What the Devil?
Sermon by Steve Edington
October 31, 2010
In 1954 the novelist Douglas Wallop came out with a nifty piece of fiction titled The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant. Since 2010 is also just such a year, and with the World Series in full swing, I figured I'd lead off with it - especially since one the two central characters in this novel is indeed The Devil. Yes, yes, I know, the Yankees came closer to a pennant win this year than did the Red Sox; but, never mind!
Wallop's book, which is still in print, is one of a number of literary variations on the theme of Goethe's tragedy Faust. In this early 19th century dramatic version of a much older German legend, Goethe's Faust sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for infinite knowledge. In Wallop's novel, the deal made with the Devil is for a somewhat less lofty - but still quite noble - goal, namely an American League pennant for the old Washington Senators baseball team, a franchise now long gone.
If this all sounds vaguely familiar, the novel was the basis for the Broadway musical, and subsequent movie, Damn Yankees (which is not an unknown sentiment in these parts). This is the musical that gave us such numbers as "Ya Gotta Have Heart" and "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets."
The story, as brief as I can make it given our time here, is as follows: It's a mid-1950s American summer, and by July the Yankees are already running away with the American League lead; with the hapless Washington Senators mired in last place. Joe Boyd, a middle aged real estate salesman, is a long-suffering Senators fan. After listening to yet another Senators loss on the radio he takes a walk around the block in his neighborhood, where he lives with his wife Meg. As he walks along Joe mutters about how he'd sell his soul to the Devil if his Senators could just get a good long ball hitter who would win them a pennant. Right on cue the Devil shows up in the person of a Mr. Applegate, a smarmy con man, and generally shifty guy.
Applegate offers his deal. He'll turn middle-aged, couch potato Joe Boyd into 20 year old stud Joe Hardy, and endow him with the best baseball skills any human being ever had in exchange for his soul. Boyd, soon to be Hardy, takes the deal but negotiates an escape clause for himself. He can get out of the deal anytime up until 9:00 p.m. on September 25--the last day of the regular season. This was before there were playoffs, when you went right to the World Series as soon as the regular season ended, thereby avoiding playing baseball in the cold, and possibly snows, of November. But I digress.
The deal goes forward. Joe Boyd becomes Joe Hardy, gets himself onto the Senators, and carries the team up through the standings in pursuit of the Yankees. There are several subplots to the story that I can't get into in any detail. They have to do with Joe's true identity becoming an object of media attention, his coming under the spell of the seductive Lola, and his longing for his wife, Meg, who has reported him as a missing person. In order to keep Meg in the story line, Joe Hardy rents a room in her house--his old Joe Boyd room--so he can still have contact her even though she doesn't know who he really is. Pulling the strings behind all these machinations is our good old boy, and good old Devil, Mr. Applegate.
Well, the story wouldn't be a story if it didn't all come down to September 25th, which--of course--it does. The Senators and the Yankees end up tied for first place with this one last game to go. The book and the play/movie have two different endings, each with the same eventual outcome. In both versions it's a few minutes before 9:00 p.m.; the game is in the ninth inning with the score tied. Joe yells to Applegate, sitting in the stands, that he wants out of the deal as soon as nine o'clock arrives. In the play and movie, Joe is at bat with 2 strikes on him when the hour of 9:00 comes. He becomes Joe Boyd again while standing at the plate, but still manages to muster up enough of whatever he has in him to hit the game winning, and pennant winning home run.
I like the book version better. In this one Joe is on base representing the winning run. From the base he's occupying he yells to Applegate to release him from their bargain. The batter at the plate gets a hit; and precisely at 9:00 p.m., as Joe Hardy rounds third, he becomes Joe Boyd. But somehow he still manages to huff and puff his middle-aged body down the third base line and slide safely home--beating the Yankees, and thereby beating the Devil.
In the denouement, Joe, now again Joe Boyd, goes back to Meg. Applegate shows up and tries to get him to go back to being Joe Hardy just one more time for the World Series, which would also allow the Devil to reclaim his soul. Joe refuses, choosing to stay with his wife as middle-aged, real estate guy Joe Boyd, as love wins out over all that the Devil can muster. The curtain falls and everyone applauds and goes, "awwww...."
Well it's all good fun--maybe even if one is a Yankees fan. It's also, in this case, a light-hearted reminder of what an enduring image the person of The Devil is in our society and culture. While, in this whimsical tale of the Devil, the setting is a baseball field, it is reflective of a larger, cosmic view--primarily in the West--that our individual lives as well as the life of our world at large are being played out on a kind of cosmic ball field, or battlefield. On this battlefield the forces of God and the forces of Satan are contending for the upper hand, with each trying to gain as many human recruits, or souls, as they can to do their bidding so they can each accomplish their ends.
It's a similar theme and imagery in one of the Star Wars movies where the Devil figure--in this case Darth Vader--informs the virtuous Luke Skywalker that he (Luke) is really his son and urges him to "come over to the dark side." The not-so-subtle message is that were all susceptible, having something of the Devil in each us, to go over to the forces of evil, that is to say, to the Devil's domain.
Just exactly when this world view began to take shape is hard to determine. In the Western world it goes back at least to the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia. In this place and time the world was seen as, again, a battleground between the Forces of Light led by the god Ahura Mazda and the Prince of Darkness, named Arichman. Many of the images of God and the Devil that came to be found in the Judaic and Christian faiths are reflective of this Zoroastrian influence. The ancient Hebrews were exposed to Zoroastrianism at the time of the Babylonian Captivity some six centuries before the Common Era and transposed some of its images a theology into their faith. Then, as Christianity emerged out of Judaism some of these Devil images carried on over into the Christian faith. That may help to explain how we got some of our images of the Devil. But it still begs the larger question of why those images, and why belief in the Devil persists.
Persist it does. About three years ago the results of a Harris Poll--a very reliable polling organization--revealed that 62% of Americans believe in Hell and the Devil. The Devil didn't do as well as God, who was up at an 82% level of belief. But ol' Satan still outpaced Darwin's Theory of Evolution in which only 42% of those surveyed said they accepted. I really do not know what to make of the fact, the apparent fact anyway, that we live in a society where the Devil has better cred than Darwin, but there it is. (There's probably another sermon in that set of numbers alone, but this isn't it.)
I think the deeper issue here is really the age old issue of how we as human beings come to terms with the reality of human evil--and to whom, or to what, we attribute it. I go back several years on this point to an article that ran in Newsweek magazine as the 20th century was coming to an end; it was one of many "wrap up the century" pieces that were running at the time. After citing some of the really horrible events of the 20th century--the holocaust, a number of ethnic cleansing type of genocides, and the like it ended on this note, "Wherever we turn, the century now drawing to a close has witnessed evil on a scale unmatched by any other. In an earlier America, evidence such as this would have immediately evoked a name, a face, and explanation: Satan's powerful domination over a fallen, sinful, humanity. Today evil is experienced as random and ordinary, devoid of cosmic significance."
True as I take those words to be in general, I'm not so sure I buy the last line. I think the persistence of the image of the Devil, in some form or other, is because there's a part of us that cannot accept the idea of evil as "random and ordinary (and) devoid of cosmic significance." When we witness events as breathtakingly horrifying as the Holocaust, or ethnic cleansing, or mass starvation sometimes brought on by despotic rulers, or any number of acts of terrorism, we cannot help but feel, at least, that maybe there's something bigger going on here than that of human beings behaving in horribly bad ways towards other human beings.
It need not be a world-shaking event to bring on such thoughts; sometime it gets very close to home. I know a trial, here in Nashua, is currently in progress; and I should not, and will not, presume the outcome with respect to who may be convicted of what. But the deed of nearly a year ago that precipitated this trial is not in question: The brutal murder of a woman, and the near murder of her daughter, in what they assumed was their safe and secure home; and the mind-numbingly vicious way in which this heinous act was carried out. It leaves one grasping for an explanation where no rational one exists.
For some, perhaps, the only way to articulate such overwhelming feelings, whether in the wake of a global or a local occurrence, is to speak of someone or something called the Devil, even if one cannot say for sure just who or what the Devil is. I wonder how many of those 62% responders in that Harris poll who said they believed in the Devil were really searching for some greater, cosmic, explanation for unspeakably terrible, and human generated, deeds that defy any kind of rational explanation.
I'm not sure, speaking for myself now, just how I would have responded if the Harris poll people had approached me in their survey. It would have been, for me, complicated. If the question was, or is, do I believe in an actual, literal creature or being called Satan or the Devil or Lucifer, or whatever other name may be used, and who is the ultimate source and cause of all evil--then my answer is a flat out 'no'. I do believe, whether such can be fully explained or not, that human beings are at the heart of all human evil, just as I believe that human beings are at the heart of all human good. (I believe that's called humanism.)
But--and here's my caveat--I'm also aware that human language often fails us, or comes up short, on a literal level. We seem to need some way to give voice and meaning to that which we "but vaguely apprehend" as the words in one of our hymns puts it. So as a metaphor for ungraspable evil, "The Devil" works as well for me as anything; just as "God" works as well as anything for me when it comes to naming that which is greater than we know but cannot adequately name.
Now I would guess that if I were to attempt to explain all that to a pollster he or she would look at me funny, and move on. They would decide they'd be better off finding someone else from whom they could at least get a straight answer. These kinds of yes-or-no polls do not leave much room for nuance; or for much deliberative thought, for that matter.
So to pick up on a metaphorical, as opposed to literal, take on the Devil, I take a cue from a book published many years ago by my now departed ministerial colleague and friend, the late Rev. Forrest Church. It's one of a score or more of books on liberal religion he published in his too short lifetime. This one is called The Devil and Doctor Church. In it he notes, "The Devil's trademark is not evil dressed as evil, but evil dressed as good... (The Devil's) most successful ruse is to cloak himself in virtue."
What I believe Forrest is saying here is that not everyone--perhaps only a few--people set out to commit evil thinking they are doing an evil deed. Some of the most terrible deeds human beings have done to one another as those that have been, to use Forrest's words, "cloaked in virtue." In order for evil to be perpetuated; or, if you will, for the Devil to do his work, a sense of unquestioned "rightness" or virtue needs to prevail. Such a sense of rightness may prevail only in the mind of a single individual; or it could be within a close circle of individuals as function of group-think--such as a terrorist cell; or it can be found within the mentality of a culture itself.
Another caveat: Rev. Church's insight, valuable as it is, does not adequately get at the kinds of horrific and seemingly random acts of violence, such as the one I referred to earlier and that is now before a local court of law. We'll probably never fully know the nature of the demons residing deep in the souls of those who committed such wanton acts. But Forrest's words, even with their shortcomings, still go a long way in pointing to the source of much of the needless destruction and hatred and death that we human beings have foisted upon one another in our time on this planet.
Think of all the wars fought because one or the other or both sides thought they were doing the will of God--"cloaked in virtue" that is to say. Think of all those who were tortured and/or put to death in various kinds of inquisitions that were being carried out by those who truly felt they were being virtuous by enforcing the alleged "correct" religious beliefs. I refer again to the book I cited two weeks ago, Terror in the Name of God, in which Dr. Jessica Stern hauntingly demonstrates how those from Al Qaeda operatives to persons who bomb abortion clinics all did, and do, what they do fully believing they are in the service of righteousness, again "cloaked in virtue."
On a, maybe, less severe but still very serious level, I wonder if those who inveigh so strongly on religious grounds against gay and lesbian and bisexual persons are really aware of the harm they are doing in the service of what they truly believe to be a righteous and virtuous cause. Cloaked in virtue, but still perpetuating a sometimes deadly stigma that continues to rear its head as we've recently seen in the wake of a number of suicides of gay persons--especially teenagers--who were the subjects of intense ridicule and scorn. Forrest Church may not have completely hit the nail on the head, but he still nailed it pretty well: "The Devil's trademark is not evil dressed as evil, but evil dressed as good."
But this is not the kind of note on which to end. It is the responses of the human spirit, of what Abraham Lincoln, invoking yet another and more positive metaphor, called the "better angels of our nature," in the face of evil or of the deeds of the Devil, that offer a saving grace. I still moved by a piece the actor Kirk Douglas wrote on the op-ed page of the New York Times some fifteen years ago. The most memorable film character he gave us, as I'm sure most of you know, was Spartacus.
In this piece Douglas told of being in Berlin to receive a life-time achievement award. He wrote of his mixed feelings, as a Jew, about being there given that city's history within his own lifetime. But then he told about how, on this same trip, he and his wife had dinner with a Jewish woman in Berlin whose parents and grandparents had died in the death camps. Mr. Douglas asked his hostess why she'd stayed in Berlin over the ensuing course of her life. This is how Kirk Douglas described the conversation that followed:
"Smiling, she gave me this answer: 'I owe that to the little heroes.' 'I don't understand,' I said. With a sigh she came over and sat closer. 'When the Gestapo came to get them, my parents sent me to a small hotel to save my life. The owner was the first little hero. She kept me safe for a couple of nights. When it became dangerous I met my second little hero. Or should I say heroine? She was our former housekeeper. She hid me for awhile and endangered her own life. Then I found a cloister. My little heroes were the nuns who took care of me when I was very sick. They never asked questions. When (my) situation (again) became dangerous, my next little hero was a policeman who didn't agree with the Nazis. All through the war I was lucky to find little heroes who helped me until the Russians came in. (I've stayed in Berlin because) I feel I owe it to the little heroes who helped me. Not everyone here was wicked."
Mr. Douglas then concluded: "Her story had a great impact on me. Of course we're always looking for a big hero to emulate, and often we see them topple from clay feet. How much better to reach for the little heroes in life--and try to be one."
The rise and onslaught of Nazism was among the greater evils of the previous century; an evil cloaked in the so-called "good" or "virtue" of creating a "master race" of white Arians. It still stands as a stark and scary example of how the forces of evil can almost overwhelm an entire society and culture. But, as Kirk Douglas's story demonstrates, the operative word there is "almost." "Not everyone was wicked" as one of the survivors of that era noted. I doubt that those who came to the aid of the woman--then a young girl--who told her story to Kirk Douglas thought of themselves as heroes or heroines. They probably saw themselves as ordinary people, who found themselves living in an extraordinary time, and who were simply trying to do the right thing.
I think this is what ultimately keeps evil, or the Devil, so to speak, from having the final word. It's people who do the right thing at the right time in the face of whatever inhumane deeds, and whatever kind of inhumanity, is being perpetuated. These are people who can still see the essential humanity in the eyes, faces, and hearts of their fellow human beings when their humanity is being denied or diminished, and respond accordingly.
We are called to be a community that affirms "the inherent worth and dignity of every person," and one that seeks the attainment of "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations." May we keep these ideals ever before us and strive to see them fulfilled to the extent that is humanly possible. We know that few ideals are ever brought to full fruition. But we know also, that the failure to try to move even a bit closer to their fulfillment is to give the Devil more than his due.
Stephen Edington
October 31, 2010
