“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” — Isaiah 45:7

I’ve been listening and reading a lot about the Devil in relation to Christian theology lately. Yesterday I listened to the “Devilpalooza” episode of Homebrewed Christianity which featured Richard Beck talking about his new Devil book, N.T. Wright, who has written about such things in the past, and Greg Boyd, an open theist who is very adamant about the literal existence of devils and demons. Coincidentally, Adam Kotsko, another writer I greatly admire, also has a book out about the Devil — which looks awesome — and has been blogging about it a little bit (here and here for example).

Anyway, I really like thinking about all of this stuff. I like thinking about the problem of evil and trying to understand why there is suffering in the world and why bad things happen to good people; all these issues have been, and still are, interesting, important and challenging issues in my life and, overall, the Homebrewed Devilpalooza episode raised some fascinating topics of reflection for me. The episode sort of centered around Beck’s book, which is partially about helping progressive, disenchanted Christians — who don’t believe in literal devils and demons fighting a cosmic battle against the forces of good — reclaim a sort of enchanted worldview that allows them to take Jesus and New Testament seriously and affirm that to be a Christian, in some sense, means that one must fight or “revolt” against “evil” in the world, which is what Boyd’s book is about I guess. I haven’t read Boyd’s book but judging from some synopses I’ve read it sounds similar to some types of Liberation Theology I’m familiar with in the sense that they might also be characterized as “revolt” types of theologies because they generally tend to view God as constantly struggling to liberate people from oppression; however, various liberation theologies might diverge from Boyd’s insistence on literal angels and demons engaged in a cosmic battle… The advantage of the ontological over and against battle scenario between literal devils and demons and angel and stuff, according to Boyd, is that a personal type of demonic force, separate from humans, is maintained in the world where, conversely, this is not the case in a progressive view that uses the demonic as metaphor for malfunctioning, oppressive, impersonal social systems only. The argument, I suppose, is that progressive Christians who disavow the ontological, literal supernatural, personal evil/demonic forces in the world will eventually end up demonizing people who are associated with the evil, oppressive systems in the world.

This idea of Modern, disenchanted folks demonizing people to fill the shoes of the missing ontological demons is interesting and, who knows, maybe there is something to it, but I also think there are some underlying assumptions here and some other things that should be considered which are not being talked about; specifically: I think if we’re going to try to talk about and re-think evil we also, simultaneously, need to do the same thing with God and the world. These three concepts are intimately connected, and it means not only doing theology but also doing philosophy and incorporating the best physical and social science available.

Enchantment
I’ve written recently that I think Beck is right to encourage rich/privileged, Modern Euro-American people to re-embrace a sort of enchanted worldview. I have personally felt this pull for a long time; as a deeply spiritual person I’ve NEVER been comfortable with eliminative, materialist science based worldviews. By refusing to bifurcate nature, not removing mind from the contents of it, and re-imagining nature as ensouled (in a mystical, western esoteric, process-relational sort of way), I feel I have successfully reclaimed a sort of enchanted worldview. In fact, as a process-relational thinker, I do not rule out the possibility of what many would call “occult” phenomenon. In fact, as a process-relational thinker I’m in a better place to affirm the legitimacy of things like parapsychology, for instance, and take seriously the reality of things like non-sensory perception and influence at a distance, which all pose huge challenges for a Modern techno-eliminativist-mechanistic-scientific worldview.

Evil
I’ve also written before about my views of evil in the world. Suffice it to say that, try as I might, I am simply not able to entertain the idea that there is any malicious ontological evil force or entity in the world — personal, non-personal, sub-human, whatever adjective one wants to use — I also don’t believe “evil” is the proper diametric for “good” and I don’t believe it is helpful at all to use evil as a label for people or nature. I’ve never experienced any sort of demonic presence, or personified, supernatural, evil force. I don’t want to come off as pretentious here or all-knowing, and I do not rule out the reality of other people’s experiences and do not wish to dismiss or diminish mystery — I have a great appreciation for it — but to blame all my troubles on a malicious force in the universe (which happens all too often in fundamentalist white Euro-American Christianity) is just disingenuous, in my opinion, and I won’t do it. I won’t try to explain “evil” metaphysically but instead will probably be skeptical and treat it as an empirical issue first and foremost. This is the gist of what I wrote about evil a few years ago, it’s how I’ve felt for a long time before that, and it’s still how I feel today.

Now, by me indicating that I am uncomfortable with demonic language Beck would probably put me in the progressive Christian category along with those folks who are overly compassionate, call themselves “followers of Jesus,” but who ultimately end up transforming Christianity into ethics/morality, turning inward, pursuing social justice and ultimately demonizing those who don’t follow the golden rule exactly as they do. I think there is an underlying metaphysical assumption here about what humans are, but I’ll get back to this later.

I personally think when people use the word “evil” what they really mean is that the web of existence, and all the bad things they experience in life, have become too big to comprehend. Humans need a word that’s big enough to encompass meaningless suffering. When life turns rotten, when all of the negative aspects and ingredients of life gang up on us at once, we need to be able to wrap a word around that shit. The word we use is “evil.” John Cobb has an insightful and thoughtful take on evil: “…evil results from a mixture of good intentions, ignorance, and sin. It is also profoundly brought about by the power of the past in each moment of human experience.”

In my blog post on evil I sort of make the case that a modified version Augustine’s idea of privatio boni, combined with a process/evolutionary and a more Jewish understanding of evil, is actually way more helpful. According to privatio boni, evil does not truly exist, it’s a no-thing, it’s dependent on goodness the same way darkness is dependent on the light. Obviously there is more to the concept than this but I think this basic understanding works well for my analogy. If we start to genuinely care, and closely analyze what we might at first perceive as evil supernatural or demonic things, they sort of start to disappear the way darkness in a corner of a room disappears when a flashlight is shined. We might begin to see that, aside from human “sin” or human mistakes/misdeeds, the ingredients that make up “evil” are perhaps actually things like chance and purpose, survival instinct, communal identity (and fear when it is threatened), sickness, dis-ease, deep held but mistaken beliefs, institutions/systems, obedience to authority, and natural disasters, etc., etc., etc. Again, it’s not that these “evil” and “demonic” things that happen in the world are not frightening or creepy sometimes (at first), or that they don’t affect us or hurt us or cause us great suffering, it’s just that these things are not unnatural/supernatural or weird.

Accordingly, allowing for the literal existence of demons and/or angels really does, in my opinion, reflect a view of God as external and distant, and as a panentheist I really can’t abide that. My view of Satan and evil, I think, is more in line with a traditional Jewish, naturalistic understanding of evil. Many Jews don’t understand why Christians see evil as a competing force with God in the world. For many Jews, God created everything to be “good,” and this includes evil. Jews think it’s weird that in Christianity The Satan is given so much power that the title “god (or prince) of this world” is assigned to him. In Judaism God is the only force and evil is a part of God. Pennina Taylor explains that “Judaism teaches that what is to be overcome is not Satan, but the “satan” in our path, the obstacle which has been put there for our growth.” Many Jews view evil as part of a cosmic dialectical friction that is meant to generate increasing levels of value. Now as a process-relational Christian thinker I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that evil is actually good, or that God wills evil for the sake of growth or anything like that; this would too easily sugarcoat or downplay the real suffering that real people experience, I think. What I would want to say is that, depending on previous choices we’ve made, sometimes the only possibility we have before us is not so great. John Cobb on this:

“Whitehead wrote that what God gives us in each moment, the initial aim, “is the best for that impasse. But if the best be bad, then the ruthlessness of God can be personified as Ate, the goddess of mischief.” (PR, p. 244) The language of God’s wrath can fit in here. We can trust God to direct us to the best possible [path], but we certainly cannot assume that that will be pleasant or desirable!

Process theologians sometimes pick up on Kazantzakis’ vision. Here God is seen as pushing and pulling toward some more complex form of existence at great cost to those through whom God seeks this end. In more technical Whiteheadian formulations, God draws us toward new contrasts that involve the sacrifice of earlier assurances. To follow God is repeatedly to die to what we have been in order to rise to what is now possible.”

Evil, like “goodness” and “love,” are perspectival and location specific, I’m affraid. What seems loving to one person in one place at one time in one context may seem terribly cruel to another — this is partly what is so damn confounding about this topic, I believe. Everyone is in a different place in their life journey, at different levels of development (physical, psychological/conscious etc.), and everyone has different experiences and is comprised of different mixtures of everything that has come before. I admit that it would indeed be a whole lot easier to just blame Satan and be done instead of engaging in the very difficult and highly complex case by case process of diagnosis, therapy, and healing.

Demonizing or Fighting Not Against Flesh and Blood
I said I would get back to the cosmic war/battle idea and the problem of progressive and conservative Modern Euro-American Christians demonizing people as a way to fill in for the literal demons they no longer believe in. This again, like the whole enchanted/disenchanted thing, does not apply to process-relational oriented thinkers in my opinion.

I’ve written before about how I can, in fact, love my enemy as Jesus instructed and still “battle against evil” as Jesus also instructed. Very briefly, the reason I can do this is because, as a process thinker, I do think ideas/philosophies/ideologies/beliefs (along with all the other things associated with psychic life) are REAL (not illusory or secondary), however, we are not necessarily our ideas/philosophies/ideologies/beliefs. In other words, although our ideas/philosophies/ideologies/beliefs and systems of thought are indeed important, and partially help to shape us, they do not constitute us completely; we can’t be reduced down to our ideas. When someone has a bad idea, or is involved in an oppressive system, it doesn’t mean that person is bad or evil.

Like I have eluded to, I think this claim that getting rid of a literal personified evil supernatural force in the universe inevitably leads to the demonization or de-humanization of people is predicated on the metaphysical assumption that humans are “enduring individuals” which are temporally ordered into societies. But I honestly don’t believe that we are autonomous, isolated little billiard balls bouncing around, occasionally bumping into one another, only affected and acted upon by outside forces (and I’m willing to bet the best physical and social science around would agree with this). Humans are NOT unchanging static things. If we were, then yes, there is a good chance that by condemning someone’s behaviors and ideologies I would also be condemning their “essence” or attacking some special inherent abstract quality of theirs or something. But process-relational thinkers, who view humans as a collection or society of casually interacting actual occasions of experience (which are interrelated processes) that emerge through a seamless network of interconnectivity, don’t have to worry about demonizing someone when they think someone has a bad idea or is behaving in a less than desirable way. Again, that bad idea or bad behavior does not constitute them fully. Ideas, like emotions and weather systems, come and go—they drift in and drift out in a perpetual process of becoming.

In my blog post I talk about how systems thinking can perhaps help people better address these sorts of issues in a therapeutic way. An example I use is that of a doctor treating an illness. When a doctor does all she can to heal someone and eradicate a harmful disease, that doctor is not, simultaneously, attempting to eradicate the person. I think this is an important distinction to get and serves as a good analogy to how people like me — who don’t believe in literal supernatural demons — can be thoughtful, compassionate, and as specific as possible but still stay loyal to Jesus, “fight the good fight” and, to paraphrase John of the Cross like Richard Beck did in the podcast, put love where there is no love.

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Painting above: ‘The Skeletons’ (1518), Agostino Musi

Tags:evilGreg Boydhomebrewed christianityjohn cobbJudaismnaturalismpanentheismpenina taylorprocess theologyRichard Becksatanwhitehead