Column for July 27 On Fighting Evil

I continue to be bothered by how easily we fall into protecting an organization and let evil do its damage. As I was preparing for a sermon for August 26 on spiritual weapons from Ephesians 6, I was forcefully reminded of a small village in France where people did not acquiesce in evil. The village was Le Chambon in France. The Vichy puppet regime was supporting the Nazi campaign against Jews in France. André Trocme was the pastor at a Huguenot church, a Reformed wing of the Protestant church, in France. He had not been there very long, but he saw the storm of Nazi ideology on the horizon. Trocme organized ways to try to save people. At one point he was arrested and held religious service sin the prison. He was released as his captors thought he caused more trouble with his services inside the prison than he could do outside the prison. When released, he was forced into hiding, but the non-violent resistance continued. Philip Hallie calls the process he started a “conspiracy of goodness.” Sometimes people can face evil with courage. We are all tempted to fall into an organizational line, salute, and try to protect reputations and live in the deadening half-life of denial. People do find complicity with evil easier than fighting it, but it is not always the case. I am pleased that the former POW and presidential nominee John McCain was willing to stand up to the unwarranted, bigoted attempt by Michele Bachmann and cronies to investigate American officials on the basis of their ethnicity and faith. When Trocme’s wife was asked about her courage, she replied that she felt it was not a difficult decision. ‘Are we brothers or not?” Trocme’s cousin, Daniel, taught Jewish children in school along with the residents of Le Chambon. Like his Biblical namesake, he was caught in the lion’s den of arbitrary political power. Eventually the Gestapo caught on to him, and he was sent to a concentration camp. Pierre Sauvage made a film and interviewed surviving members of the resistance in the 1980s. As he reviewed the film, he realized that the source of their power was religious. They saw Jews as the biblical children of the promise. They tried their best to live out the basic admonition: to love one another. Schindler’s List reminds us that people can discover their courage when they are not only irreligious but proud agents of vice. Somehow a greedy industrialist found the courage to transform his enterprises in havens for Jews. In the movie, at least, Schindler decisively turned when a little girl was taken. The state of Israel memorializes those whom they call righteous gentiles. The people of Le Chambon and Oskar Schindler are both honored. It is not clear to me how people find the virtue of courage to oppose evil. Part of the drive seems to be a capacity for empathy, for placing oneself into the position of another. Part of it could be a willingness to see what we hold in common over what divides us. Part of it is a rebelliousness that is willing to oppose authority and will refuse to leave authority unquestioned. Part of it comes from a realization that we are capable of action and are not merely passive recipients of forces larger than ourselves. Part of it is the capacity to peer past of desire to live in denial and see things from a different, clearer perspective, a courageous act in itself. I don’t know why these virtues did not appear in the Penn State case until so late in the game. I do know that evil depends on our turning a blind eye to its depredations.