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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 2008)
DR. CAROL NEWSOM Scholar Good and Evil Do these words make sense in today’s world? EDITOR’S NOTE: The following interview was conducted by Dr. Daniel Falk, associate professor of Religious Studies at UO; and Dr. Loren Crow, associate professor of Biblical Studies at NCU. A longer version of this interview is on the EW website. As a leading scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible at Emory University, Dr. Carol Newsom is fascinated with how people use the categories of good and evil to make sense of the world. She is writing a book on the topic and will be in Eugene Oct. 24-26 to give several free talks in the annual Chi Rho Lecture Series. The following is an excerpted interview. There are things so horrifi c that all of us have a hard time making sense of them: genocide, terrorism, child abuse, rape. How is it helpful and/ or harmful to use the categories of good and evil to make sense of our world? One of the reasons I am interested in doing a book on good and evil is that I am so ambivalent about the value of these terms. If you look back historically at what people identify as “good” and as “evil” you fi nd things that are very culturally specifi c — worshiping at more than one location is “evil.” Women who behave in certain ways are “evil.” Adopting certain customs from one’s neighbors is “evil,” It can make you pretty cynical about the very terminology. Unfortunately, even genocide is sometimes culturally defi ned not as evil but as good — even in the Bible. So we need to approach the very use of this language with a very wary disposition. How is our language and imagery of good and evil infl uenced by the Bible? Oh! Even people who think of themselves as totally secular are often strongly infl uenced by the categories of the Bible (for good or ill!). One of the points I am trying to make [in the talks in Eugene] is that there are actually several different ways of understanding good and evil in the biblical tradition — but in terms of Western culture only one of them has made a strong cultural impact — and in my opinion it has been the most dangerous — the apocalyptic vision of a dualistic struggle between good and evil. Now, to give this perspective its due, it has produced some compelling literature, both high culture and popular. It’s the moral imagination of Milton’s Paradise Lost. And it is also the background for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. For some reason this way of thinking about good and evil has had a very, very strong cultural resonance with people. So something about it taps into a deep psychic need — and even those of us who don’t like it need to think about why it is so attractive. For many people the most diffi cult question is: Why is there evil in the world? How do you answer that? The fact that people are troubled by the presence of evil should give us reason to believe in the fundamental commitment of our human species to a vision of goodness as the basis of our existence; that evil is an aberration. And in my opinion that commitment is in our genes. I think we are hard wired more toward good than toward evil — but unfortunately, not entirely. Where does good come from? Considering the drive for survival, isn’t the really surprising thing that people sometimes act in ways that are not in their immediate best interests? This is one of the hot topics in evolutionary biology. We know that, biologically, individuals will do altruistic things more often for those who are more closely genetically related to them — and that makes sense — it ensures the survival of their related genes. But human culture (including religion) builds on our basic biological dispositions and extends this genetic disposition to do good for our relatives. Just look at religious metaphors — they expand the notion of “family” to others. Religions talk about non- related persons as “brothers and sisters,” etc., or talk about all people as “children of God” and ask people to extend their altruism to these nonbiological family members. WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM What do you think when you hear a politician describe certain countries as an “axis of evil.” Is there a difference between calling an action evil and calling a person or a nation evil? The political use of this rhetoric is a good example of how easy it is to manipulate. WE are good. THEY are evil. This is a perversion of the human attempt to distinguish between what is good and what is not. The problem with a too facile use of these terms is that it wipes out all ambiguity. And if there is anything profound about evil, it is how insidiously it intermixes with good. That is what is fascinating. And in the best literary refl ections on evil, it is the characters who represent both good and evil who are the most compelling. Evil is not always sensational, but instead is often rather mundane, working in bureaucracies and various activities of “ordinary life.” How does this work? I grew up in the Jim Crow South. Most racism was not perpetrated by Ku Klux Klan members but rather by people who just lived by “tradition.” But the tradition itself was evil. These were not bad white people, for the most part. But the institutions of their lives caused them just to do unthinkingly what was evil. When, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the institutions of their lives changed, most (not all, but most) of these white people shifted to another way of relating to their African-American neighbors. And as the years went on and they became accustomed to new institutions, they were often perplexed by how they could have seen those previous racist traditions as right. In retrospect they could see that they were wrong. So much evil — and yes, so much good — can be encoded into “how we do things here.” If there is anything we should put our energies to it is into forming the “habits” of good. What can be done to resist evil? Is there ever warrant for violence to oppose evil? The Wisdom tradition [in the Bible] thinks that evil can be resisted by depriving it of its “fuel.” Don’t act in a mirror image way to evil — and then it will be stopped before it can spread. Don’t return evil for evil. That’s what the nonviolence movements by Gandhi and Martin Luther King understood. There are ways in which you can resist violence by performing its opposite. Of course there are some contexts in which that is not effective. There may well be some times in which the only viable opposition to evil is violence. But anyone who engages in such action should not do so in a spirit of self-righteousness. The appropriate emotion is grief. Even in acting against those who do evil, one should love them and feel compassion — for how awful that anyone could have fallen from what humans were created to be and do. This is very diffi cult to do Public Talks by without hypocrisy. But I think Dr. Carol Newsom this is what it means that Jesus “Good and Evil: Making Sense of a Senseless calls his followers to love World,” 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday, their enemies. If one realizes Oct. 24-25, and 4 pm Sunday, Oct. 26, at how easy it is to fall into evil Central Lutheran Church. A discussion session oneself, then it may be easier at the church will be 9:30 am Saturday, Oct. 25. to have compassion even while The lectures are free and open to all. resisting evil. ew EUGENE WEEKLY OCTOBER 16, 2008 13
