In recent years the prayer that the minister says when administering ashes on Ash Wednesday has become a bit more flexible, in that alternatives are allowed. Somehow it just doesn’t feel right putting ashes on a youngster and saying “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return!” Given the drinking and driving habits of many young people, it may be an appropriate statement but “Turn away from sin and turn toward the Gospel” seems a much more relatable statement. Repenting of sin seems very appropriate for Lent. It also raises the question of what is sin? At an even more fundamental level, it raises the question of what is evil? Once we have some sense of evil and the extent to which it is part of our lives, we have some sense of that from which we are turning. That is, we have some idea of what we are doing that is sinful.
If you ask a college student to make a list of things that are examples of evil, you might get a list that would include: the Holocaust, the 2004 Tsunami that killed over 100 thousand people, the 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers in New York and the ISIL execution of 21 Egyptian Christian martyrs about a month ago. Each of these incidents resulted in the horrific death of many people. We tend to see evil at work in the needless death of human beings. We value our own lives and see in their untimely end something fundamentally wrong. A normal human being usually has the capacity to empathize for another person and in some sense feel their pain. Thus, at a gut level, it is possible to agree that if my untimely death is fundamentally wrong, so also is the untimely death of another fundamentally wrong. At this most basic level we have the beginning of of a moral system.
If we go back many thousands of years we encounter the animistic people of the world, where there were no gods or worship but there were spirits lurking all around with whom we interacted. These spirits could help us or hurt us. It isn’t that these spirits were fundamentally evil or good. They represented a degree of power that could be enlisted to help us or to hurt our enemies. A shaman had particular gifts for interacting with these spirits and could be asked to help us in our dealings with the spirit world.
The ancient creation myths of the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East describe a pre-creation chaos. A universe and matter always existed but it was in chaos and the various gods arose to bring order to the universe. These myths arose during a time when there was a great deal of warfare among urban centers as the first great civilizations were developing and fighting for supremacy. The tales of the battles among the early Sumerian city-states were pretty gruesome. It seemed much of the time that the world was in chaos and a leader who could bring and enforce peace in a region was seen in almost god like terms. This historical reality influenced the myths that took shape and became part of the cultural heritage of the people of the region. From this perspective evil was chaos and virtue was what was done to bring chaos under control.
A common element in the mythology of the region was the conflict myth. The clearest example is with the Zoroastrian religion. This religion emerged in Persia about 1800 to 2000 BC. In this tradition, there was a good, creator god, Ahura Mazda and an evil, destructive god, Angra Mainyu. The first was characterized by use of reason, and kindness. He was all-knowing and created humans as allies. He was in constant battle for control of the universe with Angra Mainyu, to whom disease, death and all the suffering that plagues humanity was attributed. An important battlefield for each of these gods and their minions was the human heart. Through our choices and actions we aligned ourselves with one of these gods and helped to decide the war. The individual was judged by Ahura Mazda upon his death based on the quality of his or her life. The good went to paradise and the evil went to hell. When Ahura Mazda finally defeats Angra Mainyu, all the dead will be resurrected and brought to paradise.
The Book of Genesis presents us with the story of the Garden of Eden as the mythological origin story for humanity, as well as our experience of evil. As it has come down to us today, the interpretation of that story differs considerably between the Jewish and Christian tradition. I will discuss the Christian tradition later but right now I would like to focus on the Jewish understanding.
We touched on the classic understanding of evil in our discussion of the Book of Job last week. Essentially, asking why evil befalls one person and not another is asking for an answer to a mystery that is beyond us. Suffering happens and while we experience suffering as evil, it is often something over which we have no control and it is simply to be endured.
Several hundred years later we find a developing understanding of evil in the Talmud. The Talmud is a set of commentaries on the Bible, Jewish oral tradition and Jewish practice. It was written around 200AD in Palestine and a similar commentary came out of Babylon around the same time.
The Talmud describes humanity as having two inclinations that influence our choices. One inclination is toward reason, kindness and a sense of justice. It can be described today as the conscience. This inclination comes into play when we hit adolescence and are able to begin to grasp abstract concepts. The other inclination is toward selfishness. It is not evil per se but in excess it can be the source of great evil. In a moderate amount a certain self-interest will help to ensure that we eat, have clothing and shelter. It is only when we allow this inclination toward self-interest to get out of control that we have problems. The rabbinic scholars don’t present any grand picture of evil to be overcome, as with the conflict myths, rather they see that evil must be encountered and overcome every day in the small and large details of life. This is the tradition that sees the Covenant realized through keeping the commandments, as these are simple and direct ways to ensure that the impulse to good triumphs and the impulse to selfishness is kept under control.