Opposites

One of the things that I have noticed is that there are opposites in nature. There is hot and cold, air and water, fire and ice, night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, etc. One of the laws of science is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the Chinese Tao Te Ching there is yin and yang, the male and the female. In life there is good and evil. Opposites.

In life I have met some people who are very good and some who are very evil. Most people I think are a combination of good and bad. All of us have the capacity to do evil and one of the battles in life is to overcome our ability to do bad things.

If we take it as a given that God is good then where does evil come from? Does God have an opposite in evil? Does good and evil exist and the way we define it become God and the devil? I think that we have to name things before the concept can be clarified in our minds. The human mind is capable of understanding many things but it has to name or label before it can talk about anything. The human mind prefers concrete to abstract. Opposites.

People define good and evil according to their own beliefs and sense of morality. You see that with politicians who define their "enemies" as "evil." You see it in bickering spouses or family members who define whoever they are mad at as "evil." You see it in so called "preachers" who define whoever or whatever it is they don’t agree with as "evil."

The question is what is evil? The dictionary defines evil as the quality of being morally bad or wrong, wickedness; that which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction. Are people defining as evil things and people who really aren’t? Of course they are. People want to believe that they are good and that anyone who isn’t like them must be evil. I have known people who are very fond of throwing the word evil around while ignoring the evil that they do to others. The ones that shout the loudest about evil are the ones most likely to show evil towards other people. It is like Shakespeare says "me thinks she doth protest too much."

Is nature capable of evil? Nature is certainly capable of mass destruction as we have seen this past year with tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes. Does that make nature evil? No because nature is not capable of rational thought. This is an unstable planet that we live in. It is capable of extremes  in weather. It has Teutonic plates that are in constant motion. It does not however have rational thought and it is rational thought that determines whether actions can be evil.

Does God cause bad things to happen to people? No because God by his very nature is good. I know someone who has rejected God and claims to be an atheist because he blames all the bad things on God. In his own life he is capable of immense cruelty to others. I don’t see him as an atheist who doesn’t believe in God as much as a person who has rejected God and is incapable of seeing that he is embracing the devil who does do evil. Good and evil. Opposites.

Does the devil cause bad things to happen to people? No, not by himself he doesn’t, what he does is worse. The devil puts in our hearts the will for us to do the evil to our fellow beings. He puts in our minds the rationalization to destroy our planet, our fellow human beings, our own lives. He tells us that God causes evil and it is alright for us to behave any way we want because God has abandoned us. Why else would there be AIDS, hurricanes, terrorists if God didn’t care about us any more? The devil is the champion at rationalization. If you listen to him you believe you can do anything because you are the "good guy."

In one of my short stories called "Mirror Image" I had my hero having to fight himself, the self that was capable of evil. He couldn’t defeat his evil self until he was reminded that that being had no light. He did not have God in his heart. At the end of the story Sean, who is a senachie or bard, tells the audience, "And so you see in every creature there is the potential to do evil. It is our ability to fight the evil which makes us what we are. The gains ye may make from evil are only smoke and mirrors and have not true value at all." A friend of mine read that story and she remarked that what I had said there stuck in her mind. The path to evil is much easier to take then the path to good. It is the road that we take that defines whether we are good or evil.