I was intrigued by television personality Glenn Beck's advice that Christians “run as fast as you can” from a church that has “social justice” on its website. Beck apparently sees “social justice” as something new, springing from Marxism and not only irrelevant but harmful to Christianity.
Thinking about Beck’s advice, I asked myself, WWJD, “What Would Jesus Do?” and immediately wondered WWLD, or “What Would Lucifer Do?” Which one, Jesus or Lucifer, would run away from a congregation that has “social justice” on its website? For those of us who want to do good, not evil, what does the Lucifer Effect tell us about Christianity and social justice?
I can’t think about “goodness” without recalling the 1932 Mae West film, “Night after Night.” Mae West plays the role of gangster’s moll Maudie Tippett. As Maudie enters a nightclub draped in diamonds, the hat-check girl exclaims, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!”
Mae answers, famously, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.”
The “goodness” flowing from the scriptwriter’s pen is cultural shorthand for God. The phrase “for goodness sake” is, more correctly, “for goodness’s sake,” or perhaps, “for Goodness’s sake.” In other words, “for God’s sake.” Linguistically and theologically, God and goodness are linked. “God” and “good” are one.
Because people think of God as good, and “good” as a sort of counterweight to “evil,” it is easy to think of God and goodness on one side, with Satan and evil on the other, as if in some cosmic tug-of-war where the forces are evenly balanced and human beings are challenged to throw their lot in with one side or the other. The Lucifer Effect, with its allusion to Satan, tends to reinforce this image.
There are many reasons why I think this is an incorrect picture of the universe, but I’ll deal with only one of them now and save the rest for future posts: good and evil are not evenly balanced.
Let’s set “God” aside for a moment and start with “good.” It is possible to think theologically about “good” whether or not we start with God. (Consider the Dalai Lama.) And it’s helpful.
We’re told that the story of Stone Soup is a medieval folk tale about soldiers on their long way home from war. But it’s really a story that is both older and more contemporary; it is a fable for our times, a lesson in the Lucifer Effect and how to reverse it.
One day three comrades walked down a road in medieval France, weary and hungry. They came upon a village of frightened people. These people hide their limited supply of food and bar their doors against hungry soldiers who arrive at dusk. This is the Lucifer Effect at work; the villagers have infected each other with their fear of strangers and their fear of scarcity.
If we think about the story of the Good Samaritan, the weary travelers could be seen as strangers bleeding by the side of the road, the “neighbors” who are to be loved and helped. And so they are. But almost as soon as they arrive, the three comrades perceive that this is not a village of Good Samaritans. Yes, the travelers may be tired and hungry and needy. Yet the villagers are even more in need. Their need is deep and subtle. They are trapped in the Lucifer Effect.
It is a pattern the travelers have seen many times before.
In William Blake's famous poem "The Tyger," the poet describes the tiger's ferocity and wonders about its Creator: "Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
A telling question. A heart-felt, serious question.
The conventional understanding of God as all-powerful makes God responsible for both good and evil ("weal and woe"). People wrestle emotionally with the idea that good and evil could have their source in a single all-powerful being: Does God choose to do evil?
One response is a dualistic view of God, a "good" God figure and a "bad" God figure: in conventional terms, "God" and "Satan." In religious discourse today, many traditions resort to the idea of a "bifurcated" Power: Good vs. Evil, God vs. Satan.
People who think this way tend to classify other people as either on "God's side" or "Satan's side." It becomes a natural tendency to demonize anyone who disagrees. This bifurcated, "binary," right-wrong, good-evil way of thinking is a major source of violence, cruelty, and evil in the world. The moment we classify someone as "the spawn of Satan" is the moment we eliminate any need to understand, to feel compassion for, to love that person. The Lucifer Effect shows clearly that de-humanizing others is the first step toward evil actions.
Today we remember those who died in the service of ideals we cherish. We remember the fallen. We mourn what is lost. And on this day I wonder what lessons we might draw from our new understanding of the Lucifer Effect.
I will never forget my first walk through the Vietnam war memorial. The walkway slanted gently downward, inviting entry. As I descended, the wall rose around me, each step taking me deeper and deeper into the hall of the dead.
First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.
– Martin Luther
“On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543)
Seventy years ago, on November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi stormtroopers, along with mobs of civilian thugs, went on a rampage against Jews throughout Germany.
Nominally sparked by the assassination of German diplomat Ernest vom Rath by a 17 year-old Jew in Paris, Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) marked what seemed at the time the culmination of a five year campaign by the Nazis to villify and persecute German Jews.
92 Jews were murdered. At least 200 synagogues were burned. Countless Jewish homes and businesses were ransacked. And, perhaps most ominously, something in the neighborhood of 30,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps.
Jews who had prayed that Kristallnacht would mark the high tide of violent anti-Semitism in the Third Reich, though, were soon to be tragically disappointed. Kristallnacht was not an end to the violence, but merely a prelude to the full horror of the Holocaust. Kristallnacht was a turning point, but not an end point.
In 1859 a young Swiss entrepreneur named Henri Dunant witnessed the battle of Solfertino, where the French and Italians were fighting to drive Austrians out of Italy. Three years later he published a book about the experience, A Memory of Solfertino.
Dunant's book tells about the bloody battle, but its focus is on the aftermath—the fruitless attempt to help the wounded and dying. The book concludes with a proposal that all nations form volunteer committees of non-combatants to help care for soldiers injured in battle.
Two years after A Memory of Solfertino was published, twelve nations met in Geneva to sign a treaty, the first “Geneva Convention.” They agreed to form national committees of the “Red Cross” and to respect the battlefield neutrality of Red Cross volunteers. It was the first step to a new way for the global community to think about war.
Today everyone knows about the International Red Cross. They go to places where terrible things have happened and they bring first aid, food, blankets. They stand between people and disaster; they hand out bottles of water and when they can they set up field kitchens so people can have a hot meal. In wartime they bring balm to the injured, make the wounded whole; and they visit prisoners held by opposing armies.
Today there are many additional Geneva Conventions. In addition to battlefield neutrality for armband-wearing volunteers, the newer Conventions lay out a plan for humane treatment of non-combatants and prisoners of war. The Red Cross has expanded from 12 nations to 181, and its symbol from the red cross to (in Arabic countries) a red crescent, and (in countries that wish to adopt neither cross nor crescent) a red crystal.
The current challenge for the International Red Cross is the detention of people who are not prisoners of war but persons named as unlawful enemy combatants. A 10-year-old Afghani boy named Esrarullah saw his father for the first time in 8 months—not in person, because families of detainees are not allowed to visit—but by an internet video conference arranged by the Red Cross. I cannot imagine how difficut it must have been for the Red Cross to arrange an internet video conferencing in Kabul, Afghanistan between a father detained at an American air base outside Kabul, when for months the authorities had allowed no contact.
The story of Daniel in the lion’s den is the perfect Sunday School thriller. There is the good guy, the hero, Daniel; the bad guy, the Evil King of Babylonia, Darius, who orders Daniel thrown among the lions simply for practicing his faith; and the lions, scary and dangerous, who mysteriously do no harm to Daniel.
Children come away from this story, no doubt, impressed with the idea that if they, too, faithfully honor their religious teachings, they will be protected from danger.
That lesson is actually not the real story, the truth of the story.
The real story of Daniel is far more nuanced than the Sunday School moral lesson, and as a result it tells us much more about good and evil, and how we figure out which is which. The truth of Daniel's story involves the Lucifer Effect.
The names of individuals have been changed but the stories are true.
When a group of six teenagers heads out into the wilderness for two weeks, their twenty-something trail guide has his or her hands full.
YMCA Camp Menogyn, in northern Minnesota on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area, has an 86-year tradition of taking girls and boys out “on trail” for challenging experiences that test their characters and help them grow.
The six boys have been out with trail guide Charlie for several days, long enough to know each other pretty well and to respect Charlie’s low-key guidance. Honesty is one of the basic character traits this program seeks to develop—not only because of the importance of honesty and authenticity in relationships, but also because the kids need to learn to be honest with themselves.
“Hey, dude, tell the truth.” This is 14-year-old Zeb’s admonition to Roy, also 14, whose inclination to avoid his share of canoe-carrying over portages has begun to frustrate his group.
Kimmie Weeks, one of many children victimized by Liberia’s nearly 30 years of intermittent civil war, almost died at the age of nine from untreated diseases for which there are treatments and vaccines. The grave was ready; he was wrapped in a shroud; he opened his eyes just before they laid him in the ground.
And that's when he decided to be a hero.
I’m sure he didn’t think about it in those terms. But Kimmie did think, in the way young children do, that it “wasn’t right” that adults governing his country were so caught up in their power struggles that they allowed children to suffer and die from diseases that no longer need be fatal. It wasn't fair. Kimmie thought there must be something he could do to make things better.
So at the age of 10 he began volunteering in a local health clinic. Sometimes he just held the babies, comforting them. One day an infant died in his arms, and he began to say out loud that what was happening was wrong.
The downside of the Lucifer Effect is that people accept the morality prevalent around them. The upside of the Lucifer Effect is that determined people can challenge and change the moral climate. Anyone who sets out to make this kind of difference is a hero. Kimmie Weeks is a hero.
By age 13 Kimmie had formed a national organization to advocate for Liberia’s children. At 16 he was so vocal an opponent of the practice of enlisting children as soldiers that the repressive and violent Taylor government put him on a deathlist. Thanks to UNICEF, Kimmie escaped and came to America to finish his education. His heroic stance brought international attention to the issue of child soldiers.
