Part Three: The Inevitability of Evil in Good

It has been suggested in Philosophical texts that Evil must exist in order to “make real” our apparent freedom of choice. (Free will is obviously not truly free if we can not select from a fully stacked deck of cards.) I note that the fundamental limitation of our free will, described in the previous chapter, seems to undermine the statement somewhat. There is an underlying discord—whispered grievances of God “wanting or not wanting this or that,” in relation to our own plight; Burdening us, as it were, with Evil. In my estimation, our fundamental desire is not so much to be extrinsically Free to... as it is to be intrinsically Free from (fear, lack, need, etc.).

…does He/She not want to interfere with our business? I counter this assumption with the notion that it is not Our business vs. God’s; we follow in the same line of work. God goes about God’s business—inventing and reinventing. We are entirely a part of this process. A writerly metaphor begs itself: Each narrative plays itself out... There are endings that we do not like; but we cannot put the book down, being so intrinsically entangled in the plot. Good and Evil are moot if we accept (as I do) that there is only God (as the sum of the light and dark, the full and void; complete, thus completely neutral). One might say that there is no Evil other than that which our social mores, or personal biases, begin to deem as such.

(While not retracting from the previous position that Heaven-Earth-Hell are one, we might still, as an apt illustration, quote from The Bible, Matthew 16:19 “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.")

That is not to say that there are no wrong in the world, or consequential suffering. Once there is Choice, there is a range of selections; and as we can see full-well not every option provides the “greatest good” in outcome. Accordingly, we are not freed of individual or collective Responsibility. Indeed, I feel that we have tremendous Power, despite the insignificance we justifiably feel in the vast turmoil of Reality. We have Inertia; and that is a devastating force.

On a small scale we dread writer’s block, knowing how difficult it is to get a progressive momentum going! …All the worse of a blockade is formed when any contingent of our-kind (whether one man or a million) refuses to question social custom, and thereby obstructs the free flow of thought, which alone makes possible self-correction, balance, harmony—i.e. the sense of peace that we inherently seek out.

…does Satan and his so-called legion of demons exist? …Is religion just a clever man’s way of making sure we follow a set of rules because we humans are animals…? From the Hebrew, satan literally means “adversary” or “to oppose.” Every other creature on Earth dutifully obeys the laws of Nature, without apparent self-consciousness or resistance in that obeisance. Not so with Man; we know this deeply—through our painful awareness of our dim misleading intuition, lack of reliable instinct, and constant companion of Doubt. We seem to crave rules and guidance, while grappling with our gift of Freedom.

As suggested in the conclusion of the last chapter, only we among animals are granted the potentiality of standing in opposition to God’s propositions. Hence, Humanity is Satan; and it is we who form collectively the legion of demons. …Once again, I find our tendency to apply a displaced psychology. Not unlike when we bruise ourselves against the leg of a table, and curse it stupidly rather than ourselves, knowing acutely that our own inattention has led to the painful incident. We look to allocate some kind of blame beyond; unburden ourselves… It is not a problem of Religion or Sin; but of the hard work that we see in mobilizing and disciplining the flickering spirit within.