way, only part of which has been yet realized.

Which brings us back full circle to where we began. To the degree that we can give up false selves and false ideas about our relationship with our world, we are less vulnerable to being inadvertent contributors to the evil or anti-life energy in our world.

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I’ve named several attitudes which make us more vulnerable to inadvertently serving what is life-denying -- what can become evil. Are there intentional spiritual disciplines which help us to be less vulnerable? Which strengthen our ability to be true to the energy which upholds life? Yes. Some of them were named millennia ago.

We can counter the refusal to face reality with increased Self-knowledge. Peck suggests that psychotherapists are "engaged in the activity of saint-making." Arrogance? Perhaps. But containing some truth. One way we can reduce the degree to which we are unwitting agents of evil is to increase our self-knowledge --- our willingness to challenge ourselves, to ask tough questions, to be authentic even in our weaknesses.

We can counter confusion about where our responsibility lies with the discipline represented by the Serenity Prayer. The twelve-step program, with which I worked as a hospital chaplain intern, focuses upon this prayer: "God [my higher power, my deepest self] grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Alcoholism isn't the only evil to retreat before that commitment.

We can counter limited empathy by the intentional extension of empathy. This, too, is a discipline. It is human to empathize more easily with those who are more like ourselves. It is helpful to put ourselves in positions where we get to know people who are quite different, to listen to them with open hearts and to learn their stories. The more we have stretched our hearts to include diverse people, the less likely we are to justify harming anyone.

We can counter the mask of "respectability" with Laughter and with refusing to take ourselves too seriously In Ray Bradbury's story, what turns the tide against the evil folk? Laughter! The sudden realization of a man threatened with death that the witch who was trying to stop his heart looked absurd, pathetic, funny. She lost her power and fled before the knowledge. Her lies to herself behind which the frightened powerless child hid were revealed, and such power as her wickedness held was punctured like a balloon.

Evil cannot survive facing its lack of freedom, its lack of genuine power. Certainly, an ability to laugh at ourselves and our pride and pretensions is a good defense against becoming vehicles of evil. And perhaps loving laughter can help others to keep perspective at times. Yet a caution is in order: if this becomes ridicule of others, it is a dangerous weapon. We know how it has backfired to harden the hearts of the wounded still further, sometimes triggering a moment of decision for revenge or violence -- a dynamic which may have contributed to the recent violence in our schools.

We can counter the resistance to creativity and addiction to control by consciously affirming our openness to creativity -- to let go and let God, or whatever language works for you.

The Peck and Weil point of view is that real evil is monotonous and boring while good is original and creative. This contrasts with an essay in Time magazine several years ago which claimed that Good "has a way of boring people." The writer explains, "Evil is charismatic...The human mind romances the idea of evil... Satan and evil have many faces, a flashy variety. Good has only one face. Evil can also be attractive because it has to do with conquest and domination and power. Evil has a perverse fascination that good somehow does not. Evil is entertaining... Evil is easier than good. Creativity is harder than destructiveness."

The last is true. Creativity is harder than destructiveness. But -- Good has a way of boring people? Do you think so? Or do you agree with the first point of view, that real evil is boring, and that authentic good people are unique and diverse? It depends, doesn’t it, on whether one defines "good" in terms of "respectability" or of "creativity in service of life?"

Henry Wieman waxes unusually poetic in his declaration that, if we would serve the Good, we must be willing to be broken. His point is that only by being broken out of our old boundaries and concepts and habits can we "recover again and again the depth and power of new creation." All of us resist to some degree. Those whose lives are devoted to such resistance become vehicles for evil in the world. So an intentional discipline of "letting go," of "expectancy rather than expectation," decreases the likelihood that we will unwittingly obstruct the inbreaking of the holy -- the healing -- the creative -- into our lives.

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Which leads to my final point today, the wisdom of avoiding an attitude of "destroying evil". Peck suggests that such an attitude multiplies evil, rather than eradicating it. While the old saying "hate the sin, not the sinner," has merit, Peck would say be careful of hating anything, lest you focus too much attention upon it and give it power over your life.

Peck proposes, like many religious people before him, that evil can only be overcome by love. Not an "anything goes" kind of love, but a tough love touched with pity for the terror in the heart of the bully. At least with the everyday life-denying patterns we encounter in ourselves and others, our ability to love may make a difference. Beginning with the scared and wounded child within each of us.

As a religious community, we are dedicated to serving the good.. We encourage people to deepen their self-knowledge and to see the world more clearly as it is, not as we want it to be or are told it is. We encourage one another to be clear about our personal responsibility for our beliefs, attitudes and actions. We are committed to stretching our empathy, as we work together for a world in which all sentient beings are free of suffering. We challenge notions of "respectability" which serve as masks and excuses for harmful actions. And we challenge one another to find the courage to let go of our certainties and to allow creative newness to unfold in our lives.

One of the best ways we can serve the good is to be a place where people can share their woundedness without fear of rejection. For the better we are able to face our own woundedness, the less purchase there is in our lives for evil to operate. This is the pastoral function of religious community -- to comfort the afflicted. Another is to be a place where we can question the myths and lies which pervade our society, so often the result of attempts to deny our human limitations, to refuse responsibility, to limit empathy, to claim respectability, and to resist creative novelty. In other words, the very attitudes which make us vulnerable to being agents of evil. This is the prophetic function of religious community. I would argue that our Unitarian Universalist congregations have exceptional ability to do both, when we take ourselves seriously as agents of good acting in the world.

Agents of good -- because we are alert to the insidious ways in which we are vulnerable to serving evil. Evil in its more extreme forms remains a mystery. It can seem totally alien to us. Yet we know that we participate to some degree in that human weakness which makes horrors such genocide possible

It is folly to ignore fear and insecurity and other emotions which may make one vulnerable to evil. It is dangerous not to name evil where we encounter it. We need some understanding in order to recognize it, for much of it is not blatant, but subtle and confusing. Yet I think Peck is right in recommending that, while we must not deny its existence, we do best not to focus too often upon evil, even for the purpose of eradicating it. Our most important religious mandate is to keep our eyes upon our visions of goodness and beauty and truth, as a compass which helps us to chart the direction we are traveling, even when we fall short of the goal. For guiding our lives with such a compass can be transformative in ways we can scarcely begin to imagine..

Our primary focus must be upon bringing the good and the beautiful and the true into reality, one step at a time, in our own lives and the life of our human community. May it be so.

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