When Virtue Turns Deadly
Sermon by Steve Edington
January 27, 2008
I've been a movie goer most of my life, and of all the movies I've seen I still have very little trouble identifying the single most frightening scene in any of them. It's nothing that Stephen King, or any other master of horror, could have come up with. Rather, it's in the movie Cabaret. It came out some 35 years ago now with a, then, very cute and slender Liza Minelli in the role of the night club singer and performer Sally Bowles. Ms. Bowles sings and performs at a decadent night club, the Kit Kat Club in Berlin. The year is 1930, during the days of the Weimar Republic in Germany. World War II is still out on the horizon a ways.
The scene I'm recalling takes place away from Berlin, out in a beautiful countryside spot. Two of the film's male characters, who share the, ah...affections of Minelli's Sally Bowles, are out for a drive. They stop for a drink at a roadside tavern. The setting is about as bucolic as the film-makers could have made it: Green rolling hills bathed in sunshine, a deep blue sky, and pleasant conversation going on amongst the eaters and drinkers. Then above the chatter a very sweet, melodic voice breaks into song and the camera comes in tight on the face of an angelic looking young man standing and singing 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.," At first it sounds like something you might hear sung around the campfire at a youth gathering of some sort.
The camera then pans back a bit so you see the light brown collar on the young man's shirt and some kind of a 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 up and start singing along with the young man, and his melodic, angelic voice takes on just an edge of defiance: "The babe in the 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 innocently sweet sounding song becomes a 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.
I know it's only a well crafted scene in a very well made movie that won a host of Academy Awards back in 1972, but it still sends shivers down my spine in a way that nothing Stephen King could ever come up with could do. And the scary thing is not about the rise of Nazism as such, horrific as that was. You can see that time portrayed in any number of films and documentaries, and in much more pointed ways than in this particular scene.
What the makers of Cabaret did with this two minute scene, was to move beyond the film's historical context to a universal human reality. 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's what makes the scene so frightening. To see it as only a commentary on a certain segment of the German citizenry in the years prior to World War II is to miss the larger point and the larger message.
But I will stay with the scene for just a bit longer, nonetheless. The two film characters who had stopped for a drink - one an Englishman living in Berlin and giving English lessons and the other an aristocratic German politician - are so repulsed at what they've seen that they get up and leave. They know what's really going on. But the rest remain, feeling as if they've just taken part in a very noble and uplifting moment. They are, as portrayed in this scene, good and virtuous people who feel - and perhaps rightly so - that they and their country had been wrongly dealt with and demeaned after the First World War, especially by some of the more punishing provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. They felt they were singing to reclaim their national pride and their national dignity, which had been taken away from them. But those pastoral lyrics that initially evoked such pride and dignity and beauty soon become words of defiance and hatred: "Tomorrow belongs to me.." Or to us and to nobody else, and no one had better get in our way.
I thought of this scene as I gathered my thoughts on the subject of virtue turning deadly. Yes, it's an extreme example - but it makes a not so extreme point. If having a sense of pride and identity with one's nation and culture is a virtue - as I indeed happen to believe it is - it is also a virtue which, under certain circumstances can become very deadly. In fact, this is the case for many of those attributes we call virtues. At some point, and under certain conditions, they turn back on themselves. This is the subject I wish to address today.
I find I'm getting a fair amount of mileage from the writings of Forrest Church these past few Sundays. I don't think he'll mind as long as you don't. He's been the minister - one of the ministers - at the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City for the past 30 years. In addition to being an outstanding preacher he's a prolific writer; and I found his book The Seven Deadly Virtues to be especially good. As you can probably guess the title is a play on the Seven Deadly Sins, to which I devoted a sermon series sometime back.. I'm not launching another such series today on what Forrest is calling the seven deadly virtues. It'll just be this one take instead which is probably just as well for all of us.
What I especially appreciate about this particular work of Forrest's is that it's a serious treatment - with some humor thrown in - of the problem of evil from a liberal religious standpoint. We need such a treatment. We religious liberals like to emphasize human goodness. Both our Unitarian and Universalist movements began, at least in part, as a protest against the doctrine of original sin. But taking a basically optimistic view of the human condition, as we rightfully do I feel, does not cancel out the reality of evil.
Here's what I take to be the key line in the book: "Evil is not the privation (or lack) of good; it is the perversion of the good. This is why our 'virtues' are so dangerous...Any given quality or danger, if lifted above the scale of associated values, and weighed independently, becomes an evil." Forrest's language gets a little weighty here. I'll try to break it down. He's saying - and I agree - that a person runs the risk of practicing deadly virtue by taking one value or belief or moral principle and making your fidelity to it so intense, so singular, and so tunnel-visioned focused, that you fail to see any other virtues, values, or moral principles that are also at work. You set yourself up for the deadly virtue trap when you get so focused on one value, or on one desired outcome, that you lose sight of any other countervailing value or principle.
Extreme examples of this phenomenon abound. Most acts of terrorism are expressions of deadly virtue. I'd offer a slight twist on Dr. Church's definition of evil here. It is believing so strongly that you are serving the right and the good - usually in accordance with what one believes to be the will of God - that you cannot see the evil element in your deeds. Whether its flying a plane load of passengers into a skyscraper, or bombing an abortion clinic, or blowing up a federal building, the perpetrators of such deeds as these are taking what they really and truly believe is fidelity to God - or Allah as the case may be - and elevating that fidelity above all other virtues and values, like the value and worth and well being of the innocent lives they are destroying.
We've seen one of the more hideously perverse and sick examples of this kind of evil just this past week following the death of the actor Heath Ledger, the exact cause of which is still to be determined. No sooner was word of his death out than some of the more radical elements of the Christian right - Fred Phelps' "God Hates Fags" outfit in particular - were hailing his death as retribution from God for Mr. Ledger's portrayal of a gay man in the movie Brokeback Mountain. How anyone can be so destructively deluded as to be a purveyor of this most disgusting kind hatred in the name of a God of love is beyond my faculties to comprehend.
I'll readily grant that the great majority of evangelical Christians in this country are as abhorred at these kinds of sentiments as I am. I have to add, however, that as long as their belief, sincere as it is, in the inherent sinfulness of homosexuality remains a part of their overall belief system - as it largely does - then they're going to be stuck in the position of having to denounce the Fred Phelpses of this world on the one hand, while still clinging to a belief that demeans, and robs the dignity, of a certain segment of our population on the other. How long they can keep that juggling act going is for them to determine. But it's time for me, and for us, to move on.
Perhaps the greatest irony and most subtle snare of deadly virtue is the we are most susceptible and vulnerable to it when we are in fact dealing with something that is truly evil. This brings me back to the example with which I opened today. I remain convinced that we as a nation, in concert with our allies, were dealing with a monstrous evil in the form of Nazism and in the person of Adolph Hitler, and we were right to oppose it with military force. That's not to say I agree with every single one of our acts of war in the Second World War, but that's not where I'm going right now.
Even being on the side of virtue, however, can still make one vulnerable to deadly virtue. The late Kurt Vonnegut made a very wry and wise observation about some of the unintended consequences of our being on the side of the right in the Second World War. Remember, Mr. Vonnegut fought in this conflict and was a prisoner of war at the hands of the Germans. This is 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 remarkably pure. That illusion of purity, to which we were entitled in a way, (became our curse)..." Strong words, but well said. It was this "illusion of purity" as Vonnegut called it that helped make possible the McCarthy Era and the grievous excesses of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In defeating the evil of Nazism we came to see ourselves as inviolate to the point that any criticism of America was an act of disloyalty, 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 to the day we've yet to completely come to terms with the now 30 year aftermath of that conflict.
To take it a step further, I also believe it is this same illusion of purity that has us still us, for all intents and purposes, pinned down in Iraq - surge or no surge. Again, we were the victims of a terrible evil when those planes hit the towers, guided as they were by the deadly virtue of those who commandeered them. And now Vonnegut's words have come back, and continue, to haunt us: "Our enemies were so awful that we by contrast must be remarkably pure (and) this illusion of purity became our curse..." We were so wronged, that is to say, that any response we chose to take, therefore, had to be right - even if it meant invading, and then becoming horribly enmeshed, in a country that had virtually nothing to do with the evil that had been done us.
We continue to pay the price to this day for this kind of deadly virtue, augmented by the belief on the part of those who took us into it that they were somehow acting in accordance with the will of God. It is a price we continue to pay in American lives, in Iraqi lives, and in our standing in the world community. I can understand how the issue of the Iraqi war has dropped a few notches when it comes to the campaign issues that are touching our citizens in this election season, but it must not be allowed to drop out of sight in the months ahead as we choose those who will lead us.
I'll see now if I can get this subject down to where we all live before I'm done with it for the morning. If we are each and all susceptible, as I believe we are, to deadly virtue, then how do we guard against it? Well, one way to avoid the snare of deadly virtue would be to avoid taking any kind of a stand or position or action when it comes to one's moral and ethical principles. But that, too, would be deadly. It would constitute a defeatist and resigned approach to life and living itself. Neither nihilism nor moral indifference are the proper antidotes to deadly virtue. I think we should take our stances firmly, using our critical faculties, maintaining an awareness of our human fallibilities, and always with an eye to the greater common and human good - which all of our engagements with the larger world should ultimately be serving.
To pick up again on Dr. Church, he offers what he calls the "Sixty Percent Principle." If you think you're at least 60% correct in your position or stance on an issue, then run with it - put your stick in the ground and stand by it. But however passionately you may act and advocate for your cause and beliefs, keep that 60 or 70 or 80 or 90, or whatever percentage of correctness you feel you have, tucked somewhere in the back of your mind. That way you leave yourself open and available for correction should such prove to be needed. As a corollary to this, don't forget to ask yourself the question on occasion: Is my passion for this particular issue or cause also serving the greater human, common good?
On that note I'll go one more round with Forrest as a way of coming to a close for today. Quoting him now: "Whenever virtue squeezes out our fidelity to the commonweal, we fall victim to idolatry. Apart from community, righteousness becomes self-righteousness."
Bear in mind just those last few words: "Apart from community, righteousness becomes self-righteousness." While we rightly praise those admirable individuals who take the courageous and sometimes lonely moral stance, more often than not those same individuals had the wisdom to turn to a community of some kind, where they could work out their stances. They did so within a community they could trust and upon whose critical dialogue they relied.
Martin Luther King, whose birthday we've celebrated this month was a very courageous and often lonely individual; but he also remained in intense dialogue with certain trusted friends and associates - African-American and white - in honing his positions and planning his actions. He knew that in most cases he'd be the one up there standing and being the lightening rod for racial justice and peace; and in the end he would often retreat into his own thoughts, reflections, meditations and prayers before making his move. But he also relied on his most trusted associates to keep his righteousness from becoming self-righteousness. For that matter, even Jesus needed twelve associates - or communitarians - he could trust and test out his ideas on.
The greatest piece of wisdom we can possess is knowing that we are each and all creatures of limited or partial wisdom. Such knowledge need not, and must not, immobilize us. Rather it should serve to keep us in authentic concert with the virtues and values we do strive to uphold. This, indeed, is one of the many reasons we exist in community here; so that we may have a place where we can come to engage in open, honest, and respectful dialogues and conversations amongst ourselves when it comes to determining how we will live out the values we hold. Rev. Dick Gilbert says that one of the purposes of a liberal religious congregation is to bring people "from the 'I' of individualism to the 'we' of community"; and it is in such a community that our values are tested, reshaped and redefined.
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 minds and hearts tell us is right, we must also keep our minds and hearts awake and aware of new truths to be revealed.
As our closing hymn tells us, the law of love should always be our guide. So, let's sing together "Love Will Guide Us."
Stephen D. Edington, Minister
UU Church of Nashua, NH
January 27, 2008
