DELIVER ME FROM EVIL (LEARNING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EVIL)

      While reading one of my many FB posts about wretched ICE and how they are terrorizing Minneapolis, as well as Portland and Lewiston, ME., I read about a Spanish pastor and his parish which he fears will come to an end due to his parishioners being afraid to come to Mass. During Covid shutdown, he had started a grocery delivery service to some of his parishioners who could not leave their houses due to sickness. But now--and he said this includes far more people, up to 12,000 receiving groceries--he said he is no longer a Conservative who supported Trump. Now he says, "Deliver us from evil." 

 

    This is something when a Conservative Latino pivots from support of an autocrat to being the voice of compassion aiding those in need in his city. Although I am sure he had compassion before!

    We need to name what we are facing. It is evil, pure and simple. Evil in Trump. Evil in Miller. Evil in Vance. Evil in Vought, Noem, Leavitt, Bondi, Patel, Lutnick, and many more. We will not be able to fight this fight constructively and ably if we do not know what we are dealing with although many of us in the intellectual, progressive community have been hesitant about using this term in the Biblical sense.

    First, let's talk about what evil is. We can go to the Bible for some wonderful phrases such as, "The Father of Lies." Ya hearing that DT? Or the Red Dragon in Revelations?  Or, "Get thee behind me Satan," as Jesus famously said. And, "Satan was always a murderer."

 

    But to round this out, I want to go to Dr. Scott Peck who famously wrote about evil in his, "People of the Lie." He had not started out to write a book on this topic, but I believe that the further he researched it, he came down on the term, "Evil." No other words describe it properly, and this book is about some of his cases, his thinking, and researches into developing "a psychology of evil."  

 

    One of the things I found fascinating and true in his book is what he described as our responses to being in the presence of evil. 

1/ Revulsion. I feel that when I read about Trump which goes beyond my essential disagreements with every one of his actions and policies. I simply am revolted by the man, and I believe this is my response to his evil. 

2/ Confusion. Because evil folks are "people of the lie," their lies tend to confuse us. Isn't this the central core of what Trump and his minions are doing with their lies, to cause confusion and chaos? Yup. This inability to tell truth from fiction is a hallmark of what Trump does.

   Dr. Peck goes on, after giving us two case histories of adolescent boys whose parents he thinks were evil, to share with us that evil can "be subtle" and "inscrutable."

 He quoted Buber on this from  his book, "Good and Evil," which I am going to have to reread. In other words, some folks are obviously evil while others may be masked and hard to see. In the second case history of a young boy whose upscale, educated parents refused to send him to boarding school--although he asked for this, probably to get out of a toxic  home situation--they seemed to have no empathy for him at all, deciding--despite Dr. Peck's recommendations--that their son probably had a gene which made him a hardened criminal, so he was sent to a Military School instead keeping him in the Catholic school where he had begun to flourish. Dr. Peck caught the parents out in at least 3 separate lies in their last meeting with him. He also differentiates between people who are actually "evil" from those who do "evil acts." In his opinion, they are not the same. 

   Rick asked me, "Do we know anyone who is evil?" Besides Trump and his gang? I was unsure although when I thought about it, I did manage to come up with the name of a woman whom I knew in a religious setting many years ago. Dr. Peck said that often one place where we could find evil folks was in church, hiding behind their piety. (And recently I just read about the Pharisees asking Jesus why his disciples did not wash their hands before eating, as Jews were meant to do. Evil masked as piety.) Some of this person's kids had serious behavior problems and wound up in trouble with the law. Dr. Peck says that one way to find evil is to look to the troubled children, and then look to the parents.

   So then we might ask ourselves, "What can we do about this? If I come up against evil people or evil systems, how may I react and possibly help?" If you know an adolescent in trouble with the law, you can be a friend to them, listen to their concerns, and write letters to them if they wind up incarcerated.

  I think the best answer to this is two-fold:

--Just show up. Do what you can and be present in a way their parents have not been. Huh. I just remembered that we made a temporary home for a teenage girl after her mom kicked her out of the house. We visited her when she was in psychiatric care and supported her. Before now, I never would have labeled the Mom as "evil," but now I am beginning to wonder.

--If it is an evil system, as we are surely seeing now, send money to law firms that represent immigrants swept up by ICE. Send money to places in Minneapolis to help feed families afraid to leave their houses such as "Casa Maria." God. How have we come to this???

 

   Read "The People of the Lie" and Martin Buber's "Good and Evil" to understand more about something that runs through human history, ever since the Garden of Eden. Even if we do not believe in it as a physical place or in Adam and Eve, certainly the Fall tells us that we humans can often be infected by dark forces. And it is up to us to name this force and give love to overcome it. As Bad Bunny and Martin Luther King Jr. have said, "Only love can drive out hate." It is a tall order my peeps!

 

   I need to add something to this discussion: If we are actually to confront evil either in individuals or in systems, we must have some support. As a Christian, I have to go to church, to receive the Eucharist,

 and be among other believers. Whatever your faith tradition may be--and I hope you have one--lean on it. It will give you strength to confront the evils of this present age and to keep from being overwhelmed by them.