SermonStudio

The words stabbed me in the heart. They come back to me again and again. It was nearly twenty years ago. I sat in the Detroit airport with a couple of hours of waiting before my plane for Rochester departed. I bought a newspaper to pass the time. In an advice colunm I came across this letter:

Dear Jane Lee: I am an adult who was, and still am, despised and ridiculed because I am ugly ... I have a rock bottom opinion of myself I've never had a friend. In school, my classmates used to torment me with their cruelties ... When I went to work, I was harassed by cruel taunts ... My husband doesn't have any feeling for me. He would have left long ago if he could have afforded it. He said once - at a time when I was pregnant with one of our children - that my face turns his stomach. I sure would like to earn some money to get an education and some of the nice things in life, but I am afraid to go any place because people stare or snicker ... I've never murdered anyone. I don't peddle drugs to the young. I've never stolen from others or slandered others. I do the best I can as a wife and mother ... I would have given up on life a long time ago, but somehow I keep looking for a rainbow.1

What can we say to this poor soul who has suffered all her life because she is ugly? Our first response may be to assign responsibility to her for the way she reacts to the face she was born with. Maybe we want to admonish her sternly to stop wallowing in self-pity and do something about the situation. We quote that cute little platitude: If life deals you a lemon, make lemonade. Is that all we have to have to say? Do we hint that there must be some purpose in it, since God works for good in all things for those who believe (Romans 8:28)? Do we even suggest that suffering can be good for us, that it develops the soul? Do we quote again from Romans and urge her to rejoice in her suffering, since suffering leads through endurance to character and from character to hope (Romans 5:1-5)? Do we urge her to believe that God's grace is sufficient for every need? Beyond that, of course, in our psychologically oriented age, we might urge her to seek a secular doctor of the soul. Surely what she finally needs is a psychotherapist. But is that the end of it?

I do not want to rule out any of these responses. They all may have a point. Nevertheless, if this is all that can be said, I am a bit uneasy. All that has been said so far puts the responsibility back on the shoulders of that poor woman. We have said that if she will only get right with God and have enough faith, if only she will have the right attitude about it, see it in the proper light, come to terms with the facts, take charge of her life, lemons can become lemonade.

We seem so eager to get God off the hook. Either God has a purpose in it or will supply the grace that overcomes all. Or we are content to appeal to the mystery of God's ways of dealing with us. The assumption seems to be that the problem is finally all with her and not at all with the fact that she was born ugly. No, we say, the difficulty lies with all those people who have treated her terribly. That is not God's fault. Maybe, but what accounts for the fact that she was born ugly? But, we protest, ugly is a subjective judgment, a cultural matter. God is not to blame for that. Maybe, but we all have some notion in our heads about who is beautiful and who is not even if we act nicely toward everybody. No matter how long this sort of conversation goes on, I am left troubled.

THE TRAGIC
I want to pursue another line of thought. With heaviness of heart, I conclude that some suffering occurs that neither God nor the victims can fully overcome no matter how hard they struggle. We are limited in the extent to which we can triumph over evil either in fact or in our spirits. God too is limited and labors to overcome evil with only partial success.

I revolt against the old Calvinist doctrine of predestination. The thought that God has chosen from all eternity some people to be saved and some to be damned forever is getting close to the most horrible idea conceivable. Let us hope it is not true. Nevertheless, a remnant of truth may be contained in a reinterpreted version. It does appear that some people in this life are born to be damned in some if not all aspects of their lives. I mean that they suffer as the victim of circumstances or the actions of others over which they have no control.

A biography of Rita Hayworth appeared a few years ago. She was beautiful and glamorous in the movies. She will be remembered as the most famous pinup of World War II. It is an image that all of us old enough to recall have in our minds. She was married to some of the world's richest and most celebrated men. Yet the heading of the review in The New York Times reads: "What we have here is a very sad story." She was sexually abused by her father and exploited by him in terrible ways. At age twelve she sat fat and silent on her front porch staring straight ahead, afraid to play with other children. She lived through a lifetime of disastrous relationships and was manipulated and used by a succession of men. Her life deteriorated rapidly, punctuated by drinking sprees, irrational outbursts, and failing health. Her career disintegrated. At long last at age 62, she was diagnosed as being in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease. One redeeming note is that her daughter Yasmin became her legal guardian and took loving care of her until she died in 1987. I do not know all that is involved or how her own free will entered into the situation. It does appear that from early childhood on she was destroyed by powers over which she had limited control. She appears to have been damned from the start.

Listen to the stories of runaway children, of serial killers, of drug addicts and prostitutes. Look into the sad faces of starving babies in Africa. Consider the circumstances of those who populate the mental hospitals of the land for a lifetime, perpetually tormented in body and spirit. Hear the life histories of the homeless and destitute, those serving life sentences in prison. Whatever responsibility they have for their own destinies, I cannot escape the conclusion that an element of tragedy pervades it all. All around are people caught up, tossed about, mangled, and destroyed by forces over which they have limited control. One thirteen-year-old girl who had run away reported that she left home because her stepbrother had raped her. Her father told her he was going to have her raped anyway. In all this is an element of the tragic - suffering that the victims could not totally prevent, nor can they always or fully overcome it. Neither is it always possible for them to triumph spiritually over all adversity by the resources of divine grace. They are damned in body and spirit.

Let me stress again that I do not want to ignore or even to underplay the role that human beings themselves play in determining their destiny. Is anyone so molded by circumstances that he or she could not have altered the outcome in any shape, form, or fashion? I doubt it. We usually have a choice within some range of available options. Nor do I want to deny that some people do prevail spiritually over great obstacles. All I insist on is that there are limits to what we can do to prevent or to overcome the injustices, miseries, and calamities that beset us. What about that other part that determines our lives over which we have no control? Circumstances create a destiny that we live out. It is in that portion of life beyond the range of human decision to alter that tragedy resides.

I like to watch the weight lifters compete during the Olympics. Here are athletes who have trained long and hard to develop their strength to the highest degree possible. The time has come. They bend and lift. Every muscle strains and trembles. They sweat and groan. They push their bodies until they have exhausted their powers. No matter how much they lift, they always reach a limit beyond which they simply cannot go. The weight comes crashing down. This is my point about life. We don't always exert ourselves to the extreme frontier of our creative capacity to make the lemons of our lives into lemonade. Sometimes we do not conquer the demons that torment us because we give up too soon or don't try hard enough. Until we pass that line between unwilling and unable, the limit we cannot exceed, the terrible has not yet become the tragic. But some human suffering lies beyond the region over which we have control. At that point, we are in the hands of powers that flesh and blood cannot conquer.

In common parlance, tragedy is related to the magnitude, severity, and awfulness of distress and disaster. Moreover, tragedy suggests events that evoke sadness, melancholy, pity, and threaten despair. These usages are not eliminated here, but a more precise delineation is needed. My intention is to locate the center and the vicinity of the tragic, not to define precise or rigid boundaries.2 The presupposition of tragic suffering is finitude, which makes us vulnerable in body and soul to disruption and destruction. Animals and human beings are organized systems whose healthy functioning depends on many parts properly working together. Hence, something can go wrong and to some extent in every life unavoidably does. The enjoyment of life and the quest for happiness under conditions of justice may be frustrated or facilitated by circumstances in our personal history, our family life, and our social environment over which we have little or no control. Tragedy and finitude are inextricably interwoven. More exactly, the presupposition of the tragic lies in the fact that the finitude of sentient beings necessarily entails the possibility of suffering. Actual suffering takes on a tragic dimension in a variety of circumstances. Empirically, the tragic revolves around two overlapping dimensions: unavoidability and irredeemability.3

(1) Suffering is tragic to the extent that it cannot be avoided by those who are hurt.4 In the purest denotation tragedy is associated with inevitable outcomes. In this narrow sense it is the product of factors that operate inexorably to produce tribulation. In an extended sense a dimension of tragedy attaches to sorrow and woe that are unavoidable for those undergoing it but that do not result by necessity from given conditions. If certain natural contingencies had been otherwise, or if perpetrators had chosen differently, tragedy would not ensue. Self-inflicted tragedy may occur contrary to intent when no negligence is involved. Self-hurt as a result of carelessness may be serious but not tragic. If a swimmer dives into a shallow body of water and breaks her/his neck and becomes paralyzed for life from the neck down, the event is not - as awful as it is - tragic to the extent that it could have been prevented by forethought and caution. It is tragic because the injury is serious and permanent. Or self-hurt may be intentional in situations in which those involved lack the resources to do differently. A person who commits suicide may do so deliberately (intentionally) but in that awful moment of distress and despair may not be capable of doing otherwise (unavoidably). Self-inflicted tragic outcomes may result from personal deficiency or from flaws or contradictions in character.

When inflicted by nature or other people, tragic suffering is undeserved but beyond the power of the victim to prevent or overcome. The experience of injustice is a type of suffering. Suffering that is the consequence of enslavement to demonic powers is tragic. The tragic may arise out of ambiguities or contradictions in the historical circumstances that constrain our choices. Sometimes justice or a net gain in some good for some cannot be achieved except by causing undeserved loss for others. Finally, tragic suffering may result from our genetic inheritance, accidents, disease, tornadoes, and the like, i.e., spring from nature rather from history. The tragedy we experience is our destiny, but it may be compounded, transformed, or limited by freedom.

By extension the tragic refers not only to suffering that is unavoidably undergone but also to evil that is unavoidably done. This could involve accidental harm to others where neither bad intention nor carelessness was involved. Tragic also are those instances in which people have lost the capacity to avoid evildoing because of a life history that has destroyed their capacity to exercise moral freedom. While most people retain some capacity to distinguish good and evil and to choose between them, the possibility of a near total obliteration of moral ability cannot be ruled out. The result is tragic both for them and for the victims of their depravity.

(2) Suffering is tragic to the extent that it is pointless and irredeemable. Tragic suffering is meaningless and purposeless. It cannot be made into something different. An evil may seem to be senseless but acquire meaning by the way some or all who are affected respond. Over a period of time misery may result in good consequences hardly conceivable apart from some past affliction. A painful divorce may over time lead to reconciliation and a deepening of relationships among all involved that would or could not have occurred otherwise. In this sense the suffering caused by the marital breakup may be redeemed to a significant degree. To the contrary, a permanent loss of sight is tragic as such in that a valuable capacity is gone beyond recovery, even though blindness may contribute to gains of other sorts that might not or even could not have occurred otherwise. Eyesight is valuable in itself, and other goods, no matter how precious in themselves, cannot substitute or compensate for it. Not all suffering, however, can be given meaning or made to serve a purpose and remains forever pointless for all concerned.

The possibility of loss, disruption, and destruction is the inevitable and inescapable implication of finitude. Finite existence and the likelihood of tragedy are by necessity inseparable. Actual suffering becomes tragic (1) when it is of serious magnitude, intensity, and duration and (2) when it involves empirical elements of unavoidability, pointlessness, and irredeemability.

I don't know what happened to that woman I read about in the Detroit airport who lived a dreadful life because she was ugly. I wonder whether she finally gave up or whether she found the rainbow she was looking for. After everything else is said, I want to say to her the following: "God knows, and God cares. God did not make you ugly for some hidden divine purpose. I believe the reason you were born ugly is not because God intended it but because God could not prevent it.5 But God suffers with you in your agony. God shares your pain as one who has a hard time too. God has a heart with a scar in the shape of a cross. That heart is broken for you. God is working through your urge to live and find fulfillment to bring the best that is possible out of this situation. Do the best you can to cooperate with God to make that happen."

THE AMBIGUOUS
Life is a mixture of good and evil. Experience and observation keep that fact before us. Jesus told a story that illustrates the point. A farmer sowed good seed in his field. His enemy came by night and planted weeds among the wheat. Soon both were growing up together. The offending weed is apparently darnel, a grain that resembles wheat but is poisonous to eat. Shall an attempt be made to pull out the weeds? No, says the farmer, let them grow together until the harvest. Then a separation can be made. To pull up the weeds now would uproot some of the wheat as well.

The ambiguous refers to the presence of two (or more) opposing elements in a situation. As used here ambiguity refers to events or clusters of events in which good and evil are closely interconnected either as causes and effects of each other or as products of the same source. More narrowly, ambiguity refers to the inseparable mixture of good and evil in events and in choices. This kind of ambiguity cannot be overcome by freedom, but freedom may choose the better rather than the worse of the tradeoffs and may redeem in whole or in part the evil consequences of unavoidable choices. Conflicts in values such that something good cannot be achieved without introducing evil along with it is part of the tragic nature of historical existence. Evil thus originated may exacerbate and perpetuate the demonic. Ambiguity also refers to the presence of truth and error in theories and statements.

Ambiguity appears in many guises, and not all forms are of the same logical type. In particular, we need to distinguish between (1) instances in which good and evil are intrinsically interconnected and thus inseparable and (2) instances in which good and evil are actually present together and closely related in the total situation but separable. In (1) you cannot have the good without the evil it is bound up with. In (2) it is possible in principle to have one without the other. The first we can call metaphysical ambiguity. The second we can call factual ambiguity. The former cannot be overcome by human choices and actions, while the latter can. Some problems in personal life and at the society level seem to combine elements of both. Many social policies may have the appearance of (1) in terms of the intertwining of good and evil, but with
compromise and compensatory actions the good may be maximized and the evil minimized, if not totally eliminated.

Sometimes a present situation that is ambiguous in the sense of meaning (1) could have been avoided if preceding circumstance or choices had been different. An unfortunate past may create an emergency or crisis such that no matter what we do now, both good and evil will result. It should be possible to discern from the context in what follows the extent to which the intermixture of good and evil participates in these possibilities. Discerning when problems can be dealt with to achieve unequivocal good and when unambiguous results are impossible taxes our wisdom to the limit. Human creativity must be exercised to the fullest to meet the challenge of reaching the best compromise or devising a novel solution that maximizes the desirable and minimizes the unwanted.

Ambiguity, then, does not mean simply that good and evil are both present in the world. The deeper reality is that good and evil in some measure are dependent on the other. Often we cannot have one without the other. Well-intentioned actions that have predominantly good consequences may unavoidably have others that are destructive, there being no choice that is wholly positive with no negative outcomes. Some prescription drugs that do much good have unwanted side effects that can be serious. The same is true of many moral prescriptions. Even the purest of moral aims cannot change this fact. Ambiguous also is the connectedness among human beings that unites our individual sorrows as well as our joys. Sharing the joys and triumphs of those we love is one of life's sweetest pleasures, but when disaster or failure strikes them, our hearts bleed too. In all these cases, we cannot have the roses without the thorns. A few examples will illustrate the point further.

RELIGION
Hardly any aspect of our common life is more ambiguous than religion. Religious faith offers comfort and hope in the midst of the trials and troubles of this life and often generates moral energy to heal the wounds of the suffering and to bring about justice in the social order. Yet those same religious people and institutions often have claimed the approval of God for nearly every evil the world has known. We only need to mention the role of religion in defending slavery and segregation and the subjugation of women in the past. In the present gays and lesbians, no matter how responsible their love affairs may be, are condemned with quotations from the Bible and the Pope. Roman Catholic piety produces good works that aid the hungry, the poor, and the helpless, but official Roman Catholic doctrine makes the most effective forms of birth control a sin and denies the priesthood to women. The Religious Right in its zeal to preserve traditional values surrounding sex, marriage, and the family conspires with conservative politicians to support policies inimical to the interests of minorities, women, homosexuals, and the poor. Southern Baptists, who nurtured me spiritually during my early years, exhibited a zeal that sent missionaries around the world to preach the Gospel, feed the hungry, and heal the sick. Yet at home for decades they would not receive into their own fellowship believers from Africa who had been converted under their own ministries.

Religious fanatics at the fringes, fervent in their devotion, have no hesitation in cutting off the heads of their enemies in the name of God. Religious extremists in every religion resort to terrorism and violence to achieve ends believed to be divinely authorized. Pacifists may allow cruel tyrants to oppress the weak, since the only effective resistance is forbidden by a commitment to nonviolence. Just war theorists may authorize wars that achieve their relatively good ends only by inflicting death on the enemies of justice. The list could go on.

Is religion intrinsically and unavoidably ambiguous? Would not good religion be wholly on the side of the angels? The historic world religions advocate and inspire love and compassion in every generation. Religious faith is often allied with justice. The ideal possibilities for religion on earth if enacted would obviously eliminate much of the ambiguity that actual practice now exhibits. The deeper truth, however, may have been captured by Reinhold Niebuhr. He noted that Jesus himself could incarnate perfect love only by becoming powerless on the cross, symbolically and literally lifted above the ambiguities and complexities of interconnected life in society.6 The point is that the exercise of power in actual life with all its interrelatedness is apt to have ambiguous consequences that produce evil in the pursuit of good or generate good while committing evil.

ANGRY WHITE MEN AND CULTURAL LIBERALS
Ambiguities abound in the economic and political order. Consider the "angry white men" who resist the struggle of African-Americans, women, gays, lesbians, and other groups for full equality and inclusiveness in American society. This obstinacy cannot be condoned. Yet many of them have been squeezed unmercifully by changes in the national and global economy that reduce the availability of high-paying jobs for those with limited education and few skills.7 At the same time they feel threatened as they see aspects of traditional morality they were taught to honor under attack in the culture, especially values having to do with religion, sex, marriage, and family. These economic stresses and moral anxieties provide fertile ground for exploitation by politicians. Promising to get tough on crime, end affirmative action, limit welfare benefits, put recipients to work, protect "family values," and put prayer back into schools, conservative and reactionary office seekers garner their votes. Unfortunately, these would-be saviors of white males sponsor economic policies that result in a redistribution of income upward to corporate elites and the affluent. These strategies run contrary to the interests of many in the middle class as well as the poor and working classes that include many of these very same "angry white men."8

Meanwhile, many middle and upper middle-class cultural liberals who crave a more open, tolerant, and inclusive society favorable to the interests of previously oppressed groups are so turned off by the traditionalism and reactionary moral attitudes of the white working classes that they tend to be insensitive to the genuine economic distress of these offended males. So accustomed are they to seeing working-class white males as victimizers of their favorite victims, it is hard for them to appreciate the fact that working-class white men can also be victims of societal forces beyond their control. So interwoven are the complexities, contradictions, and ambiguities of class, race, gender, and cultural outlook that it is nearly impossible to combine into one political agenda capable of attracting an electoral majority all that a comprehensive justice might require.9

ECONOMIC ISSUES
The economy is a veritable breeding ground of ambiguities.10 We have long been accustomed to the trade-off between inflation and unemployment. Measures that reduce one tend to increase the other, but we want both low inflation and high employment. More recently we hear about the tension between keeping inflation down and stimulating economic growth. Periodically, the question of the minimum wage becomes a matter of controversy, most recently in 1996. One side maintains that raising it will improve the lot of entry level workers who cannot support themselves or a family decently on the present wage rates that many people get stuck in these days. The other side argues that the consequence of increasing wages by law will be a loss of employment for a significant number of people. As business people find themselves unable to compete when their labor costs are raised beyond what the market will bear, they will fire workers. The evidence is not unequivocal, but it does appear that some sort of trade-off is present. We would like to raise wages for those who would be most helped, but the price may be some loss of employment for those who badly need jobs. According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow, a panel of economists at the American Economics Association, meeting in January, 1996, concluded that "the employment effect of a moderate increase in the minimum wage would be very, very small."11 But the debate continues with no resolution in sight.

PUBLIC QUANDARIES
Other ambiguities relate to the tension between individual liberty, the rights of others, and the common good. Sometimes the commitment to free speech entails the defense of unsavory characters whose use of liberty may be offensive both to justice and to good taste. College communities wanting to protect minorities from "hate" speech may find that the only way to do it is to ban "free" speech. Efforts to produce greater equality of income and opportunity for less fortunate citizens may require governmental coercion that infringes upon the liberty of others.12 Zealous and long-range testing of new drugs may keep them off the market while people who need them die needlessly, but the same cautious policies may prevent another thalidomide tragedy. Raising speed limits on interstate highways may have a variety of benefits, but it may increase the number who die in accidents.

How far should we go in regulating tobacco even though the restrictions may limit the choice of smokers and do harm to farmers who grow it? Yet tobacco is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year and adds substantially to medical costs. The early death of smokers is a countervailing factor, of course, reducing the number of people who would otherwise claim social security benefits or need expensive care in old age! What rights does a community have to protect itself when a convicted sex-offender known for repeating the same crime is about to be released to live in the neighborhood? Are coercive efforts to trace the sources of HIV infection legitimated by concern for public health or are they merely an offense to individual liberty?

Unless we recognize the presence of ambiguity and complexity that mark many of our individual and political choices, we cannot find our way to wisdom. Meanwhile, opposing parties argue as if all truth and justice were totally on their side while their opponents persist stubbornly in their advocacy of pure falsehood and wrong.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Affirmative action that helps women and minorities make up for past discrimination may in some cases be unfair to white males here and now considered as individuals. Under attack at the moment, affirmative action is frequently debated and reported in polls as if it meant just one thing and were a simple matter one needs to be either for or against, something that is either right or wrong, just or unjust. If we consider women and blacks as members of groups who have because of this identity been subject to past oppression, then remedies based on group membership are appropriate. Yet men and white people considered as individuals not responsible for the practices of former generations and not themselves guilty of prejudice or discrimination in their own personal habits may be unfairly affected by policies that treat them on a group basis. Nevertheless, even though specific individual males or white people may not be guilty of racial or gender bias, they may have benefitted by their group status.

Ought we always to look at people as individuals, or is it sometimes legitimate, even obligatory, to treat persons in terms of their group membership, e.g., as women or as African-Americans or as Native Americans? Should the aim be to promote and ensure equal opportunity or to guarantee equal results? Does justice mandate race- and gender-neutral schemes or preferential treatment for previously oppressed groups? No policy option is without ambiguity. 13

WELFARE AND POVERTY
What are we to do about poverty and welfare? To explore the issues, let us ask which of the following statements are true:

1. Payments to poor mothers with dependent children provide a safety net for families who have had the misfortune to fall on hard times temporarily.

2. Welfare queens, promiscuous teenagers, and lazy, deadbeat moms are living off hardworking taxpayers, while unreliable males father children and then escape responsibility.

3. A culture of poverty exists within the underclass that requires an individual, family, and community transformation of values and habits to improve their economic lot.

4. General economic and social conditions have created whatever pathologies may exist in the underclass, so that they are mainly society's fault.

5. Past government policies have created a culture of welfare dependency that is rotting the moral fabric of the destitute.

6. Reform measures that put work requirements or time limits on welfare recipients, place caps on payments, and refuse additional awards to mothers who keep having children are cruel measures that punish the poor, especially children.

7. Cutting off subsidies would be an incentive for mothers on welfare to have fewer babies.

8. Women have children for reasons hardly affected by having a little more or a little less welfare money.

9. The breakdown of two-parent families and the rise of births to non-married women are general cultural phenomena that have multiple causes not restricted to the poor and mostly unrelated to welfare policies.

10. Poor single mothers seek welfare because no jobs are available.

11. Poor single mothers prefer an easy monthly check to the discipline of work.

12. The available jobs they qualify for are mainly dead-end, low-paying, dull, and onerous. Many are at a distance from where they live.

13. Many poor single mothers lack competence, education, discipline, acceptable work habits, and self-confidence.

14. They need the goad of economic need to motivate them.

15. Counseling, training, child-care help, decent job openings, and encouragement would be sufficient to get many able-bodied poor mothers on a payroll and off the dole.

16. We can require personal responsibility from mothers without punishing innocent children if we provide assistance in job-training, job-seeking, child care, and other necessary services, but doing so would be more costly than sending them a check.

17. Putting welfare recipients to work is a good idea, but jobs are not always available in the private sector, and if the government provides subsidized work, powerful unions representing government workers will protest for fear of being displaced.

18. We can do what is humane for mothers and their children without making it easier for fathers to evade their duty.

19. Welfare payments to unwed mothers are an incentive to males to procreate while avoiding the financial disciplines of fatherhood.

20. Restricting or cutting off welfare payments to teenage mothers or better sex education will do only a little to discourage teenage pregnancy, since many young girls, especially those who have been abused or come from broken homes, are needy and vulnerable and hence easy prey for older men and are often impregnated by rape or incest.

21. Many young women with a chaotic life history get pregnant voluntarily, e.g., to have someone to love them - a behavior not deeply affected by the availability of welfare money or birth control devices.

22. People on welfare would rather make it on their own, since to live off a government check is damaging to their self-esteem and sense of competence.

All 22 of these statements, I suggest, are at least partly true but none may be unequivocally so.14 Truth and error are nestled together so closely in some of these claims that it is difficult to mark them off from one another. So complex, interwoven, multifaceted, and intricate are the problems associated with poverty and welfare that no conceivable set of policies from the right, left, or center would be a panacea, and all would have ambiguous results. The circumstances of welfare recipients are so varied that hardly any generalization applies to them all, and no remedy would work equally well for everybody. Debaters on every side of the issue come armed with compelling statistics skillfully compiled to justify their own claims. Hardly anything would improve the quality of moral discourse in this country more than a recognition of the complexities and ambiguities of the policy choices we must make.

Let it be said clearly and emphatically, however, that this does not mean that every policy is as good as any other. It is possible to combine a safety net for needy mothers and children while having reasonable and humane work requirements if sufficient employment assistance is provided and decent jobs are made available. But it will be difficult and costly. Or welfare payments could be abolished for able-bodied, competent parents if opportunities for paying work under good conditions were assured in "tough love" ways that did not favor them unjustly in comparison with their similarly situated peers determined to make it on their own. Either option is a major and expensive challenge to policymakers and doubtless exceeds what is politically feasible. Moreover, no matter what we do, frustrating problems will remain, new ones will arise, and some failures will occur. If that is too pessimistic, what is the alternative that (1) is compassionate, (2) will work for everybody, (3) society can afford in light of competing and equally just demands for funds, and (4) is politically doable in today's climate?15

ABORTION
Hardly any issue embodies more tormenting ambiguities than the one we consider now. Abortion has polarized society. Extremists on either side argue as if they had the whole truth. For one side, it is simply murder. For the other side, it is plainly a matter of a woman having control over her reproductive capacities or of a woman's right to choose. Pro-life zealots tend to speak only of the fetus - "the unborn child" - and ignore or explain away countervailing circumstances that might surround the situation. A few extremists think it permissible, even obligatory, to kill abortion providers. Pro-choice radicals tend to minimize the moral status of the fetus and are inclined to win too easy a victory over a very difficult problem. A few extremists regard the embryo or fetus as an unwanted parasite or as neutral tissue that can be innocently disposed of, just as one gets a haircut or a fingernail trim. The easy division of people into pro-life and pro-choice camps is itself indicative of the way complex issues full of ambiguities are reduced to simple labels and sound-bite slogans.

The emergence of new life is a continuous process that proceeds over a period of nine months from conception to birth and on into childhood. Designating a point on this unbroken continuum at which a potential person becomes an actual person with all the rights thereunto appertaining is impossible. Everybody agrees that a mother is morally forbidden to kill her child after the fetus has developed into a fully actual person. But at what moment along the way from potential to actual does that prohibition begin to apply? No answer is fully satisfactory. The general rule that the further along in the process abortion occurs, the stronger must be the justification may be correct, but it is vague and offers little precise guidance. Hence, merit attaches to the conservative view that conception itself is the definitive mark beyond which no interference is permissible.

Yet conception itself is a process that takes time to occur, not an instantaneous event. Moreover, not to recognize the difference in fact and moral status between a freshly fertilized egg and a five-year-old child is unconvincing. If a fully actual person is present from conception onward, then the fatal shooting of a doctor who is about to perform an abortion is as morally justified as is the killing of a madman who is about to murder a kindergarten child, if in both cases no other means is available at the moment to prevent the act. Yet few pro-life advocates would go that far. Why not, if they are to be morally consistent? Would not a strict pro-life position forbid abortion even in the case of rape or incest since an innocent "unborn child" would be murdered?

Several conclusions follow. (1) Moral discourse would be served if both sides recognized the complexity of the problem and admitted that ambiguities abound. Above all, greatly to be desired is humility on each side along with an acknowledgement that those who take the opposite position to one's own are not necessarily satanic or lacking in insight or moral integrity.

(2) The only completely satisfactory solution to the abortion problem is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Once an undesired conception occurs, an emergency ethic is required that defies the rules of normal moral discourse and introduces complexities, difficulties, and compromises one would prefer to avoid but cannot.

(3) Some abortions may be justified, but all abortions inevitably have an element of the tragic and dimensions of moral ambiguity.

(4) Justification for abortion must always be serious and never trivial. Its casual or routine use as a backup or substitute for contraception is morally defective.

(5) The slogan that suggests that abortion should be legal, safe, and rare is probably as good a compromise as the situation allows.

(6) Pro-life advocates ought to be zealous in promoting effective birth control methods to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Pro-choice advocates ought to be aggressive in their efforts to promote sexually responsible behavior, including abstinence, to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Pro-life and pro-choice advocates ought to strive to surpass each other in doing whatever is necessary to reduce the need for abortion to the absolute minimum.

Even if we got agreement that abortion ought to be legal during the early part of pregnancy, the problems would not end there. Should unmarried teenage girls under, say, seventeen years of age be compelled to secure parental permission before they have an abortion? Should they be free to make this decision on their own? Do parents have a right to know when a young daughter still under their care is about to undergo such a serious procedure? Regardless of which side the law takes on this issue, some good will result, and some harm will be done. Should a compromise be made so that if parents refuse the required permission, a teenage girl may seek an exception from a judge? That might help, but consider that the applicant is then subject to whatever biases a particular judge may have, as well as to the delay and burden of seeking legal aid.

MERCY KILLING
My wife was a chaplain in a Pennsylvania hospital when a young man was brought into the emergency room badly burned in a motorcycle accident. He was in great torment and agony. He had no chance of survival whatsoever. Despite all doctors could do, his condition was horrendous. He remained conscious. He wanted to die. His family stood helplessly by in horror watching him suffer and slowly slip away. Should he be put out of his misery? It would seem to be an act of mercy for somebody who would - and did - inevitably with known certainty die in a matter of hours. Yet deliberately to kill someone is against the law and offends the conscience. We have a term that puts the dilemma before us - mercy killing. The moral law tells us to be merciful, but it forbids us to kill. What shall we do? Good and evil are inseparably intertwined, and the consequences are tragic.

FREEDOM AND THE INTERWEAVING
OF THE ELEMENTS OF EVIL
Four faces of evil have been defined and illustrated - sin, the demonic, the tragic, and the ambiguous. It may be useful to suggest how they are interwoven in the fabric of life and to look at how human freedom is related to these complex relationships. How is freedom related to the origin and overcoming of the various forms of evil?

1. The Tragic: The tragic is unavoidable or irredeemable suffering and evil. If something is totally tragic, then by definition we have no control at all over it, either to prevent it or to redeem it. No matter what choices we make, we cannot reclaim the loss. We are not responsible for the tragic: some disease, unpreventable accidents, tornadoes destructive of life and property, being injured on the highway by a drunk driver, and so on. Most tragedy is not absolute. We have some power to prevent it and some ability to overcome it. While freedom is limited in the extent to which suffering can be redeemed, no prior limits should be put on the capacity of human creativity to endow the apparently pointless with meaning and to bring good out of evil, given sufficient resources of grace and personal strength.

Perplexing questions arise when the sinful and the tragic appear to be mixed, as in the case of the demonic. Moreover, if the Augustinians are correct in teaching that sin is inevitable but that we are nevertheless still held responsible, this is truly tragic. Paul Tillich says explicitly that moral evil is the "tragic implication" of freedom. I argued in a previous chapter for a view of "tragic sin" to designate extreme and probably rare situations in which persons have been so battered by life that they have lost power to do good in some circumstances and instead unavoidably do evil. At least partial redemption may still be possible in some instances. The requirement is a sufficiently powerful experience of being absolutely and unconditionally loved under circumstances that (1) permit or cause the awfulness of their deeds to burst into awareness and that (2) make attractive positive alternatives available to such doomed souls.

2. The Demonic: The demonic originates under circumstances involving some dimension of choice but becomes a persisting power that enslaves. People may not be aware of the influence that is deceiving them or of its satanic character. A tragic dimension is involved in the demonic to the extent that those who are bound by the destructive power of the past have their freedom constrained. Yet since the demonic arises in freedom, it can be overcome through freedom. However, we must first be liberated from the diabolic powers, the sinister ideas, and the satanic practices that have exercised their power over us. How does that happen? It takes place when emancipating grace operates in us. This involves more than a simple decision, since we cannot change until we are liberated or, more precisely, are made free by being liberated.

Sometimes patients in therapy are enabled to reexperience the trauma that gave birth to toxic patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that have caused them grief. This freshly felt pain from the past, when accompanied by insight into the circumstances and causes of their dysfunctional living, along with the expression of the feelings appropriate to the original situation, may enable them to gain freedom from the debilitating powers. They may get in touch with long repressed feelings like anger present since childhood and experience a catharsis that purifies the soul and brings relief. Fresh patterns of more healthy living become possible when this anger is finally expressed in the context of gaining understanding of its source, meaning, and its destructive effect.

To use another image, light must shine in the darkness. The evil must be seen and known as evil at a deep level. Sometimes this occurs as a result of revelatory experiences. A member of an extremist organization resigned when he realized that if the group came to power, his severely retarded child would be exterminated. This led him to see the disastrous implications of his former belief system.

Conversion is often experienced as a gift from a redeeming influence from beyond our own capacities. Anyone who has ever undergone a liberating experience in therapy or experienced a deep spiritual emancipation can testify to this. As new and more fulfilling ways of thinking, feeling, and acting become attractively available, the oppressive powers can be cast out.

When evil social practices are involved, they must be overcome by good practices. This may require the use of power, and often it involves political means. Sometimes violence must be used, as in the war against Hitler. Slavery in the South was ended by proclamation backed up by military force. Segregation was overcome by a civil rights movement involving masses of people that was effective in securing legislation that brought about needed change. Meanwhile, the slow growth of ideals in the hearts of people prepared the way for eventual peaceful accommodation and final acceptance. Southern politicians now seek votes from African-Americans and proclaim their allegiance to civil rights for all - eloquent testimony to the possibility and fact of moral progress. Granted this new situation may involve elements of political necessity under new circumstances as well as growth in moral sentiment. Hence, social demons may be exorcised gradually by evolution toward higher ideals or by revolutionary upheaval involving the use of force.

3. The Ambiguous: To the extent that good and evil are so bound up with each other that we cannot have the good we want without the evil we don't want, a tragic element is involved. If trade-offs are necessary, we can ask which option on the whole produces the greatest net gain. Freedom, then, can eliminate some of the worst bargains but may not be able to achieve an unequivocal good.

The ambiguous may also involve other dimensions of the tragic. When we claim that what is partly good is totally good because of invincible ignorance involving no fault of our own, the tragic is involved. The sinful gets mixed up with the ambiguous when people take one side on an issue and claim that all the right is on their side. Self-interest may lead us to claim that our truth is the whole truth. The demonic may enter when we are so in the grip of what we have been taught that we honestly think we are right when we are only partially right. We may be morally blind but unaware that we are.

4. Freedom and Unfreedom: A line exists between being unable and being unwilling to choose the good or the best tradeoff that is available. That line is sometimes hard to draw. Obviously, some suffering arises from a mixture of human irresponsibility (freedom) and non-human factors (nature). Individuals are in part responsible for their own suffering, as well as for the injustice they do to others. By their foolish, inept, or irresponsible choices, they bring misery upon themselves and their neighbors. Sin occurs when individuals are unwilling to choose the better instead of the worse alternative. A tragic dimension enters when they are unable because of ignorance or personal deficiency to do the best that could be done in a given situation. Sometimes people hurt themselves and others when they most deeply want to do what is right and good but don't know how or lack the requisite ability to do so. Hence, suffering and injustice may result from sin or exhibit elements of tragedy - or both. Unhappiness experienced in marriage may involve both sin and tragedy.

Life is full of examples of ordinary good people doing the best they can with the best of intentions toward all but who, because of a lack of personal skills, accidents, disease, the perfidy of others - and a host of unavoidable vicissitudes - may end up leading disappointing, miserable lives. Parents do unintentional psychological damage to their children due to distortions in their own behavior rooted in a tortured past that encompasses many generations of interwoven freedom and destiny. Children starve in Africa for a combination of reasons involving both natural forces and historical factors that intermingle the sinful and the tragic in bafflingly complex ways.

In the summer of 1996 violence broke out once more in Northern Ireland. A friend of mine visiting there asked a local citizen what the conflict between Protestants and Catholics was all about. The respondent began by citing an event that occurred in 1082, more than nine hundred years ago!16 Against some social ills with their long sinful, tragic, and demonic history, the forces of reason and good will often seem impotent indeed. The violent acts of extremists on both sides may perpetuate old hatreds and ignite new ones, making it almost impossible for the peace-hungry majority to effect reconciliation. Across the years human life exhibits a complexity and a mystery of iniquity that defies rationality nearly to the point of producing despair in the tenderhearted.17 Nevertheless, persistence in peacemaking will doubtless in time heal the bloody wounds of Northern Ireland. What Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat set out to do in seeking peace between Jews and Arabs illustrates the hopeful possibilities that inhere in the most tragic and demonic of situations.

CONCLUSION
Four faces of evil have been described. What is the relationship of God to sin (and injustice), the demonic, the tragic, and the ambiguous? A full answer would require nearly the whole of Christian doctrine, since the good news is God's victory over sin and evil in Jesus Christ and the promise of ultimate redemption from all suffering in the end. The next chapter will set forth a doctrine of God who is perfect in love but limited in power, a God who, as Creator, is indirectly responsible for all evil but directly the cause of no unequivocal evil. The adventure of God in history, however, is caught up in the interweaving of good and evil, as is our own. I will argue that God as Redeemer is opportunistically active in every event, seeking the best possible under the circumstances, but lacks the unilateral capacity to bring about the highest possible good.

1. The Detroit News (October 14, 1976).

2. The definition of the tragic offered here is my own. For the way in which the category has been employed in philosophy and literature, see Walter Kaufman, Tragedy and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). For usage of the tragic closer to mine, see Daniel Day Williams, The Demonic and the Divine (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), 55-71.

3. Given the two factors, four situations of suffering arise. Systematically considered, a dimension of the tragic is present in three:
Avoidable and redeemable
NO TRAGEDY INVOLVED
Avoidable and irredeemable
RELATIVELY TRAGIC
Unavoidable and redeemable
RELATIVELY TRAGIC
Unavoidable and irredeemable
ABSOLUTELY TRAGIC

4. Systematically considered, one feature of tragedy is unavoidable suffering. Three sub-categories arise:
Self-inflicted:

Situational:
Other-inflicted:
unintentional

arising from
and
or


value conflict
undeserved.
unavoidable,

or from nature.

5. Some will wonder if a God who could not prevent her from being born ugly is of much value and a source of much hope. I see the point. But which is worse, a God who wanted to but could not or a God who could have but did not? Ah yes, but comes the rejoinder: God had a secret purpose in her being born that way that will eventually be seen to have been for the best. I don't accept that view any longer.

6. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, One vol. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), 11:35-97.

7. See The Washington Post National Weekly Edition (June 12-18, 1995), 7, and (July 3-9, 1995), 21. For more detailed analyses of income trends and economic opportunities in recent years, see Sheldon H. Danziger, et al., eds., Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). See also, Lester C. Thurow, The Future of Capitalism: How Today's Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow's World (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1996).

8. Richard C. Leone, "Taking 'Common' out of Commonwealth," The Nation (July 31/August 7, 1995), 130-134. For an analysis of how complexities in the economic order are matched by complexities in the political order, see E. J. Dionne, Jr., They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). See also, Michael Lind, Up From Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America (New York: The Free Press, 1996) 138-155, 235-258.

9. For a perceptive analysis of the past few decades, see E. J. Dionne, Jr., Why Americans Hate Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).

10. I am told that President Harry Truman once said that all he ever heard from his economic advisors about every policy was, "On the one hand, these good results will follow, and, on the other hand, these bad consequences will result." He longed for a "one-handed" economist.

11. The New York Times (March 31, 1996), E3.

12. I have explored many of the tensions, complexities, and ambiguities that arise in trying to increase liberty, equality, and the common good simultaneously in Process Ethics: A Constructive System (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1984), 195-310.

13. I have dealt with the complexities of equal opportunity and affirmative action in considerable detail in The Passion for Equality (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987), 99-128. Three books that respectively argue that with respect to affirmative action we should end it, mend it, or defend it are Terry Eastland, Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1996); Richard D. Kahlenberg, The Remedy: Class, Race and Affirmative Action (New York: New Republic/Basic Books, 1996); and Barbara R. Bergmann, In Defense of Affirmative Action (New York: New Republic/Basic Books, 1996).

14. See Lawrence M. Mead, The New Politics of Poverty: The Non-Working Poor in America (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Michael B. Katz, Improving Poor People: The Welfare State, The "Underclass," and Urban Schools as History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Joel F. Chandler, The Poverty of Welfare Reform (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Herbert J. Gans, The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Christopher Jencks, Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Mickey Kaus, The End of Equality (New York: New Republic/Basic Books, 1992), 103-148. See also, "Symposium: Illegitimacy and Welfare," in Society (July-August, 1996), 10-45, containing brief statements by sixteen prominent experts in the field. Finally, see a review of the years 1993-1996, outlining why welfare reform failed this time by David T. Ellwood, "Welfare Reform as I Knew It," The American Prospect (May-June, 1996), 22-29.

15. While these words are being written (July 25, 1996), Congress is about to put on the President's desk a bill that he may sign. In my opinion that legislation takes us backward toward worse policies not forward toward better ones, but those who dominate in both parties believe this is what will get them reelected. President Clinton would like nothing better than to rob candidate Dole of the welfare issue.

16. I am grateful to Kenneth Dean for this story he told me on July 15, 1996. I am unable to document whether the reference to the year 1082 points to some significant event in this long story, but it at least illustrates how in the minds of people present ills have their roots in the distant past. This fact itself is important.

17. Some material in the preceding paragraph has been taken from Theological Biology, 262-263.