Dialogue: Churches need to get real about divine intervention

Religiously obsessed Brian Aporo's tragic case in Rawene
reinforces the Church's need to be sensible about divine intervention and supernatural forces, says IAN LAWTON*.

Author Thomas Harris summed up our confusion about evil in The Silence of the Lambs in this exchange between serial-killing psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter and a young FBI agent:

"Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviourism, Officer Starling. You've got everybody in moral dignity pants - nothing is ever anybody's fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I'm evil?"

Situations of horror force the question of how good and evil, personal responsibility, social influences and religion all interact.

The details of a Whangerei High Court case which found Brian Aporo not guilty of murdering his two children and a neighbour on the grounds of insanity have again raised the issue of the role of the Church in social life.

In this case, it is the Church's propagation of a passive yet destructive ideology of good and evil which is being questioned.

Too often, stories are told of churches which fail to urge troubled people to seek professional support and, rather, suggest that they pray harder or seek "spiritual" solutions to their angst. The advice comes at a tragic cost.

I write as an Anglican vicar and know that my denomination is as guilty as any other in this matter.

The tendency to a duality of good and evil has been a mark of the Christian Church since its inception. It initially sparked an anti-Semitic fervour as Jews were blamed for the death of Jesus, and we have seen 20 centuries of violence and hatred as a result.

Arthur Miller wrote in Incident at Vichy, a 1960s play about a group of men waiting to be interrogated by the Gestapo: "Jew is only the name we give to that stranger, that agony we cannot feel, that death we look at like a cold abstraction. Each man has his Jew; it is the other. And the Jews have their Jews."

The trend of the Christian Church has been to accumulate enemies, rather than to replace them with new foes. So, the Roman Empire then bore the brunt of this persecution complex.

In the 20th century, communism became the evil "other" and in the 21st century post-modernism and the new-age movement continue to shape up as major threats to the social control and status quo of the mainstream churches.

The point is that whenever the power base of the Church is challenged, the offending party is branded as "evil," which safely leaves the Church in the "good" camp. All of life and history in this ideology is set up as a cosmic battle between good and evil, God and Satan.

Human experience consists of being caught up in some way in the battle and, therefore, solutions are sought in divine intervention or some sort of supernatural purging of the forces of evil.

There was an intriguing example of this type of ideology in a letter to the Herald last week - relativism was demonised as being in some way to blame for youth suicide. The Church has too often put forward arguments along these lines where it has claimed an absolute authority and said that when this is strayed from, evil is the result. It is seen in extremes such as "Satan made me do it."

Yet it is seen also in far more subtle piety such as "God has it in control" and "Pray that you will be delivered."

The ideology personifies Satan as a manifestation of whatever the latest threat is. Yet the fact is that Satan is only ever described in the Bible in what are clearly fantasy genre texts. These texts, known as "apocalyptic" literature, held their own political agendas and insecurities and were never intended to be read as literal accounts of reality for all time.

In the light of this ideology, it is no surprise to hear the Hannibal Lecters of the world quoting from the Bible and in some sense feeling that they are motivated by religious energy. In short, they grow to feel that they are involved in this mythical cosmic battle, and their delusions are encouraged by the teaching of some churches.

The Christian Church then is faced with a choice. It can continue to encourage an acquiescence to cosmic dramas. Human responsibility only exists from a supernatural perspective if the cosmic forces choose for humans to be involved.

If the Church takes this path, it will shun professional help for those in need and encourage people to "pray harder." If the Church makes this choice, it will continue to wear justified criticism for its indifference to human suffering.

If, on the other hand, it is willing to leave behind this tendency to a duality of good and evil, it may be able to offer something of use to those in need. In this case, it will recognise and affirm the potential of humanity to both unspeakable inhumanity and to monumental goodness. It will call humans to make the choices which they have the capacity to make.

It will form sensible views on mental illness as a physical condition, and social influences as a changeable reality. It will refer people in need to a whole range of professional services and never turn responsibility away from individuals and social structures and towards a cosmic battle which is beyond human comprehension and measurement.

It is time for the Church to be sensible about divine intervention and supernatural forces. Perhaps then some horror will be avoided.

God help us if we aren't willing to change.

* The Reverend Ian Lawton is vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland.