The rhetoric of Americans being the good guys and of all the bad guys being out there made me suspicious. I grew suspicious, not only by the irony of Christian calls to war, but by studying. Studying sociology, I learned of the startling Zimbardo prison experiment at Stanford, wherin a dozen students, prescreened for mental stability, were given two mock roles: some to act as prisoners, the others as wardens. They had to call things off after just a few days; even playing the role of a warden for a few days was too poisonous to their character, since they soon turned to the banality of evil and its propensity to corrupt even the “good guys.” It brought new light to interpreting mysteries like the Holocaust and people like Adolf Eichmann, a German in charge of much of the “extermination program”; when he walked into the high criminal court, attendees expected a man with devil horns upon his head and perhaps demonic steam floating about his body. But a curiosity emerged–this was a fairly normal family man who was just doing his job. Plumbing these mysteries, one sociological study on evil chillingly declared, however obviously, “People do evil out of a sense of right.”

I wondered how much of our “War on Terror” would heed this humbling lesson of history: you don’t have to be a monster to do monstrous things. Sometimes you just have to “do your job,” feel that you are working on the side of righteousness, and the rest takes over. But the reverse is just as, if not more, important: you don’t have to be a saint to do saintly things. One professor, Dr. Sherrie Steiner, told the story of a French village ,known for its courageous hiding of Jews during the Holocaust, called Le Chambon-Sur-Lingnon. Virtually all the townsfolk here regularly lied to Nazis they stowed Jews and others being hunted. Risking their lives. But after the war, when the story started getting out, a curiosity emerged: this village was not teeming with pious Mother Teresas. Strangely, the people were not strange. They were, in fact, eerily normal.

What accounted for their virtue? Mainly, their community had created a culture where it was easier to be good. While it is true that people must try hard to cultivate virtue, and that a “culture” doesn’t maintain itself, it is also true that we partly gain our virtues by passive cultural osmosis, by living near people more skilled at wisdom than us. Evil is contagious, so be cautious; but so is goodness, so take heart.

Brilliant insights here by Chris Haw, which come from his new book From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart: Rekindling My Love for Catholicism. In this excerpt Chris talks about a sociological experiment with findings similar to that of what Sanley Milgrim found in his controversial experiments in the ’70’s. In light of the recent massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary and the current re-examination of U.S. gun culture that is happening, the findings of the Zimbardo Prison experiments and Milgram’s theory of obedience–not to mention Chris’ two real life Holocaust stories–should give any compassionate person pause. Do we want to be the society where it’s easier to do good or easier to do evil?

Tags:Chris HawevilgoodnessMilgramnon-violencepeaceviolence