"Evil Prevails When Good Men do Nothing" at the Intersection of Faith and Culture

A man hears a sound, investigates, flees, calls his father for counsel, receives the advice and does as he is told. A man is told, tells his boss, his higher-up, and continues with his work. If they are normal human beings, one will be haunted by what he saw and the other by what he was told, and hauntings are often caught and held in the unconscious. But, again if they are normal, what is also caught is an irritation concerning what they did not do. One did not intervene when he saw what he saw, and the other did no more than tell the person he was supposed to tell.

And we are left to ask, “What is the nature of an individual’s moral lapse, the moment when what needs to be done, is not done?” Before asking how human institutions are designed to be complicit in lapses that circumscribe moral failures, a question worth pursuing; and another, how individuals in those institutions take steps to protect institutions over people, we are compelled to walk on the shifting ground of complicity borne of moral inaction.

The man who saw and fled and followed advice from his father is, of course, the graduate assistant coach who walked into the Penn State football locker room, heard a slapping noise, walked into the shower to find a grown man he knew sexually attacking a young boy whom, presumably, he did not know. Had he walked into a situation where a lone individual was in peril because of a building malfunction, like a wall crumbling down, would he have rushed in to save the life? Had he walked into a situation where a lone individual was in the process of bleeding out from a self-inflicted wound, would he have rushed in to save that life? I think, maybe yes, even if he did not recognize them. I like to think that generally, we rescue from calamity or despairing demise. But when a defenseless child is being attacked by an acquaintance and former coach who is known, why didn’t he rush in at that very moment to protect the defenseless whom he did not know? Was the scene so horrific, and his loyalties and personal allegiances so shattered, that he couldn’t do what was morally required? And the counsel from his father? Why didn’t it include any concern for the defenseless stranger?

And the man who was told, held up over decades for his moral uprightness in following the rules, coaching young men, and shaping their character, why did he only follow the rules of the chain of command? Why didn’t he seek some kind of protection for the defenseless, whom he did not know, and remedy for future defenseless strangers? Why didn’t he, over a whole decade of moments where other action could be taken, choose not to act? Did the prospect of what he was told so threaten his loyalties to an institution he loved, and his allegiances to another he had known so long, that he couldn’t do what was morally required? Isn’t character building directed related to our obligations to those whom we do not know, especially the defenseless stranger?

Both had time to reflect on what they did and did not do; almost a whole decade in fact. They had time to mull over how they could have behaved differently, and even seek to change the future, for what they hadn’t done in the past. But, they didn’t. It was for others to tell the truth and force a confrontation with doing what is moral and right for the least amongst us, the defenseless, and the stranger, the ones we do not know. Why the moral lapse, and the continuation over time? Why is there such a distance between what we see and hear and lift up as right and good, and the will to take action?

Beware, those who claim some higher authority, even God, will save us from action we do not take when it is time to take it. Heed this story. We are responsible for what we do and leave undone, not some higher authority who will rescue us if we just report what we see or are told. Beware, those who claim there is no higher authority than the individual self. Heed this story. We go to great lengths to camouflage our moral obligations from actions that will both rescue and halt horror.

By our actions we become co-creators of redemption or conspirators with collapse and ruin.

What If It Doesn’t Matter So Much? Part Two

What if it doesn’t matter as much what our individual moral makeup is, or the ethical acts we engage in, in terms of our spiritual identity? Many religionists in the West today, especially within liberal religion in general, and Unitarian Universalism in particular, assume that it does, especially if someone proposes, as we did in a previous post, that “beliefs” no longer can be considered primarily, or exclusively, as the source of religious identity. Without beliefs as that “definer,” the fallback position is usually morals and ethics. My beliefs may change, or I may not be able to communicate them meaningfully, but I am searching for “the good” or to be a “good” person, and/or I want to be right and not wrong on key issues of our times. Faith traditions may not be able to say with certainty what it is they believe in common, or have adherents who can faithfully toe the line consistently in terms of beliefs, but still pursue with cause and determination a conception of what is good and/or what is right. The characteristic of our time relative to religion, morals, and ethics, is that all three seem to have collapsed into political positions and policies such that the political is what religions, and individuals, are really wrestling with in terms of a search for the good and the true.

It is impossible to be good or right, bad or wrong, alone. It requires a relatedness to entities larger than self, and thus one is ushered immediately into the political. You can individually hold beliefs about God and act on those beliefs without others present or in mind. Lord, help thou my unbelief, is an example. But morals and ethics are different. They involve politics, and how relationships between people and matters amongst groups are to be governed and adjudicated. So, while morals and ethics cannot be reduced to politics, they involve the political to some degree because all are social. It’s just that at our time in history, politics dominates our collective point of view regarding these things. Today, we collapse them all into the political.

But, suppose we tried to extricate religion and the religious. So, how could we conceive of “the religious” or “being religious” or “expressing my religion” or “the spiritual identity of an ‘us’” that does not involve the moral or the ethical primarily or exclusively, any more than it would put forward “beliefs” in that same way? Hopefully, this question stretches the mind to see religion, the “religious,” and “spiritual behaviors” and "spiritual encounters and experiences" as something more than beliefs, morals, and ethics; and, in fact, as something from which are derived beliefs, morals, and ethics, as secondary yields. They are important. But, they are derivative.

What could that something more be? Let’s let that question “percolate” a while, and be something that is mulled over and turned over, again and again; in part because it requires us first of all, to engage something in addition to that part of our brain that urges we categorize in ways that are currently set, though maybe no longer as useful because they are recognized in their narrowness. We are seeking some kind of unified view, and thus will categorize at some time in order to understand, but not yet. Right now, suffice it to say, that the old ways of seeing just aren’t adequate, as they had been more. We are more and differently religious than what beliefs, or the moral thing to do, the right action, lead us to see. We don’t need more vision, but a larger and wider view.

What kinds of things does homo religiosus engage in, do, contemplate, is surrounded by, seek, yearn for, and is a participant in? How does homo religious behave when being “religious” or “spiritual”? What activities does homo religious engage in and is a part of? What forms mark homo religiosus as being religious as opposed to when not?

And then, what are the ways homo religiosus is “distinctive” such that we categorize as one kind and not another, and give it a name, like Christianity, and further categorize with Protestant, Liberal, and then, Unitarian Universalist (my particular interest)?