The Psychology of Evil, Part 1: The Myth of Pure Evil

Hannibal Lecter, Freddie Krueger, Dracula, Darth Vader, Cruella de Vil. We are all familiar with the myth of pure evil in Hollywood movies. It's a myth both because it serves as a literary device for the stories that shape how we see our world, and also because it is not true. It represents a naive cartoon understanding of what evil actually is.

Don't get me wrong, evil is real. People do really horrible, unspeakable, awful things to other people. If we can understand what leads a person to do that, then we can also discover how to move in the opposite direction, how we can grow and develop morally and socially--collectively and individually--towards being move loving, more just.

One of the key tenets of the myth of pure evil is other-izing, de-humanizing. When we refer to a person as a "monster" it is implied that they do not need to be treated as human. That allows us to treat them inhumanly, and then we ourselves commit evil actions, while thinking that we had no other choice, and perhaps telling ourselves that what we are doing is good and just. So we see our enemies as monsters and do horrible things to them, and they see us do that and think we are monsters, and thus feel justified in doing horrible things to us.

The problem with this cartoon depiction of evil is that it does not help us to break out of these cycles, and in fact contributes to keeping us locked in them. It's a fairy-tale world where we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. That's the opposite of being introspective and self-aware. What I hope to do instead is take a realistic and deep look at the reality of human evil that is a part of all of us, in the hopes of finding how we can move towards being good in a realistic and deep way.

Based on the work of psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature identifies five roots of evil: predation, dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideology. In the first part of this series I will discuss the last two of these, sadism and ideology. When you think of ideology, think Isis. When you think sadism, think Charles Manson. Hollywood and the news media are obsessed with these stories of terrorists and psychopaths. I suspect they do this because it reflects our own obsession. These are the things of our real life nightmares. This is the kind of evil that leaves us baffled, perplexed and horrified. The problem is that the media tells us this story with very little reflection or insight because it’s an easy headline to write. “If it bleeds it leads” they say. This stokes our fear, rather than helping us to gain insight.

Let's begin with taking a look at sadism. Despite its frequent depiction in movie villains, sadism—taking pleasure in hurting and killing others--is actually quite rare. Baumeister explains that sadism is something that one develops into, much like drug addition. Studies have found that, of those actively engaged in violence, only around 5% become sadists. What keeps 95% of people from sadism, Baumeister says, is our sense of guilt.

Whether that sense of guilt is in-built, the product of culture, or a mix of both is not entirely clear. What we do know is that, as mentioned above, only a very small percentage of those participating in violence come to enjoy it. We also know that in the past it was common for people to do sadistic things as a culture. One example is the torture of animals for entertainment. Pinker gives several accounts of how animals, dogs and cats in particular, were brutally tortured as a means of public entertainment in Medieval times. This might indicate that where cultural taboos are absent, more people can develop sadistic tendencies unhindered by guilt.

The idea of someone taking pleasure in hurting others seems to represent what our cliché of pure evil looks like. Think of the Disney villain with his classic mwa-ha-ha-ha! maniacal laugh, and we have the cartoon version of sadism. The “thriller” movie version is only slightly more complex, sometimes it is even less complex. As mentioned previously, this cliché reflects our need to make sense of what seems "monstrous" to us. We watch these “monster movies” to try to process our fears. Unfortunately these movies typically re-enforce our ignorance. To be fair, many Disney movies (for example Zootopia) have actively moved away from that, addressing issues of racism and prejudice in a cartoon. I can’t say the same for action movies.

So what do we do with sadism? First we need to realize that even when the media give us the impression that it’s everywhere – every second headline seems to be about this. We know that it is actually very very rare. It’s also important to note that Baumeister concludes that sadism is not so much a root cause of evil, but rather a byproduct, entering the picture after evil (that is, actively torturing and killing others) is already in progress. It is something that a very small percentage of people have the potential for, perhaps we might even see it as a perversion of sorts. But it is not a root cause, it is not where evil starts. So if we are seeking to find the root causes of evil, the root that it grows from, we will need to look further.

This brings us to the second category: Ideology. Ideology and its connection to violence is something I have discussed at length in Disarming Scripture, and often on this blog. I refer to this as the way of “unquestioning obedience” and have often warned of its potential to lead to violence. As Pascal says, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

One might say that ideology acts as an antidote to moral conscience. It gets us to turn off our brains and hearts, to shut off our compassion and common sense, thinking that we are doing this “for God.” This can lead parents to harm the children they love, thinking that they are doing God's will or being true to the Bible. It has, as a matter of history, led many pious and idealistic people to commit horrific atrocities in the name of their god or political ideology.

It’s easy to look at groups like Isis and think that we would never be like that. However, studies like the infamous Milgram experiment reveal that the average person is disturbingly capable of hurting others in order to conform to authority. Most of us just go with the crowd -- whether that's in the halls of our high school, at our fundamentalist church, or somewhere else where the stakes are higher.

That's why it's so important to learn to think for yourself, to question, and perhaps most of all, to develop moral courage. If we don’t stand up in the little things, will we stand up for the big things? It’s easy to spot the evil of fanatical extremist ideology in another religion or another nation, and I certainly do not want to deny that this truly is evil. The true test however is whether we are able to stand up to authoritarianism and demagoguery when it wraps itself in our flag and claims our religion.

People often ask me how to deal with things like Muslim extremism. I have focused mainly on Christianity because that is my own faith. So I begin with looking at myself and my own tribe. But the answer to how to deal with Muslim extremism is the same as how we deal with Christian extremism. Fundamentalism is the same is any religion. The antidote to this non-thinking non-empathetic ideology is of course to learn how to have a thinking faith, how to be introspective and reflective, how to grow in empathy and moral maturity.

In understanding ideology as one of the roots from which evil grows, the key takeaway is to recognize that it is therefore not something that we only find in those monstrous bad guys “over there.” It is something that we all, as humans, are susceptible to. Put in the right circumstances we might find ourselves doing the same thing that the people in the Milgram experiment found themselves doing. Denying this does not make us immune. On the contrary, to the extent that we are unreflected about this potential in us, we are all the more susceptible to it. Only by facing these tendencies in us head-on, and actively deciding to move in the opposite direction, can we counter it. In the case of ideology that means, among other things, actively questioning authority and learning to think morally for ourselves. We need to practice it in the little things—among our peers, at school or work or church—if we hope to have the civil courage to take a stand for bigger things.

The End of the World As We Know It - Part 1: Growing Up

 A reader asks,

“Both Jesus and his followers seemed to believe his return and the last days were imminent. Yet here we are 2,000 years later and no Jesus in the flesh or end of the world. Was Jesus wrong? Is our record of what he taught wrong? If I am honest I can see how people can dismiss Jesus as an end times prophet anticipating a soon-coming final judgment that has not come soon. Growing up shaped by Pentecostal emphasis on the second coming I have heard many explanations of this that just seem to ignore the simple conclusion that Jesus was wrong. And if so, was he in fact divine like no other? And if he was wrong should I treat his teachings as authoritative?”

This is a question I have struggled with too. At its heart is a desire to see suffering and injustice come to an end, to see things made right. Those are good desires. However, it’s pretty hard to deny that 2000 years is by no definition “soon.” So what do we do about that? What do we do about the seemingly unavoidable conclusion that Jesus and his early followers’ hopes and expectations were apparently wrong? This brings us to the broader question of what do we do when we find that any part of the Bible is wrong. Does this cause our entire belief to collapse? Does this invalidate everything else?

If we have a faith rooted in authoritarianism and the way of unquestioning obedience, then the answer is, yes, it does. Because of this, many fundamentalist Christians convert to being fundamentalist atheists. That’s one possibility. Another possibility is to double down and argue that we are misunderstanding things and that everything is fine, and the Bible and Jesus are never wrong. That’s another possibility that is widely taken. I’ve heard lots of attempts at doing this in relation to eschatology, and I have to say they all left my heart still longing for a better answer. What my heart wanted was to see the world made right, and so somehow all explanations of why I should accept things as they are just rang hollow.

The way I see it, on a deeper level, this is an issue of growing into adulthood, and that is a painful and difficult passage. As children we idealize our parents and teachers. We place child-like trust in them. When we become parents ourselves, we are faced with the staggering responsibility of taking care of our children. We take on that seemingly god-like role in their lives, all the time painfully aware how inadequate and unprepared we are to live up to that. We try the best we can to keep them safe, but we know we cannot shelter them from everything. We try to do our best, but we know we will fail, we will make mistakes. It’s hard to know that our kids will get hurt in this world, but it’s harder to face that we will hurt them, we will fail them.

The same is true of anyone who is a position of authority in our lives, teachers, managers, mentors, politicians, and pastors... no matter how much they try not to, will all fail us. That can be devastating. Many people, when faced with the moral failings of their pastor, walk away from their faith altogether – just like many people do when they find that the Bible is not a flawless book.

Note that "authority" and "authoritative" are not the same as authoritarian. Adults have people in authority over them, and exercise authority themselves within their lives as parents and professionals. Adults also regard things as authoritative when they deserve to be regarded as such.  But authoritarianism is synonymous with a child-like and developmentally immature approach to life. To the extent that we are nurtured in an authoritarian church, people are conditioned to remain developmentally immature. We need to have a faith that allows us to be morally responsible intelligent adults.

So the question becomes, how can we come to terms with our own imperfections and failings, with the imperfections and failings of those we look up to, and the imperfections and failings of scripture, and still hold on to what is good in ourselves, in our mentors, and in the Bible? That is the core question of what it means to move from childish faith to an adult faith. An adult faith is not one that has all the answers. It is not a faith that is rooted in certainty. That is what a child imagines it is like to be a grownup. Those of us who are adults and parents know full well that the reality of adulthood looks very different.

This new perspective of adulthood does not have the perspective that says if someone is wrong about one thing, therefore we must reject everything. After all, you are wrong sometimes, and that does not mean you are always wrong. The same goes for me, and the same goes for the human Jesus (it’s important that we hold that Jesus was not just divine, but both human and divine!). That means that you cannot blindly and without thinking accept everything I say, or accept everything anyone else says for that matter, including Jesus. We need to seek to understand so we can follow well, not blindly obeying without understanding – which means we will (because we do not understand) follow wrong, leading to hurt.

From what I can see, Jesus was wrong about the timing of the end. He was also wrong in his understanding of medicine, which he (like everyone else at the time) attributed to invisible demons rather than invisible germs. I put all of this to the limitations that Jesus experienced in being a human being, and to be fair, Jesus himself does say “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mt 24:36). In the same way that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human, the Bible as a whole is also both divine and human, too. It is possible to encounter God in its pages, to encounter a love and goodness that puts us in direct contact with the divine, the eternal, and the holy. The challenge for us as adult believers is to learn how to find and embrace the good parts so we can get to the holy, so we can get to the heart of Jesus.

Just because Jesus was misinformed about medicine does not mean that there is nothing for us to learn about how Jesus treated the sick. In fact, there is immense, profound, life-changing moral insight that we can learn from how Jesus sees and treats the sick. Similarly, just because Jesus (and Matthew) were wrong about the imminence of the end, if we dig a bit deeper to look at what the Gospels, and in particular the Gospel of Matthew, has to say about the end time, what we find is a life-changing message that we desperately need to hear in our time, right now. I’ll discuss that in detail next time.

How Moral Immaturity is Taking Over Evangelicalism

Authoritarianism has become a major characteristic of white American evangelicalism. We hear story after story of how leadership in major evangelical institutions has shifted to be more conservative, bullying professors and pastors to leave their jobs if they do not agree to the conservative views of the leadership – a stance that is stridently anti-gay, anti-women, anti-science, pro-gun, pro-war, and pro-torture. Let’s pause on that last one. Evangelicals are more likely than any other religious group to support torture.

That makes me ashamed to be an evangelical. I am not alone in this. There are a great many evangelicals who feel that this type of “evangelicalism” represents the very opposite of what they believe in, the very opposite of the values of Jesus. Many of us have felt compelled to leave the church, out of moral protest, and what we feel we are leaving is a toxic and abusive environment. That’s why when a church gets a fog machine and lights we still don’t want to come back. What’s needed is a moral overhaul, not a better entertainment system.

While the rest of society is moving forward, evangelicals are behind on pretty much every moral issue of our day. Not in a passive way, but actively opposing that moral progress. We are seeing major movements in our society towards reducing violence, towards civil liberties for all people, towards caring for the needs of the disadvantaged, towards human rights, and the largest group who is actively engaged in fighting to stop this moral progress on every front is evangelicalism.

So we basically have two evangelicalisms. One is the evangelicalism that I grew to love. It was an evangelicalism focused on cultivating a relationship with a loving God, on knowing “the father heart of God.” It was where I learned about grace, and how being unconditionally loved opens your heart to love others with that same kind of open hearted grace and compassion. It as an evangelicalism where you sang with all your heart, with hands stretched high to the heavens out of gratitude for that love. An evangelicalism where you wanted to share this good news with the whole world. It was an evangelicalism that I associated with joy, deep friendships, and abundant life. Maybe that’s an evangelicalism you knew, too.

Then there is the evangelicalism that people associate with being intolerant, judgmental, angry, sexist, homophobic, and Islamophobic. It is an evangelicalism characterized by fear and hostility, which then responds with authoritarian violence and coercion. That’s why it supports police brutality, pushes for laws with harsh criminal punishment as well as laws that restrict civil rights, endorses torture, and cheers when politicians promise to indiscriminately carpet bomb their enemies. As much as I wish I could bury my head in the sand and insist that this ugly and immoral evangelicalism is not the “real” evangelicalism, it is very real, and very much a major force in our world with great political and economic influence, not to mention popular support – not a majority thankfully, but a significant and very vocal and engaged minority.

Why do people support it? Because of fear. Feeling threatened leads to hostility. This is characteristic of low level moral development. A child, when it does not get what it wants, will go to whining, hitting, and screaming. That child will justify their actions saying things like “that’s not fair!” This all comes naturally to children, it comes “pre-installed” so to speak. It’s cooperating, being social, and resolving conflict that they need to learn. When a person does not learn this, and retains the simplistic black-and-white, us-vs-them-thinking characteristic of a child, this is moral immaturity. It is a low-level morality that has been stagnated or retarded. Unlike children, morally immature adults are not cute. They can also do a lot more damage than a little child can, especially when they are in positions of power – morally immature pastors, politicians, and CEOs.

Being a morally immature adult is of course not exclusive to evangelicalism, to Christianity or even to religion. There are lots of morally immature angry black-and-white-thinking atheists, just as there are loving, thoughtful, compassionate, morally mature atheists. There are also thoughtful, compassionate, morally mature evangelicals. I hope I can count myself in their number. But as a morally mature evangelical, I do think it is important to recognize that my beloved evangelical faith can and does act to give religious cover, providing justification and sanctification to morally immature people.

Indeed, morally immature evangelicalism typically wraps itself in scriptural justifications, and claims to represent orthodoxy and tradition. It claims to represent the good, and genuinely believes that it does. That’s why Hollywood’s negative portrayals of religious conservatives miss the mark when they paint them as just plain mean “bad guy” characters. Moral immaturity is sincerely trying to be good, but does so in a way that hurts others. That’s what immaturity looks like. The key difference between maturity and immaturity is that maturity is complex and social. Children therefore need to learn to develop into social beings, learning empathy and the skills to maintain relationships – as do morally immature adults.

Likewise, a morally immature evangelical is not always angry and judgmental. The complex reality is that they can be deeply loving in certain situations, while being angry and hostile in others. Just like a child can be wonderfully loving... right before they throw a fit. As any parent knows well, children can be little angels, and little monsters. They are both. That is, again, characteristic of immaturity.

It’s understandable why immature evangelicals react as they do with hostility, but we do them a disservice when we let their aggressive and hurtful behavior take cover, saying their hurtful actions are due to being “passionate” or having “zeal.” The Apostle Paul knew about that kind of “zeal” first hand, but came to regard that very zeal as his greatest sin. When Paul repented, he was not repenting of breaking a commandment. He boldly claimed, in this regard, that he was “faultless” (Philippians 3:6). Yet he nevertheless came to regard himself as “the greatest of all sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15) precisely because of the harm resulting from his religious zeal.

Those of us who are morally mature evangelicals need to know how to articulate what a morally mature faith looks like in action, drawing from those same scriptures and traditions, in order to demonstrate that one does not have to choose between a morally immature faith or rejecting one’s faith altogether.

Moral immaturity is not focused on the self, but on the in-group. It is not me-focused, but rather it is us-focused. It is us-versus-them, whoever that perceived “other” is. In contrast, Jesus continually taught people to expand that circle, saying that the way we treat those who we regard as “the least” is how we treat our Lord, teaching us to care for the beggar, the outsider, the stranger... even going so far as to tell us to love our enemies. This is the very height of moral maturity, which is focused on growing ever more social, focused on the ministry of reconciliation, the mending of broken relationships.

It is only when you begin to practice this that you learn that the tools of moral immaturity – the tools of yelling and hitting, of coercion and force, building higher walls and dropping more bombs – are simply ineffective when our goal is to make for peace and work to reconcile. Those who are immature cannot see this. To the morally immature, true strength, the strength to compromise, forgive, and work together is regarded as weakness. They gravitate towards authoritarian leaders who they see as strong and bold. But those who are mature can see that this “strength” in fact reflects an utter ineptitude in regards to solving problems, working with others, and resolving conflicts. We have a word to describe a morally immature person who has grown big: They are a bully. Being a bully is not strong or admirable or brave or moral.

The more we become versed in the way of reconciliation, the more we see how ill-equipped the means of moral immaturity is at achieving this. It only knows how to build walls, not how to build bridges. That’s why it’s so important that those of us Christians who support nonviolence do not simply regard it as a statement about what we won’t do, about where we draw the line, about what is forbidden. This is often where the conversation stops. But it needs to go beyond what we won’t do. Nonviolence also needs to be about how we actively work to make things right, how we act to resolve conflict and mend relationships. For example, it’s one thing to say you are against adultery. Big deal, pretty much everyone is. It’s quite another thing, however, to be able to provide a couple with the relational tools to walk the difficult path beyond betrayal, and towards re-building trust together. Forgiveness is not simply about overlooking a wrong, it is about learning how to reconcile. Learning how to do that is what moral maturity is all about.

Fear, Fundamentalism, and Moral Development (part 2)

Last time I discussed human moral development, and how fundamentalism functions to keep people at underdeveloped levels of moral development, characterized by black and white thinking and fear. This time I wanted to look at how we can work to move ourselves and others away from moral immaturity and towards higher level moral thinking, based on understanding Jesus' message of enemy love.

Consider what goes on in our heads when we get mad: I stop seeing things in terms of "us" and instead see everything as me against you. I feel the need to defend myself, not to hear you. I need to have my side validated as "right." If I am accused of doing something to hurt you, my focus will not be on expressing care for you, let alone remorse. Instead I will focus on justifying myself. You misunderstood, I didn't mean it. I'm innocent, and I am the focus.

All of this is me-focused, rather than we-focused. When we feel threatened, our brain shifts into self-defense, self-protection mode. That self-focus has a valuable function (it preserves your life when there is danger), but it also means that if I switch into this mode when I'm having a disagreement with my wife that I will see her as the "enemy" through the distorted lens of my self-protective bubble. 

Sociologist Christian Smith has described American (conservative) Evangelicalism as "embattled and thriving," and both of these are true. In fact, Evangelicalism thrives precisely by fostering feelings of outrage and fear. Perhaps that's why it's growing, while the Catholic church under pope Francis is shrinking. Remove the fear and everyone heads for the exits. Sad but true.

Fundamentalism is all about maintaining that self-protective bubble. Those on the inside are good, those on the outside are seen as a threat. There is a strong need to be right. Because outrage and fear are fostered in a fundamentalist environment, being in that environment for an extended time is very much like being angry all the time. That us/them thinking has the positive function of creating a deep sense of belonging and identity within the group, but at the same time it moves those inside further and further from empathy--which is at the very heart of how Jesus saw those who were considered "outsiders" by the fundamentalism of his day.

In short, fundamentalism is a form of tribalism that fosters and perpetuates this anti-social self-focused state, stunting a person's moral growth. The longer a person spends in that environment, the more morally impaired they become--like living in a building filled with asbestos. Asbestos is meant to protect you from fire, but poisons your insides. Fundamentalism is the same.

This self-protective reaction can be a response to physical danger, and it can also come as a response to perceived threats to our self-worth--feeling disrespected, shamed, rejected, abandoned, unloved. Both of these are core needs. We might even call them primal. So when we feel that either of these are threatened we can "freak out." 

This "freak out" response is our body's response to perceived threat. When we are triggered, the social part of our brain (called the cerebral cortex) gets shut down, and our brain is driven by its fear center (the lymbic system). That's why you can't see the other, and become so self-focused when you're triggered. It's physiological. This physiological emergency brain shut-down function may be good for a caveman being chased by a woolly mammoth, but it's not so great for relationships.

We need to develop morally and socially beyond that caveman response. We can all become triggered when we feel our value is threatened--when we feel disrespected, shamed, rejected, abandoned, unloved. What we need to do when we feel triggered like this is learn to break out of our self-protective bubble. 

That begins by learning to recognize when we are triggered, and taking time to calm down so we can "see" socially again. This is again physiological. We need time for our brains to come back online. But what we can do is develop self-awareness, like a person who recognizes when they have had too much to drink and hands over their car keys, we can learn to recognize when we are socially impaired due to a lymbic reaction of our brain.

The next step is to seek to see the perspective of the other, too, to move from "me" to "we." That's empathy--which is both central to both moral development, and to the way of Jesus. If this is with someone we love, that empathy can kick in as soon as our cerebral cortex comes back online. So all we may need is to allow time for this. If we are talking about an "other," then we need to work to develop that empathy, to move from seeing them as an "enemy" or "threat" to seeing them through the lens of love. Jesus was all about pushing us to widen our circles to include those we put on the outside.

That's how we can work on ourselves, but what about when someone else is triggered and emotionally reactive? How can we help a person who is morally impaired to break out of that self-focus? To put it in gospel terms: How can we rescue them from the dominion of fear, and reconcile them to Christ and his kingdom way of love? Again, when a person is reactive, this is a response to a perceived threat to their value and worth. So communicating to them that you genuinely value them, and value their concerns can create a safe space for conversation rather than defensiveness. Love disarms. 

Of course a person needs to have insight and self-reflection themselves. They need to take responsibility for their moral growth. But "disarming" a person by affirming and validating them can create the safe space to help make that possible.

What also is often necessary when seeking to reconcile two parties in conflict is the help of a trained mediator. A mediator, who is both neutral and validating to both parties, can work to repair trust. 

That's pretty much the opposite of the approach of Christian apologetics which is not set up to seek to understand the other, to disarm with love, or to reconcile the other. Apologetics seeks to win an argument, but in the process loses the person. Again, that whole antagonistic "I win, you lose" approach is one of low moral development. We need to learn to win people, not win arguments. 

Here's an amusing thought experiment: Imagine a debate--say between an atheist and a Christian-- where instead of each  speaker attempting to "win" the debate by "proving" that their position was superior, the moderator instead worked to get them both to understand and validate the other's feelings and concerns, so that in the end the two grew closer.  I want front row tickets to see that!

"God has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God" (2 Cor 5:20).

Fear, Fundamentalism, and Moral Development

There's a great clip from Richard Rohr by my buddy Travis Reed at Work of the People. In it, Rohr discusses how a major problem with the Bible has to do with who is reading it,

"If you put the word of God in the hands of an angry young man, they're going to misuse it, abuse it, distort it, murder the text, to make it fit their own agenda...  The Bible is best put in the hands of mature human beings who are not filled with anger and fear and agenda."  -Richard Rohr

The reason that we will never get to a time where there will not be fundamentalism is because fundamentalism has to do with a lack of human moral development. It is a reflection of  immaturity, and unfortunately, to turn a phrase, you will always have the immature among you. 

The real problem is not with the Bible, but with how we read it -- whether we read it like Jesus did as a vehicle to move us towards compassion, or read it like the Pharisees did in a spirit of unquestioning obedience that leads to hurt. In other words, the problem is not so much with the Bible as it is with people who are at a very low level of moral development which is characterized by black and white thinking and fear.

The theory of moral development, pioneered by Lawrence Kohlberg in the 1950s, observes that as humans we go through stages of development morally. The morality of small children is characterized by black and white thinking and motivated by avoidance of punishment. As we grow older, and our brain develops, we become capable of higher forms of morality such as empathy, understanding the perspective of another, and doing things not to avoid punishment, but because we care for others.  

Little kids exhibit low level moral development because their brains are not developed enough yet to be capable of these higher moral functions (which is incidentally why children should not be tried as adults in our legal system). When adults exhibit low level moral development, this is a problem. It's moral immaturity.

It is important to stress here that by the term “fundamentalism,” I am not referring to those with conservative or traditional beliefs (many of which I myself affirm), but rather to a way of approaching belief that is authoritarian, judgmental, self-righteous, and ultimately fear-based. Such a fundamentalist environment encourages people (by means of shame and fear and threat) to remain at a low moral developmental level. Fundamentalism fosters fear, rather than helping people overcome it. It consists of indoctrination that stunts a person's moral development, and the more time a person spends in that environment, the more their moral growth atrophies. 

The same is true with watching Fox News, or spending time in other toxic environments like internet comment boards filled with viciousness. Fundamentalism takes many forms: There's religious fundamentalism (including atheist fundamentalists), political fundamentalism, and so on. Basically, any ideology or belief system can be approached in a morally immature way, characterized by otherizing, fear, and black and white thinking. The more you feed on that diet of fear and anger, the more it stunts your moral growth, the more it shrivels the soul. When they say "you are what you eat" that's not talking about food.

The problem is that, rather than recognize this black and white thinking and fear as indicative of low level moral development, fundamentalism instead upholds this as moral virtue. Compromise is seen as failure, compassion as weakness; hate and judgment become virtues.

We need to recognize these things for what they are, and that is an underdeveloped morality. To the extent that we foster staying at that low level of moral development, we make people less good. That is what a fundamentalist church does. 

But it is not just churches. Our public discourse -- whether this is grandstanding politicians, shouting pundits on the news, or the toxic posts on the comments section of any big internet site -- is characterized by people who exhibit very low level moral development: fear based, black and white, otherizing, incapable of understanding complexity or finding compromise. This moral immaturity is so prevalent that it feels like the norm, but it is not normal to have so many morally stunted adults (let alone is it the ideal), it's very broken.

To put this in typical Christian terms, it is a sin. I don't say that to place shame, but simply to underline that fostering moral immaturity as a virtue is bad. It hurts people because of how it otherizes and reacts in fear, leading to violence -- especially when we have morally immature people in positions of power and influence. Jesus in the Gospels spends quite a bit of time confronting this in the Pharisees. So while it is uncomfortable to be "negative" and to point out the problems, it is important to do so for the health of our ourselves and our society. So I want us to take note of moral immaturity that masquerades as a virtue.

Next time I'll talk about how we can work to move ourselves and others away from moral immaturity and towards higher level moral thinking, based on understanding Jesus' message of enemy love. Here's part 2.