Toward Evil

Toward Evil
Diving toward evil in 2013, I'm stopping to add an essay from 2004.
I shake and feel fearful around certain people. I sense an evil presence coming from them that's very real. It's an aura more than a thing. You know it by your own feelings and you want to stay away from it. Or can you be attracted to it at the same time?
Evil is the essence of human beings. Didn't Jesus say, "But if you, who are evil, wouldn't give your child a stone instead of bread, how much more will God give you good things"?
In today's world it seems appropriate to ask what we mean by "evil." Here are the ideas of a variety of thoughtful people. I can't claim them to be a random cross-section of the population. Mostly they are people with at least a high school education, middle class, and a wide variety of ages, from early teens through older adult. Several ethnic backgrounds are represented. Theologically, these are people who hold a variety of secular and Christian positions.In the following statements, "I" refers to the speaker being quoted or paraphrased. It does not refer to the compiler of this article. Each paragraph represents a different respondent. In most cases, people were not responding specifically to the questions in the headings. The headings are simply a way to organize the wide range of material.
What is evil, anyway? And is there a difference between evil and sin?
Evil is a rebellion against the good things of God and God's creation. Evil seems more than sin. Evil is something that is done but also seems to be an existence outside us. Our minds can't comprehend reality without placing things in opposition. Hate exists in order that we might see compassion. If we simply feel hate and allow its reality to illuminate compassion, no violence is done. But our small minds focus energy upon hate and feed it, resulting in violence. Through our own free will, we create violence and cruelty. God is present everywhere, so God is present even in violence and cruelty. But every evil act ends, and in its place arises compassion and love, or at least the yearning for them.
Sin is stupidity or habit or blindness. Evil is intentional. Evil is the essence of human beings. Didn't Jesus say, "But if you, who are evil, wouldn't give your child a stone instead of bread, how much more will God give you good things"?
I shake and feel fearful around certain people. I sense an evil presence coming from them that's very real. It's an aura more than a thing. You know it by your own feelings and you want to stay away from it.
Evil is causing harm or ill-will to another being against her or his will. Sin is brokenness, or estrangement from God and others and the created world. But evil seems to be something more; maybe a composite of sins or systemic sins.Evil is actions, attitudes, and beliefs that destroy life in all its forms. It's unmerited, unjustified suffering. Evil is what detracts from the integrity of the world.
Evil is waste of any kind.
Evil is the absence of awe.
Sin is failing to do something that could have made the world better. Evil is deliberately choosing to do something that will bring hurt.
I read in Bill Williams' book Naked Before God that evil is like dissonant notes in music. We don't eradicate these notes, but we add more notes to them so that they become beautiful music. Therefore evil is an incomplete state or unfinished reality.Evil is what takes away the abundance of life. It's desiring the opposite of the highest good. Yet it's really hard to pin down what is good and what is bad.Sin and evil are of two kinds: personal and systemic. Systemic sin and evil involve human institutions. Individuals participate in these institutions, but they have a kind of life of their own in which evil is spread around even though individuals don't want that to happen. Problems like world hunger, nuclear war, poverty, violent crime, racism - these are evil things that are beyond the control of an individual. Together we could overcome them but we don't seem to be able to work together to do so.
Is evil a force equivalent to, but opposite from, God, or does God encompass it somehow?
Evil has been given metaphysical status for a long time. Does it "soften" evil too much to deny it metaphysical status? Does insisting that it's a force equivalent to God help us to take responsibility for it more appropriately? Does insisting that it's the result of ignorance, greed, and other human failings help us take responsibility?I don't believe that there is an evil entity that is separate from God. God encompasses all that is, and that must include evil somehow. I don't have a sense of God as a good being who is battling Satan, an evil being. Whatever evil is, it is part of God. An instructor I had used to say that maybe evil is that which is far from the heart of God.
I believe that there are "principalities and powers" that wage war against the power of God, but my view of salvation also holds that God, through Jesus, has overcome the principalities and powers even though there continue to be skirmishes. Evil is the active absence of good; it's not a power equivalent to God.
Evil must somehow be within the encompassing realm of God, or life would be totally fearsome and unmanageable. It often seems that evil is outside of God, and we become so focused on the evil that is done to us that we lose sight of the awareness that God is bigger and more powerful than anything else. Sometimes we wonder who is winning the struggle. We need to remember God's transcendence.Evil is a force at work in our world; the sinister side of the good. Evil is a force and it has power, but the good Creator and Love has a power that always supersedes the ravages of evil. I believe that evil can always be conquered; that evil never "wins" even though evil is devastating. When love is present, evil is incapacitated.
God is infinite, so God must contain evil and also everything else we can't understand. Infinity presupposes that everything is included.
Evil is not outside of God's influence or realm as an opposite force. Evil was a possibility when God took the risk to create, and God created, knowing that and not being overwhelmed by it as we often are.
Are natural disasters evil, or is evil something only humans "do"?
Evil shows itself in many forms; the worst form being what human beings do to each other. There does seem to be a "dark" side to God's good creation. I don't understand why. Even creation seems to have free will. I don't think God sends hurricanes and earthquakes to punish people, and I don't believe God sends people cancer or other calamities. But this is part of our reality and it evokes a lot of questions that can't really be answered. We live in a good but imperfect world.
Non-humans can't be evil. Evil has no power without human cooperation.I don't believe that the non-human world is evil. It doesn't have choices the way humans do. For an act to be evil, there has to be an intention to harm. It's also interesting that science is discovering that natural calamities like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes have a vital function in sustaining life on earth. For example, certain compounds necessary for life are released into the atmosphere through natural disasters that are not present in any other form. This mixture of creativity and destruction is hard to fathom.
Is evil a force outside our world, or is it in us?
We all have the capacity within us to do evil. In fact, we all have the capacity to do the most evil things that have ever been done.
Evil is a force outside us, and in us too. I believe that evil can possess a person against their will and cause them to do things, like run over someone with a bus, so that Satan can destroy that person. When evil wants to destroy someone, especially a Christian, it will use all kinds of methods to accomplish its ends. And when a person cooperates with evil, that is even worse.
We need to identify and name evil when we see it, but that also needs to be done within ourselves. Too often we see evil as only something "out there." We need a healthy awareness that evil is also within us, but that the seed of God is growing and has more power than any evil.
I don't know how to think about the relationship between evil and the shadow side of humans that is normal and important. I do think that as humanity progresses, evil will be lessened.
Why do people have such different ideas of what actions are evil? Is there any objective reality to evil, or is it just dependent on a person's perspective?
I believe in the need to delve into the dark places of oneself, meet the shadow, embrace it and know that it holds gifts as well as dangers. It is in us all. We project our inner darkness onto the other, and we do that individually as well as nationally. I agree with Jung that the hope for the world to avoid disaster rests in each individual's choice to pursue the inner journey.Humans would probably agree that there are some things that are rather universally considered wrong, evil, or bad, even if we couldn't agree on exactly what they mean or the conditions that have to be present. But that says more to me about the inherent goodness of humans than it does about evil. Evil has an objective reality but it manifests differently in each of us, the way God does. Our unique personalities, histories, and thoughts cause us to understand and name evil differently.
There is a relative nature to evil. We tend to label an action "evil" when done by an enemy, while the same thing done by us or our group may be called "freedom fighting" or "just war" or "self-defense" or any of a host of other less dire labels. It is hard for us to acknowledge the evil within ourselves. We tend to see it more in others, especially our enemies.
What causes people to do things that are seen as evil?
Evil is about ignorance. It's worse if we could have known better but didn't bother, than if there's no way we could have known.
People are created in God's image, so they have to be good at their core. Because we are created with free will, we make choices that separate us from the relationship God desires to have with us. Because of woundedness in individuals, systems, structures, families, churches, society, and so on, people sometimes seem "controlled" by something that feels evil. . .the antithesis of the good.
I saw a bumper sticker that said "Evil thrives when God's people do nothing." This gives humans a lot of power over evil. What would it look like to have humans doing things that give evil a "failure to thrive"? The power of love unleashed in our world profoundly confronts the force of evil.
Fear is at the heart of all that we call sin and evil. I believe there are only two emotional realities: love and fear. But for me, love is greater than all fear. It will reign in the end.
Once I know about my demons, I don't wipe them on others. We do evil things because of our unexamined issues, our wounds, and our lack of awareness.
There's a combination of factors like ignorance, greed, denial, apathy, and laziness that come together into a force that takes us away from our true face and God's hopes for the world. This force is behind the evil things for which individuals and world systems are responsible.
Some intriguing thoughts about evil (quoted or paraphrased) by the authors cited.
All the things we usually consider opposites, such as past and future, good and evil, pain and pleasure,
"...are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave. . . .For a wave, although a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point. For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest alone nor in the trough alone, but in their unity (try to imagine a wave with crests but no troughs). Crest and trough-indeed all opposites-are inseparable aspects of one underlying activity. . . ."
"Perhaps we can begin to understand why life, when viewed as a world of separate opposites, is so totally frustrating, and why progress has actually become not a growth but a cancer. In trying to separate the opposites and cling to those we judge positive, such as pleasure without pain, life without death, good without evil, we are really striving after phantoms without the least reality. Might as well strive for a world of crests and no troughs, buyers and no sellers, lefts and no rights, ins and no outs." (Ken Wilber, No Boundary)
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoingthere is a field.Come. I will meet you there."(Maulana Jalalu-'d-din Rumi)
"The desires of a single pair of aphids, if satisfied, would destroy the Earth. After only a single year such aphids would generate over half a trillion offspring. The same could be said for the majority of the insects and, in a related sense, much of life. Their desires to unfold into being are immense, while the energy of the Earth is finite. To energize those aphids means to remove energy from other regions, from other beings, and for those others to perish. Each being in the universe longs for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence requires extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun. . . ."
"Within self-reflexive consciousness, terror becomes aware of itself. With such conscious self-awareness, life understands that it is precious and liable to destruction. It is out of this new depth of fear that humans devoted themselves to eliminating violence and destruction. A new kind of insecurity emerged in the universe with humans. . . ."
"The determination to dominate the universe so that all insecurity, limitation, destruction, and threat of destruction could be eliminated eventuated in racism, militarism, sexism, and anthropocentrism, dysfunctional maneuvers of the human species in its quest to deal with what it regarded as the unacceptable aspects of the universe." (Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, The Universe Story)
"Satan, Lucifer, and the other demonic figures. . .are psychologically necessary. They had to be invented, had to be created, in order to make human action and freedom possible. Otherwise, there would be no consciousness. For every thought destroys as it creates: to think this thing, I have to cut out something else; to say 'yes' to this is to say ' no' to that. . . .Thus, the hope that Satan or the other 'adversaries' can be gotten rid of by gradual process toward perfection, would not be a constructive idea even if it were possible. . . .The goal of perfectibility is a bastardized concept smuggled into ethics from technology, and results from a confusion between the two."(Rollo May, Love and Will)
". . .I prefer to regard [demons] as the impersonal spiritual realities at the center of institutional life. Think, for example, or a riot at a soccer game, in which, for a few frenzied minutes, people who in their ordinary lives behave quite decently on the whole suddenly find themselves bludgeoning and even killing opponents whose only sin was rooting for the other team. Afterwards people often act bewildered, and wonder what could have possessed them. Was it a Riot Demon that leaped upon them from the sky, or was it something intrinsic to the social situation: a 'spirituality' that crystallized suddenly, precipitated by the conjunction of an outer permissiveness, heavy drinking, a violent ethos, a triggering incident, and the inner violence of the fans?. . . "Frankly, most of us, myself included, simply do not want to believe in radical evil. The implications are too terrible. . . .Evil is within us (in Jungian terms, the personal 'shadow') and among us (as collective 'shadow'), but much of that can be raised to consciousness and transformed. We are speaking now of a deeper evil-a layer of sludge beneath the murky waters that can be characterized only as a hellish hatred of the light, of truth, of kindness and compassion, a brute lust for annihilation. It is the sedimentation of thousands of years of human choices for evil (not wrong choices merely, but actual choices for evil) that has precipitated Satan as the spirituality of evil." (Brubaker 2002)(Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers)