Suffering the Knowledge of Good and Evil

by

Now I begin to understand why God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. No matter whether we treat Genesis as the literal account of creation or as a poetic metaphor for God’s evolution, we face a terrifying reality: the knowledge of evil can be simply too hard for a mortal mind to bear.

My mind and my spirit have been burdened for over a year by the plight of immigrants being held in squalid detention centers for the crime – a misdemeanor crime at that – of crossing the U.S. border without legal documentation. And now, in his tweeted attacks on four congresswomen of color, President Trump has laid bare the racism that underlies his administration’s policies on immigration and so much else.

Yes, I said “racism,” and I’m going to continue to say it, as loudly and forcefully and often as necessary. Our president has proved himself publicly to be a racist, and his minions have shown themselves willing to carry forward those same blind prejudices. We are all sinners, but what our government is doing now in our name is nothing less than sin.

This knowledge bedevils me to no end. I’ve decided that our current state demonstrates the true nature of tyranny, that not only are vulnerable populations subjected to prejudice and deprivation, but that those who wish to relieve their suffering are thwarted from providing even simple compassion. Some of my co-religionists would say that we shouldn’t be concerned about politics, that we as the church shouldn’t get involved. I can’t buy that argument because of what Jesus said when he began his public ministry:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” – Luke 4:18 (NRSV*)

Thus, my dilemma: In our current national shame, how am I and my sibling Christians to take up the ministry of Jesus without becoming corrupted by the environment around us? How are we to stand up to the evil that grips our nation when we seem to be powerless to stop it, or even slow it down?

How could Jesus counsel his followers to turn the other cheek if struck by their Roman overlords? To carry a soldier’s gear an extra mile when compelled to fulfill the law that said subjugated peoples must carry that gear for a mile? Most of all, Jesus said to love one’s enemies? How can we love or even pity public officials that inflict imprisonment, family separation and emotional trauma to children? 

I frankly can’t remember a time when my faith was as sorely tested as it is right now. I wonder how many of my brother and sister Christians feel the same way?

  • We want to aid the immigrants, but the Border Patrol won’t accept our help by federal law. Do we weep for the immigrants, or do we curse the Border Patrol?
  • We want more compassionate, more common-sense U.S. immigration law, but Congress remains deaf to our demands. Do we give up, do we bad-mouth Congress, do we stage even more demonstrations?
  • We want America to look and sound and feel like the land of liberty and justice that we were taught its founders envisioned. Instead we’ve come face to face with an America that looks like the Upside Down of the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” Even our most heroic, self-sacrificing actions come to naught.

White Christian Americans must now confront what the continent’s indigenous inhabitants knew, what its slaves and descendants of slaves have known, what various ethnic groups have known all along. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are not a benevolent democratic republic of self-determination and equal opportunity. We are what we have despised in other nations, what we have denied from our critics, that our lofty civil religion extols a nation that doesn't exist. We have become an empire capable of evil.

Now we suffer the pain of the knowledge of good and evil. How can a Jesus follower endure the agonizing dissonance between a faithful vision of beloved community and the cruel reality of American society today?

Mary Pezzulo, a Catholic blogger on Patheos.com who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite Christian writers, says: “We must be about our Father’s work. Denouncing grave scandal is absolutely part of that work, but then there are the other 23 hours of the day – that is, if you all take about an hour to type out a blog post like I do. That gives us plenty of time for feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, ransoming the captive and so on. That’s what’s really important.”

The mission that Jesus gave us remains. I pray God’s Holy Spirit gives us discernment to see what shape that service should take in these troubled times.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.

*New Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible. Copyright 1989, 1996 by the Christian Education Committee of the National Council of the Churches of Christ USA. Used by permission.