Politics and the practical problem of evil

In his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson begins the chapter on Psalm 124 with this story:

I was at a Red Cross bloodmobile to donate my annual pint, and being asked a series of questions by a nurse to see if there was any reason for disqualification. The final question on the list was, “Do you engage in hazardous work?” I said, “Yes.” She was interrupted from her routine and looked up, a little surprised, for I was wearing a clerical collar by which she could identify me as a pastor. Her hesitation was only momentary; she smiled, ignored my answer and marked the no on her questionnaire, saying, “I don’t mean that kind of hazardous.”

Eugene didn’t pursue that discussion, as there was a line of people behind him, but he notes later in that chapter that the nurse missed his point. It’s not the particular work of a pastor but the life of discipleship in general which is hazardous; and one reason for that is the power of evil in this world.

When we hear the word “evil,” I suspect most of us think of the extreme cases—genocidal dictators like Hitler, for instance, psychotic mass murderers, psychopathic serial killers, and people of that sort—the cases where, you might say, we find it straight up in a shotglass, 120 proof. The problem is, we usually meet it mixed in, hidden behind a bunch of other colors and flavors to sweeten it and make it look pretty, so that people who aren’t paying attention will swallow it whole. A friend of mine first encountered Long Island Iced Tea at the age of 12 at a party his family was attending; he’d had a couple before he or anyone else realized that he wasn’t drinking regular iced tea, in part because the alcohol took a while to hit his system. I guess when it did, he went from zero to blitzed in three seconds flat. A lot of times, we’re like that with the evil in the world—we swallow it without realizing it, and by the time the consequences show up, it’s too late.

The basic problem is that because there’s evil in every one of us, because we’re all tainted, everything we create, even the best we ever do, is also tainted; and that includes every human system—every family, every government, every charity, every association, and yes, every church. They’re all imperfect, because we’re all imperfect. I don’t care whether you vote Republican or Democrat, whether you supported Barack Obama or John McCain, whether you were ecstatic last November 4 or despondent: the Obama administration is deeply flawed, and so would a McCain administration have been, and you could say the same thing about Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy, Roosevelt (either one), Lincoln, Washington, or any other president you might care to name. They were all possessed of considerable virtues, but each was also compromised by evil in ways both obvious and subtle. That’s just the way of it in this fallen world of ours.

What that means is that, if you try to live the Christian life for all your worth—if you really open yourself up to the Spirit for God to lead however he will—you’ll find that in trying to be on God’s side, you’ll wind up on nobody else’s (not completely, anyway). Those who are born of the Spirit are like the wind, Jesus tells us—independent of any human control (or prediction, really). It’s impossible to sign on with any given political program, whether Democrat or Republican, and reflexively support it, because the Spirit will be constantly prompting you to recognize the evil in that program, and in those who’re pushing it, and to remember that they, too, are human and therefore wrong a significant percentage of the time. (Along with that, of course, the Spirit will also be constantly prompting you to recognize the same things about yourself; there lies the beginning of humility.) As Jesus said, no one can serve two masters, so if you’re going to follow him, you can’t follow anyone or anything else; which means that sooner or later, following him is going to put you crossways of the powers that be.

Of course, that truth is clearer and sharper some times and places than others. One of the reasons we give thanks for our political system is that it was designed by people with a clear awareness of human sinfulness; and if the checks and balances they built in as a result, in an effort to neutralize our vices and give virtue the best possible chance to triumph, sometimes make our government resemble one of Rube Goldberg’s ludicrous contraptions, well, it’s a small price to pay, given the alternatives.

Even so, if the temptation to back down, to compromise our faith, to go along to get along rather than standing up and resisting evil when we meet it in our government or our culture, is less obvious and clear-cut now than it has been at other times in human history, that doesn’t make it any less of a threat. We might be better able to fool ourselves into thinking we’re obeying God when we choose to compromise with evil, but that only makes the temptation more insidious, and more dangerous.

As Christians, we need to face the fact that we are always in opposition to the powers that be, at least to some degree. There are governments that do many things we can support, on a qualified basis, but even there, we must always hold ourselves apart from them and be calling them to account for the things they do wrong. We must be careful not to make the mistake (which far too many Christians, of whatever political persuasion, have in recent years) of identifying the work of the kingdom of God with the agenda of any given political party, or of mistaking supporting a political platform for advancing the work of God on Earth. We cannot with integrity sit that comfortably or identify ourselves that closely with any political organization, because we and they fundamentally are not about the same thing.

Rather, we need to recognize that if our primary commitment is to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, we will make enemies. We will tend to be thorns in the side of those who hold power, digging out the things they want hidden and challenging them to be better than they are (or, maybe, than they want to be); we will also be an irritant in our culture, challenging people in their comfortable assumption that they’re doing just fine, calling them to set aside some of their desires and follow a more difficult path. But if we will hold fast to God, the psalmist declares boldly that God will keep us secure, both against the temptations of evil and against its assaults.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563.