Narratives of Good and Evil
Avoiding the Victim-Theology of Demons
There tends to be a great deal of work in pastoral ministry that involves shaping one’s narrative of God. When I use the term narrative I mean to indicate the subjective reception of the truths of our faith. What happens when the Dogmatic claims of the Christian faith are heard, and how do they either get twisted or assimilated by the person? In the most basic of relationships we know that our own experiences, wounds, and even our personality can warp the way we interpret reality. For instance, a person who learns to anticipate rejection may see rejection where it doesn’t exist. This may create the polarized approach to relationships where a person might either appear stand-off-ish as a way to protect themselves from such rejection, or they might turn into a people pleaser in order to buy acceptance. Those who perceive these behaviors may likewise interpret that stand-off as a cold-distant demeanor (i.e. rejection) or the people pleaser as a manipulative or fake person. Meanwhile, amidst all of these judgments and interpretations what we really have is a room full of fear.
Given that the Dogma about our faith preserves the truest narrative of our God, we nonetheless find ourselves working against all sorts of narratives. And these narratives are not simply warped by the traumas and fears of individual persons, but also a wounded collective or sociological paradigm. This is where philosophical examination can help us examine the very systems by which we interpret things such as law, or ethics, or politics. Theological work is served by Philosophy which grants it a systematic (objective) criteria that can help us honestly reflect on our own interpretations of the theological truths around our God.
The objective does not “replace” the subjective narratives. Rather, the objective instructs us, and sometimes chastens the interior wounded voice that would receive God’s "Good News” as if it were “Bad News.” Satan is an example of one who would not take instruction from the objective, subjectively. The demons throughout scripture demonstrate a demoralizing, tyrannical, and deceptive God. Within the Dialogue between the first Eve and the serpent we see very clearly these three lies passively sown in the heart of mankind. We hear demons say things like, “have you come to destroy us?” And then we see the Pharisees themselves label the Holy Spirit as a demon. What is this phenomenon that inverts man’s subjective interpretation of experiences as the opposite of what is objectively the case?
The Answer…
Man is complicated. While our freedom is one cause for such a distortion (i.e. we gaslight objective facts about God and others; we rationalize), we also make innocent errors due to our own woundedness. Our wounds and sin are often mixed together, and the wounds themselves are often a hiding place for such evil spirits to prey and hide. Its for this reason that the Truth, Jesus, needs to deeply touch these wounds, and awaken within ourselves our own disordered thinking. He doesn’t inordinately shame us for thinking wrongly, but moves us toward a more charitable and hope-filled way to trustingly interpret Him, and even through meekness, one another.
Liberalism’s Deficit
Liberalism’s invention often pollutes man’s notion of the ultimate good as the maximization of individual liberty. Conflating individualism with interior-freedom, man finds himself harping on “individual-rights” and the automatic thinking that any type of limitation on our freedom is a type of oppression. Thus, the Church, which does endorse the non-absolute liberty of the individual is automatically deemed as oppressive. In Liberalism’s narrative, we find the same strain of philosophical satanists who claim that their own personal liberty is the ultimate good, and thus they rebel against any institution, including religion that would impose moral law upon them. They offer the same caveat that philosophers like Rousseau suggested, which is to maximize liberty so long as it doesn’t harm another person’s. Therefore, the narrative of the Church and the Gospel is one of oppression, while those who are espousing such “individual rights” without reasonable limits, find themselves to see themselves as victimized. Ironically, those who experience the injustices and evil that thrives through the unregulated individual rights of others, also see themselves as victims. What happens, therefore, in political discourse and perhaps mostly latently is nothing more than triangulation.
Liberalism’s Roots
Liberalism really branched out as a result of nominalism and the denial of nature in the scholastic and classical sense. The natural law in the Thomistic sense placed man in a state of peace with himself and others, but Hobbes placed it in a state of war. Liberalism did not only branch out from such a metaphysical return to Democritus, but also accepted a departure from a solid anthropology that naturally married itself to an ethic of fulfillment. In the metaphysical and anthropological approach to man, the human race no longer had a real connection to nature, where abiding in some ethic was simply man becoming fully alive. The law and moral ethics of scholasticism were now replaced with the existentially instituted social contract, imposed upon the unknowable nature of man. Thus, man would not discern himself, per se, but rather only examine what Scholastic would call his “second-nature” without reference to his First and foundational nature. Our “second-nature” or habits, behaviors, et cetera, are judged to be good or evil according to their conformity with man’s “ontological dignity.” But such dignity was thrust into the darkness of doubt, and man would simply constitute his own purposes rather than subject himself to what was perceived as an arbitrary teleology thrust upon him by Aristotle, St. Thomas, and ultimately God.
Liberalism’s Warping Power
People have been habituated in interpreting law and moral ethics through the lens of the social contract. This ultimately makes moral ethics not a matter of man thriving and becoming who he really is in his second-nature. Rather, all law has the context of artificially being imposed upon man through practical reasoning in order to offer him as much liberty as possible. Thus, law seems to be regulated by the principle of liberty rather than man’s objective good (since knowing that is impossible or trivial). As a result, even from well-meaning Christians, God’s law is not perceived to be anything other than an existential determination artificially imposed by God on man in His so called “wisdom.” In this context, faith is given to God, even though the law is imposed in a type of arbitrary manner. Thus, Liberalism returns the human Race to the same and original temptation to a narrative of God that portrays his law as oppressive, competitive, and deceptive.
Many Catholics, anecdotally speaking, are heavily influenced by the warped approach of deontology (Immanuel Kant) who succumb to a merely duty-bound approach to ethics. Rather than internalizing God’s moral law as something that is genuinely for our own fulfillment, its simply a matter of duty even though it is interiorly seen as brutal.
The fundamental point of departure comes from the metaphysical schism between Creation and the Creator. Blessed Duns Scotus in combination with Occam reintroduce within the Church a pivoting point towards the protestant rationalism-fideism dichotomy by bringing us back to nominalism’s trap. Man is no longer participating in God’s own goodness, but is univocally His own thing, and unknowingly as such. In other words, God’s law is not a revelation into the infinite goodness of God’s own substance, but as has already been said artificially imposed by God. To St. Thomas Aquinas, God did not invent the law, but rather such order and goodness was intrinsically what God is, in Himself. Thus, the natural law is participating in God. Thus, God does not construct moral ethics from outside of Himself, but in a vulnerable and loving way reveals something about his own beauty and goodness by allowing us to participate in Himself.
Departing from such a narrative of God lends itself to an alienation of God who both stands at an infinite distance, and may simply impose morality upon us for no other reason than to serve Himself. When honestly examining the reputation of the Church’s doctrine, I would think that we would be a bit naive if we didn’t notice such a narrative, at least latent in the minds of many believers, and explicit in the non-believer.
Redeeming the Narrative
One thing that regularly cuts through such narratives is not merely an apological or philosophical response. Rather, it entails a personal encounter with God where we intuit and experience the genuine goodness of God. For those seeking, and are thus promised to find the true God, they will have in this moment a genuine experience of the Personal Truths around the goodness and beauty of God and therefore His Law.
Understanding the wound and various types of victimhood that exist in our culture help us to at the very least diagnose the fears and resistance to the Gospel. Echoing in the hearts of many the liar speaks when the Gospel is proclaimed, “Have you come here to destroy us?” Our work therefore implies a type of expelling of these forces of darkness and fear with perfect love. Taking seriously the role of the Church, which is His Body, we must grant others by the Power of the Holy Spirit, an encounter with God through our own imperfect lives. This means we must detach ourselves from personal offence at the rejection of the Gospel, and see the other who rejects the Gospel as poorer than ourselves. This type of pity is not to be conflated with an arrogant condescension. Rather, like a rich man who sees another without food, he recognizes his responsibility to care for those who are willing to accept his offer of help. Not because he is rich, but because he is human, and needs food as anyone else. Thus, it is the food of heaven that man sees another starving for, that fosters an awareness of our own need and poverty for God. Rich only in God’s gift of grace, we nonetheless are poor, but at least admit it when we come to know the hunger we have for God.
Finally, in the realm of ideology, we must push up against the false notions of liberty and freedom that are automatically held by many. We must demonstrate that we need to be told “no” in order to rise above the addiction of sin, and to become fully alive. That is all to say we must reintroduce the experientially verifiable reality of slavery to sin. Without such an awareness, we cannot look for grace, or even seek a deeper freedom than liberty. For this to take place, people must make a connection in their mind between the good they want to do, but the evil they find themselves determined to do regardless. When this happens, we won’t look at what God forbids as desirable, but at least will cry out to Him to change our hearts back to the way they were before we believed He was evil and the serpent was good.
