EVIL, Backwards

There are three kinds of people in the church today: deists, dualists and devoted.

In 2005, sociologists Smith and Lundquist coined the phrase “Moral Therapeutic Deism” to describe a belief of American teenagers: religion is about being “good” (culturally defined) so that one can be happy; God is a minimally involved Creator. It’s an individualistic faith, blended with culture. Evil threatens this belief system.

Instead of deism, “Moral Therapeutic Dualism” is now on the rise – although I can’t claim the sociological research to prove it. Religion is increasingly about moral behaviour; Christians define right and wrong, we value clarity over unity and claim it is for the good of culture. If they disagree, we will force them by law to do it our way.

In the satire God’s Favorite Idiot, the self-righteous preacher says, “Only the righteous are right.” This portrayal of a dualistic battle between Satan and God shows God losing. The Moral Therapeutic Dualists do not challenge this dualism, only the claim about who is winning.

Types of Dualism

A simplistic dualism leads to disaster. To see those who disagree with you as evil, to be controlled or defeated, has become our politics, our cultural, and, unfortunately, our religious practice. Listen for war imagery in society. Christian warriors are crusading, distorting the apocalyptic imagery of heavenly battles. Now “right makes might.”

Some operate out of an anthropological dualism that separates body and spirit, elevating the spirit and denigrating the body. This is inherited from Plato, and often leads to an escape from surrounding culture.

A polarizing cosmic dualism of good and evil is popular – ask Marvel. This metaphysical dualism originated in Zoroastrianism in 6th century B.C. Persia. Jewish people in exile incorporated this dualism into new stories of the origin and “fall” of Satan, which carried over into Christian and Islamic traditions.

Many Christians read cosmic dualism into Genesis 3, Job 1-2 and Revelation: Light vs. Darkness; Right vs. Wrong; Us vs. Them. We see this dualism in the 3rd century A.D. heresy of Manichaeism that claimed the early life of Saint Augustine and tempted C. S. Lewis before his conversion. As Aquinas, Augustine and Lewis all point out, this dualism elevates evil, which is only ever a parasite on the good.

Perhaps we can learn a more nuanced approach from Taoism’s philosophy of Yin and Yang. Two opposite principles interact with each other in an inter-connected harmony. Light in the dark and dark in the light, within a greater whole. This could illustrate Paul’s view in 1 Cor. 12:25-26, “so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.”

Devoted

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body… the body is not made up of one part but of many.” (1 Cor.12:12-14)

There are those devoted to God and each other, not by force, but by suffering; not by conquest, but by community. Be devoted in God’s mission to all people, that “evil” may be turned around to spell “live.”