Evil

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Evil

Evil is an umbrella concept that includes both a moral aspect (sin) and a natural, nonmoral aspect (suffering). Most religions address both moral evil and natural evil.

In the two largest religions in America, Judaism and Christianity, interest in the nature of evil is a secondary interest; the primary interest is in salvation from evil. Still, both of these religions, and many others, teach certain things about evil. Some religions approve of evil. For example, in Satanism it is taught that evil should be embraced. This is a rare view; most religions teach that moral evil is to be avoided rather than embraced. Some religions deny or minimize the importance of evil. For example, in the Church of Christ, Scientist, goodness has been understood to be more real than evil. This also is a rare view; most religions acknowledge the reality of evil.

In the early part of the twentieth century some liberal and modernist forms of Judaism and Christianity seemed to lack a serious view of moral evil; they were characterized by confidence in human progress by means of education and goodwill. Across several decades, optimism concerning the manageability of evil has diminished and is now regarded by many Americans as naive. The realistic attitude that Judaism and Christianity have traditionally taken toward evil is one of the factors that renders these faiths plausible to many thoughtful people in America. Embracing, denying, and minimizing the seriousness of evil are not characteristic of very much religion in America.

Moral Evil (Sin)

Moral evil is an important concept in the religious thought and action of the majority of Americans. Within the Jewish and Christian traditions, moral evil is presented as having two faces. Just as crimes have perpetrators and victims, so moral evil has perpetrators and victims. Perpetrators of moral evil are persons who know the difference between right and wrong, who have the power to choose either right or wrong, and who choose to do wrong. An example is a person who betrays and thereby needlessly hurts a friend. Victims of moral evil are persons who are in the grasp or power of forces beyond their control, so that they do not have the power to do what is right. Examples of victims are persons who, because of their addiction to drugs, diminish their own lives and harm the lives of those they love.

Most religions recognize the distinction between perpetrators and victims. Nevertheless, within the religions there are intense discussions about the distinction. One such discussion within Christianity and Judaism concerns the nature of the moral evil that victimizes people. For example, what is it that causes people to become addicts? There are both Jews and Christians who think that the question is not a proper one. They insist that every human being has the freedom to choose between good and evil, that some have freely chosen evil, that addicts are simply people doing what they have chosen to do, and that there is nothing else to be said about the matter. In other words, addicts are actually perpetrators, not victims, or at least they began as perpetrators and then developed a habit or taste for drugs. Those who take this position point out that it offers a high view of human beings because it holds human beings responsible for everything that is wrong in their lives. To do this, to hold people responsible, is to affirm their freedom and therefore their dignity.

Few if any Jews or Christians would retreat entirely from the concept that human beings are responsible for some of their conduct, but many have come to doubt that human beings are responsible for all of their conduct. They are convinced that there is more to evil than discrete choices made by free, rational individuals. One of the things that has called attention to the fact that there is more than this to evil is the history of the twentieth century. To speak of individual choices just does not seem to do justice to the immensity of the evils of the century. Something more seems needed to account for what Adolf Hitler did to millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others in the Third Reich, for what Joseph Stalin did to millions of his countrymen, and for what Pol Pot did to many of his countrymen.

But what is this "more"? One traditional set of candidates is the devil and the demons. In Europe and North America the view that there are actually personal demons that oppress people has been losing ground for centuries. It does not help the case for demons that they are widely believed in throughout the industrially undeveloped world, for that leads naturally to the conclusion that belief in demons is one of the superstitions that should be sloughed off once scientific enlightenment is available.

Some traditional Christians and Jews have always retained a belief in demons because there are references to demons in the Bible. This belief got support from one movement that arose within Christianity in the twentieth century: Pentecostalism. But most Christians who reflected carefully on the power of evil tended to turn in other directions. One of those directions is psychology. Throughout the century there has been widespread interest in psychology, and the principal forms of psychology have acknowledged that darkness exists deep within the self of human beings. Various explanations have been offered for this evil. For example, human beings have something like a memory of early childhood experiences of powerlessness that generate fear and rage, and these emotions propel human beings to do evil.

Others have sought an explanation for evil in evolution. Human beings, it is said, have evolved from lower forms of life whose survival depended on their being violent; the tendency to violence has remained in human beings as they have evolved, and their violence leads them to do evil things. Ironically, human beings, unlike lower animals, kill even when killing is not necessary for their survival. Others have looked for an explanation for evil in the social character of human beings, a view that owes much to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In isolation human beings tend to be good, but in the collective they become capable of evil they would never dream of perpetrating on their own—for example, the evils of racism. Moral human beings create immoral societies. Still others have looked for an explanation for evil in the institutions of society. Organizations, bureaucracies, and especially governments diminish and dehumanize human beings and thereby launch them into conduct that is contrary to their otherwise good tendencies.

These explanations seem plausible to many Jews and Christians. There is much less naive optimism about people at the end of the murderous twentieth century than there was at its beginning. In the industrially developed world belief in personal demons still stretches the credulity of most people, but recognition that there is more to evil than the choices of individuals is widely accepted. Additionally, it is now widely acknowledged by Christians and Jews that there is a mystery to evil. Evil is not something that human beings happen not to understand; evil is something that will always defy human understanding. This is not surprising, because to understand is to grasp the rationality of things, and what is characteristic of evil is that it is not rational at all but rather irrational.

Natural Evil (Suffering)

In the Jewish and Christian faiths, there is a close connection between sin and suffering. Suffering, it is said, is a consequence of sin. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, told in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, displays that connection. Until Adam and Eve had sinned, they lived a life free of suffering; as a consequence of their sin—indeed, as a punishment for it—they were driven from Eden and began to experience suffering.

Formed by this teaching of Scripture, American Jews and Christians tend to acknowledge that moral evil can lead to suffering. They accept the link between sin and suffering that is taught in the Bible, but they also are aware that a great deal of suffering is not attributable to any moral failure. For example, some babies are born with birth defects that cannot be attributed to any conduct of either their parents or any other human beings. In the Bible the Book of Job is addressed to the question of undeserved suffering, so there has been an awareness of the problem for centuries.

Many Christians, Jews, and Muslims do not make any attempt to understand the problem. They see it as an act of loyalty to God to refuse to ask why bad things happen to good people. They regard uncomplaining submission to whatever happens to them as part of their obedience to God. Many others, however, do attempt to understand the problem of undeserved suffering. Their attempts are exercises in theodicy, a defense of the power and goodness of God in the face of undeserved suffering.

Suffering is a universal human problem, but it is a problem in a special sense for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. This is because these religions have an understanding of God that says that the one and only God is all-good and all-powerful. But, the argument goes, if God is all-good, then God must want to prevent undeserved suffering; and if God is all-powerful, then God must be able to prevent undeserved suffering; but since undeserved suffering happens, it follows either that God is not all-good or that God is not all-powerful. This is the most powerful and influential argument ever made against faith in God, so it is not surprising that some people have been led by this argument to surrender their faith in God altogether.

Others have been led to surrender some aspect of their faith in God. For example, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner says that he believes that God is all-good but not all-powerful; God is very powerful but not powerful enough to prevent all of the suffering that occurs in the world. On the other hand, Christian theologian Frederick Sontag has affirmed that God is all-powerful but not all-good; he even speaks of a demonic side to God.

These are ideas that are held principally by intellectual minorities in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The majority of the faithful of these religions have retained the traditional belief in a God who is all-good and all-powerful. They recognize that there is a mystery about suffering that they cannot explain, but they also welcome such relief as the various explanations may provide. They look forward to a time when all undeserved suffering will be ended, and they expect that it is only then that human beings will have a full understanding of undeserved suffering.

Both moral evil (sin) and natural evil (suffering) continue to occupy an important place in American religions today, just as they have in most religions since ancient times, and there is no sign that their importance will be diminished in American religion in the near future. It is rare for anyone in an American religion to claim to have a comprehensive explanation for the nature of sin and suffering; it is much more common for people in American religions to acknowledge the mystery of these great human problems. It is even more common in religions in America for the claim to be made that God provides salvation from evil. In that claim lies the good news that is most characteristic of each of the religions.