How to Love Evil

by

Perspectives

Walter Wink, a man who would one day become a great theologian and peace activist, told a story from his youth in the civil rights movement. Wink stood at among a crowd in Selma, Alabama in 1965. Darkness had fallen, and around the crowd of black and white protesters stood row upon row of Sherriff’s deputies, with the Sherriff, a racist named Jim Clark, at their center. Clark was not simply a garden variety racist of the sort then in vogue across the south, but the sort of man who carried and employed a cattle prod on nonviolent protestors.

The situation was volatile. Earlier that day in Montgomery, a protest had ended in bloodshed when peaceful activists had been beaten, some nearly to death, by the police. Ambulances sent to treat the wounded had been intentionally delayed for two hours as the victims bled in the streets. News of the violence in Montgomery had just made its way to Selma and the crowd was understandably on edge. Just then, a young black minister took to the microphone to lead a song. Wink wrote:

He opened with the line “Do you love Martin King?” to which those who knew the song responded “Certainly, Lord!” “Do you love Martin King?” “Certainly, Lord!” “Do you love Martin King?” “Certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord!”

Right through the chain of command of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he went, the crowd each time echoing, warming to the song, “Certainly, certainly, certainly Lord!”

Without warning he sang out, “Do you love Jim Clark” – the Sherriff?! “Cer…certainly, Lord” came the stunned, halting reply. “Do you love Jim Clark?” “Certainly, Lord” – it was stronger this time. “Do you love Jim Clark?” Now the point had sunk in… “Certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord!”

Following the song, another young minister took the microphone. “It’s not enough to defeat Jim Clark – do you hear me Jim? – we want you converted. We cannot win by hating our oppressors. We have to love them into changing.”

Wink’s story illustrates the genius of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King and his colleagues understood that the battle for equality was not a political one, but a moral one. They did not simply seek to pass the Civil Rights Act or integrate lunch counters, they sought to change the heart of their oppressors. Their struggle was not with injustice, injustice was simply the symptom; instead, their struggle was with evil, and they succeeded because they understood the transformative power of radical love.

Today, it should be clear to anyone with a Facebook account and a passing familiarity with the Gospels that evil is once again ascendant in the United States. Most abhorrently, Donald Trump has suspended a refugee program designed to protect civilians fleeing the Syrian Civil War, but he has also authorized the construction of a border wall to keep out Hispanic migrants, appointed a bigot to the National Security Council, lied too many times to count, forgotten God’s chosen people on Holocaust Remembrance Day, ignored the murder of six Canadian Muslims by a right-wing extremist, and suspended travel from seven predominately Muslim nations.

People of conscience are understandably alarmed by the events of the past few weeks, but so far the response to this reemerging evil seems to be an attempt to assert political power through protests and social media activism. However, you don’t defeat evil with political power, nor do you use anger or hate, two emotions that seem to be all the rage these days. Instead, you defeat the evil that lives inside of the Trump administration with love.

Yet, the President and his enablers in Congress are far removed from most of us, and so it seems quite difficult to love the oppressors. Again, we can learn from the story of the Civil Rights movement. Walter Wink and his fellow protestors did not try to love every racist in Alabama all at once, and they did not seek out George Wallace, or their Senators, or other elected officials. Instead, they targeted the man in front of them; the broken Sherriff with the cattle prod and the deputies at his side.

Jacques Ellul, another great peace theologian, famously argued that we should think globally, yet act locally. Yet perhaps the civil rights movement should teach us that we should think globally, but love locally. Perhaps in our resistance to the evil of Washington, we should not just march and protest, but we should look for opportunities to love those who disagree with us into repentance. We should not treat those who disagree with us as the Pharisees that Jesus scolded with anger, but as the lepers that Jesus healed with love.

Of course, loving our neighbor enough to preach the social Gospel is difficult and dangerous. It is difficult because we naturally avoid conflict, and it is dangerous because we can use it to build our ego. After all, aren’t we who understand the Sermon on the Mount far better Christians then those who don’t? Aren’t we right and they wrong? Yet, there is something broken inside of all of us; something that requires transformation, as well as parts that have been transformed. We are all lepers to be healed by the faith and love of Jesus, it’s just that our disease effects different parts of our hearts. If I can heal the fear in my brother’s heart that drives him to support walls and bans, perhaps he can heal the brokenness in mine that drives me to try to earn a grace that I already possess.

Brian Snyder is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Louisiana State University and layperson at First United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge.