Deadly Virtue
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, March 15, 1998
Out of all of the movies I've seen in my life, the single most frightening scene for me is not in anything that Stephen King, or any other master of horror, could have come up with. Rather, it was in the movie "Cabaret", a really outstanding piece of cinematic work which swept the Academy Awards some 25 years ago. The film, you'll recall if you've seen it, is centered in and around a decadent night club in Berlin, whose featured performers are played by Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli. The time is in the mid-1930s and centered on the events that led up to World War II.
The scene I'm recalling, however, takes place away from the city out in a beautiful countryside spot where two of the film's male characters are sharing a drink at the outdoor eating/drinking area of a roadside tavern. The setting is about as bucolic as the producers could have made it: Green rolling hills bathed in sunshine, a deep blue sky, and pleasant conversation going on among those who are eating and drinking. Then above the chatter a very sweet, melodic voice is heard breaking into song and the camera comes in tight on the face of an angelic looking, clean-cut, young man as he stands and sings these pastoral lyrics: "The sun in the meadow is shimmering gold; The stag in the forest runs free; So gather together to greet the sun; Tomorrow belongs to me."
The camera then pulls back just a little so you see the light brown collar of the young man's shirt and some kind of kerchief around his neck. His song continues: "The branch of the linden is leafy and green; The Rhine makes its way to the sea; And somewhere a glory awaits unseen; Tomorrow belongs to me." Some of the younger people now begin to stand and take up the singing with the young man, and his melodic, angelic voice takes on just an edge of defiance: "The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes; The blossom embraces the bee; But soon there's a whisper, 'Arise, arise'; Tomorrow belongs to me."
By now many of those in the beautiful garden tavern are rising to their feet, some hoisting their drinks. The camera is back far enough now to allow you to see a swastika emblem on the young man's shirtsleeve, as well as on the sleeves of several others, and the last verse of this sweet sounding song becomes thunderous chant: "O Mother and Fatherland show us a sign; Your children awaken to see; The morning will come when the world is mine: Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs to me!" And the Nazi salutes go up all over; and no matter how many times I've seen it, and no matter how well I know that its only a movie, it still sends cold shivers right down my spine. As I said, I find more horror in that scene than in anything Stephen King could ever come up with.
The scary thing for me, though, is not about the rise of Nazism as such--as horrific a time as that was. You can see that portrayed in any number of films, and in much more pointed ways than in this particular scene. What the makers of "Cabaret" did do, with less than two minutes of film, went well beyond the movie's historical context. They demonstrated just how closely the angelic and the demonic can run together. They showed how very quickly that which appears to be wholesome and virtuous can turn into outright evil, even as the evil remains largely unseen. That is what makes it so frightening.
The two film character friends who had stopped for drinks--one an Englishman living in Berlin and the other an aristocratic German citizen--are so repulsed that they get up and leave, but the rest remain feeling as if they have just participated in a very noble and uplifting moment. The people enjoying their afternoon on the tavern green are portrayed as good, virtuous, country-folk who felt--and perhaps rightly so--that they and their country had been wrongly dealt with after the First World War. Theymay have felt they were singing to reclaim their pride and their dignity. But the pastoral lyrics that initially evoked such pride and dignity and beauty quickly became words of defiance and hatred: "Tomorrow belongs to me..." and to nobody else, and no one had better get in our way.
So as I was thinking this past week of some examples I could cite on the topic of "deadly virtue" it was the "Cabaret" scene that came to mind. I even went out and rented the movie so I could watch it all over again, and get spooked all over again. (I spare no effort when it comes to sermon preparation.) Admittedly, its an extreme example, but those are the ones that work best. If having a sense of pride in and identity with one's nation and culture is a virtue, as I believe it is; it is a virtue which, under certain circumstances can become very deadly. Such, in fact, is the case for many of those attributes we call virtues; at some point, and under certain conditions, they turn back on themselves, and this is the subject I wish to address today.
I want to address it from several angles. I'll expand a bit more upon how I see this matter of deadly virtue playing itself out in our world and in our lives. I hope to show just how tricky the pursuit of virtue can be at times, and how that pursuit can sometimes be a snare that we usually do not see until we are caught in it. Then I'll finish up by briefly speaking to the issue of how one takes principled stances without slipping into the deadly virtue realm.
I initially got the idea for this sermon while re-reading a book Rev. Forrester Church, published nearly ten years ago, called The Seven Deadly Virtues. Some of you may recall that in the year before I went on sabbatical I did a sermon series on the "Seven Deadly Sins" and I thought maybe I could find the basis for another such series with Forrester's book. As its turned out I think I can cover the territory, to my satisfaction anyway, with just one sermon--which is probably just as well for all of us. On the subject of deadly virtue Forrester writes, "Evil is not the privation (or lack) of good; it is the perversion of good. This is why our 'virtues' are so dangerous...Any given quality or value, if lifted above the scale of associated values, and weighed independently, becomes an evil." What Rev. Church [and how many minister's manage a name like "Rev. Church"?] is saying is that a person runs the risk of practicing deadly virtue by taking one virtue, value, or moral principle, and isolating his or her fidelity to it from all other virtues, values, or moral principles. You set yourself up for the deadly virtue trap when you get so focused on one value or moral principle that you lose sight of other countervailing values and principles.
This, to take an extreme example, is how terrorism comes to be justified. Rev. Church again: "There are those who so love God that they bomb abortion clinics or drive truckloads of dynamite in to the embassy of some infidel." He makes a telling point. Suppose a person believes, as some sincerely do, that abortion is one of the most grievous affronts that can be committed against the God he/she feels loyality to above all else. While I do not share such a position, I can--at that level--accord it some respect. But it is when loyalty to that one virtue gets set above and isolated from all others--like the value of the lives and well being of the human beings who legally staff abortion clinics--it is at that point that I lose my respect for persons who call themselves "right-to-life" advocates.
This was the basis of my little argument with the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago after they printed two letters, each of which labeled a Manchester physician by name as a "baby killer" and as a "killer of innocent children" because he performs abortions. I knew it was pointless to take issue with the letters themselves, as scurrilous as I considered them to be. But I felt that in printing them in the manner in which they did the Telegraph itself fell into the snare of deadly virtue. They took the virtue or value of "freedom of expression"-- which I firmly support--and isolated it from other countervailing values, like civil discourse in a public forum, to say nothing of the safety of a law abiding physician. I felt they were endangering the Doctor's well-being, if not his very life, by giving the authors of the letters attacking him a public forum. I do have to give the paper's editor her just credit, however, in printing a letter in which I rather severely took her paper's editorial policy to task. What got printed, by the way, was what I wrote after I'd settled down.
That said, lets consider some other angles on the subject. Perhaps the greatest irony and the most subtle snare of all when it comes to deadly virtue is that we are most susceptible to it when we are in fact dealing with something that truly is evil. In a way, this brings me full circle from the example with which I opened today. I'm quite convinced that we as a nation, in concert with our allies, in the Second World War were dealing with a monstrous evil in the form of Nazism and in the person of Adolf Hitler. This is the point I made a couple of weeks ago in speaking to the Iraqi crises. But even being on the side of virtue can make you prey to deadly virtue. The author Kurt Vonnegut has a wry, but still wise, observation about one of the, probably, unintended consequences of our actually being on the side of the right. Remember, Mr. Vonnegut himself fought in that conflict and was for a time a prisoner of war. Here's his observation on the aftermath of World War II:
"(It) was (in one sense) very bad for us...Our enemies were so awful, so evil, that we, by contrast, must be remarkable pure. That illusion of purity, to which we were entitled in a way, (became) our curse...."Strong words perhaps, but still well said. It was this "illusion of purity" as Vonnegut calls it, that at least helped make possible the McCarthy era, and the grievous excesses of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in the years following WW II. In defeating the evil of Nazism we came to see ourselves as inviolate; and any criticism of any domestic or foreign policy of the United States was therefore un-American and those making such criticism were fair game for having their careers destroyed. It was this same illusion of purity, I believe, that unfortunately and tragically got us into Vietnam, and we still have yet to completely come to terms with the aftermath of that conflict.
Moving on, and bringing us right up to the present day now, it was during the debate that took place this past weekend in our own New Hampshire State House over the expansion of our State's capital punishment statute, that a statement was made which I thought defined quite well where the line between virtue and deadly virtue lies. Before getting to it however, just a word or two about this issue as it relates to my topic this morning. I acknowledge that capital punishment is an issue about which reasonably minded persons can honestly differ. I further recognize that support for the death penalty often arises from a revulsion over some of the depraved acts that human beings can, and do, perpetrate upon other human beings on occasion. I believe that our capacity to feel such revulsion over the willful destruction of human life by another human being, and our willingness to deal with such destruction is a virtue. Absent such a virtue there might well be no human race. How we deal with such destructiveness is the moral issue here--and not the fact that it has to be dealt with in some very serious fashion. For some persons, enacting the death penalty is a morally appropriate, if not virtuous, means for dealing with the destruction of human life. I have to respectfully differ; feeling, as I do, that to go that route takes us into the realm of deadly virtue.
The statement I alluded to a moment ago was made by Representative Robert Cushing, an opponent of the capital punishment measure, and whose own father was murdered outside his home ten years ago this June. Rep. Cushing's statement, which he made during the debate on the bill, was:
"For me to change my beliefs because my father was murdered would give over more power to the murderers...We become what we abhor. I do not want to be consumed by hate...""We become what we abhor.." That, as I see it, is the line of demarcation between virtue and deadly virtue. When, in the pursuit or the upholding of one type of virtue we find ourselves doing things or causing things to happen which we know in our hearts we find abhorrent, or that we know to be working against what we know to be right, then we have slipped into the realm of deadly virtue. This can happen in practically any area of our lives, and even with those we whom love and care about the most. There can be no greater virtues than love, and caring, and compassion, but even they can become skewed when they become entangled with our own needs and expectations with respect to another person or community of persons. Even love and caring can become means of manipulation, as in "if you really loved and cared about me you'd would (or would not) do such and such"; or, "I'm only doing this because I love you." While I've taken a more issue or topical oriented approach to today's sermon theme it certainly applies in many areas of our personal lives and well, and I hope to be able to touch on some of those areas on some other Sundays.
One more consideration before closing: One way to avoid the snare of deadly virtue would be to avoid taking any kind of stand or position or action with regard to one's moral principles or ethical values. But that would be a pretty deadly and defeatist approach to life and living itself. Neither nihilism nor moral indifference are proper antidotes to deadly virtue. I think we should take our stances firmly, and also with the use of our critical faculties, with an awareness of our human fallibility's, and always with an eye to the greater common, human good. To use some of Forrester Church's words one more time:
"Whenever virtue squeezes out fidelity to the commonweal (or common good), we fall victim to idolatry. Apart from community, righteousness become self-righteousness."
Bear in mind those last few words, "Apart from community, righteousness becomes self-righteousness." While we rightly praise those individuals who take the courageous and often unpopular moral stance, more often than not those same individuals have the wisdom to work out their stances in conversation with a community they trust and upon whose critical dialogue they rely. Martin Luther King was a very courageous, and often lonely, individual, but he also remained in dialogue with certain quarters of the African-American community of his day as well as with his most trusted associates for the very purpose of keeping his righteousness from becoming self-righteousness. For that matter, even Jesus needed twelve associates he could test out his ideas on. The greatest piece of wisdom we can possess is knowing that we are each creatures of limited or partial wisdom. Such knowledge need not and must not immobilize us, but rather it should serve to keep us in authentic concert with the virtues and values we do indeed strive to uphold.
To bring this even closer to home, I have appreciated, over my years here, those times when our own Executive Board has had to make decisions as to how to best stand for our own UU values and principles. Should we support this particular activity or initiate this particular program? Its not always an easy call, but it is always one that weighs our values and seeks the collective wisdom of all its members. It is a collective wisdom that I value.
To quickly touch on another close-to-home area, as I said in my latest newsletter column, I was particularly grateful for the tone of the gathering we had following the service last month to initiate the Welcoming Congregation program. Along with the very clear sense that embarking upon a program of being affirmatively welcoming of gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual persons was the right thing to do, there was also the desire expressed that we have open, honest, and respectful dialogue amongst ourselves in ways that will deepen the meaning and value of this liberal religious community for all of its members. There is not a whole lot of new ground to be broken or new understandings to be gained if all that takes place is a "preaching to the converted."
Finally, the best way to deal with the dynamic of virtue and deadly virtue is to remain mindful of one of our more definitive liberal religious precepts, which is that there is and always will be more light to be revealed and more truth to be uncovered about the truths we hold dear. No canon of virtue is ever closed. While we finally have to do what our heart tells us is right; we also must keep out minds open, awake, and aware of new truths to be revealed.
This is the spirit in which our closing hymn was written [The Growing Light, No. 345]. Let's sing it together.
Copyright © 1998 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
