What is "Evil" I define Evil as an act commited by an individual or a group of individuals that is not in accordance or in the best interests of Creation.
Many will say "I don't believe in Evil". Evil as a concept can be taken in many ways. When I refer to evil, I am not referring to the Darth Vader kind of evil. I mean the residue that taints our world with every act that countermands the nature of Creation, of this World of Forms. With every rape, murder, war, coarse word, racist comment. With every child that is exploited and every animal that is beaten, our world becomes a little less.
When we commit an act that runs against the nature of Creation we commit Evil. Don't get caught up in labels, they are not in and of themselves a bad thing. They make debates such as this possible.
If I beat my child for spilling her drink in the car, I commit Evil. It is my job as a father to nurture her growth and to help her learn and grow into who she is meant to be. Do I perform this basic function by inflicting pain on her for a simple mistake? No, absolutely not. I show no compassion or understanding for her developing little bodies lack of fine motor skills and her poor judgement that lead to the spilling of the drink.
Now if I help her clean it up, and kiss away her tears and show her a better way or place to drink, then I commit Good. And this adds to the world.
Man creates evil through his actions. But man can also uncreate it, through his positive actions. With every kiss, every embrace, every act of charity and every expression of compassion, our world is built back up again. Jesus showed us that Love can and will triumph. Now we just have to get there one act at a time.
Peace
7 comments:
Curing someone of cancer goes against the "nature of Creation". So is not letting the weak starve. It seems to me that you've got it all very much backwards.
Creation is a "nature red in tooth and claw" kinda place. It's not evil, it's just not necessarily in our best interest. Our humanity transcends the world of forms, and that transcendence is often in opposition to it.
Now I'm certainly not saying that evil does not exist, but it does seem to me that your association of Creation=good, interfering with Creation= evil to be rather flawed.
Then perhaps Creation is the wrong word for that is not what I intended to say at all.
Perhaps I mean Nature, the intrinsic goodness and beauty that is naturally a part of this world. When we live in harmony with that nature, then we thrive and we grow.
Since we are a part of Nature and of this world, to cure someone of cancer corrects a wrong. How that wrong got there is another subject for debate. Feeding the hungry or clothing the naked is something Jesus speaks of many times in many writings. This too shows compassion for anothers suffering and rights a wrong.
I don't believe the world is a bad place. I once heard it said that Earth is not a bad place at all, it's just that it's full of humans.
If Creation is a nature red in tooth and claw, then it is human nature that is the culprit.
Again, I have to disagree (not that the world is a wonderful place, or that nature is good, yay nature) but that the problem is humans - oh and that "Nature" is the word you're searching for.
Not Nature. If "we are part of nature and everything we do is natural" such as curing cancer, then WalMart is nature. I think the hole that keeps getting deeper here is that you're using terminology with which you may be unfamiliar: "nature" and "creation" are well travelled roads with VERY specific meanings.
Howbout "Justice"? Real justice means "the way things are supposed to be but usually aren't". The Egyptian word was "Ma'at" from which we derive mathematics, measure, masonry, and possibly magic.
Keep going! You're on to something.
Ok, so not Creation and not Nature. And you are right, perhaps I am not as familiar with what these terms MEAN as I assumed I was. I love hole pokers, they make you think.
Perhaps then the definition of Evil would then have to be an act or thought that takes us away from the Divine and moves us back towards the animal, or baseness. Before you get your finger out again for some more hole poking let me explain.
Our purpose here is to attain an awareness of the Divine within. In order to do this we must let go of our ego and all that entails (rage, jealousy, covetness, envy, greed, etc...). We must move towards the Divine first by our actions and second through our awareness. By expressing love, compassion and understanding towards those around you, familiar and unknown, and apply these emotions to problems or situations we are faced with, we make of ourselves pure/purer vessels for receiving awareness of the Divine.
Since the Divine is by its nature (well as much as we can understand) Good, we must expunge all Evil from ourselves in order for this to be possible. In a sense, we need to get ourselves out of the way and surrender ourselves to the experience, rather than hang onto control and attempt to force it to happen.
Creation and Nature (at the risk of further misunderstandings) are the arena in which we exist and experience. Since they are neither good nor evil, they simply are and affect us in a myriad of ways as we travel our road through them. Some events we perceive as good and others we perceive as bad, but that is for us personally, not for Creation or Nature specifically. They're doing they're own thing, it's up to us to avoid the pitfalls when possible and to embrace beauty as we encounter it.
OK, now poke again.
"Perhaps then the definition of Evil would then have to be an act or thought that takes us away from the Divine and moves us back towards the animal, or baseness."
Poke poke. Nope. No holes. An oblique but serviceable definition.
"Evil, in a large sense, may be described as the sum of the opposition, which experience shows to exist in the universe, to the desires and needs of individuals; whence arises, among humans beings at least, the sufferings in which life abounds. Thus evil, from the point of view of human welfare, is what ought not to exist. Nevertheless, there is no department of human life in which its presence is not felt; and the discrepancy between what is and what ought to be has always called for explanation in the account which mankind has sought to give of itself and its surroundings."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm
Seems so much less menacing but no less prevalent when looked at in such simple terms.
Thanks for the lesson!
During the times of the Early Church, the doctrine of the Gnostics was formally called the doctrine of "Evil."
Think about that the next you say the Lord's Prayer.... "and protect us from the Gnostics." ;)
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