As I write this, we are coming upon the tenth anniversary of the attacks on 9/11/2001. I watched a show on PBS about the struggle of faith that many survivors had (and continue to have) after those attacks. They don't believe that a merciful God would have allowed such a thing to happen, and they can't comprehend the evil that came into their lives.
I don't believe that evil actually exists. Having said that, I nonetheless recognize it when I see it: Evil always takes the form of principles over compassion. Thus, the man who killed 78 people in Norway (most of them children) was clearly evil because he sacrificed lives in the name of social and racial purity. Osama bin Laden, who killed 3,000+ people in the name of Islam and Jihad, was functioning from principle. Hitler, who believed fervently in racial purity and the superiority of the Arian race, was evil when he put those principles into practice by slaughtering millions of people. But Hitler, bin Laden and the Norwegian killer all believed that they were doing the right thing. It's important to remember that principles can be right or wrong, and when we adhere to them despite the suffering they cause, we are committing evil. Principles should always yield to reality.
By the measure I have just laid out, and as a liberal, I have started to see conservative Republicans as being evil, especially as their positions become more rigid and doctrinaire. They believe in certain principles -- small government that provides few social services, favoritism for the rich, absolute economic freedom, freedom from regulation (regardless of the harm to the economy or the environment), survival of the fittest, etc. -- and they adhere to those principles even though the full realization of them would result in a society with huge economic and social inequities (something that we already have, actually). In their view, small government trumps everything. That is evil because it elevates a principle above the welfare of the people. (Note: I wrote this before Trump came on the political scene. Republicans have become so much worse since then.)
Just about every religion in the world has an evil side. That's because almost every religion adheres to strict principles, and proclaims itself to be the absolute truth. In doing so, it positions itself against the rest of the world, and it encourages its adherents to be intolerant and prejudiced. Islam may have its Jihadis, but Christianity had its inquisitors and crusaders.
My best friend from childhood is now a Christian minister who believes that I will go to Hell because I am not a born-again Christian and/or because I am gay. He is a person with naturally good and generous instincts, but over the years he has repeatedly repressed those instincts because they conflict with scripture (scripture as he interprets it). Repressing his natural instincts in favor of the absolutist principles of his religion is evil. In my view, our good instincts may be our most direct communication from God. Happily, my friend is not in a position to control my life or dictate my religion.
Extremism and fanaticism are evil because they always arise from principles. Principle itself may be evil, but I'll withhold judgement on that because some principles -- the best principles -- arise from life. For example, my statement above that principles should always yield to compassion is a principle in itself, and it is a good one.
(Note: The behavior of serial killers, who get a thrill from simply killing, seems to go against this idea that principals are always at the core of evil. However, I believe it is possible that every serial killer has, at his core, a personal principle that he is adhering to. Of course, I may be wrong, and I will never know because I don't have such impulses.)
I started this article by saying that there is no evil, and I need to explain that. My religious views are based on the Seth Material, and the tenets of the Material guide much of what I am saying here.
Seth said we are all connected through God. We live in a pantheistic universe, meaning that the universe exists within God. The living energy that forms God also forms the universe, and God's consciousness flows with this energy, permeating everything (including us). Since the universe is formed from the life energy of God, and since God is not evil, nothing in the universe can be evil, including those seemingly evil people among us.
So if the evil people among us are not evil, what are they? They are ignorant, or misguided, or confused, or obsessed, or repressed. Most evil people suffered deep hurts as children which then became unconscious motivators later in life. Striking out violently makes perfect sense to the inner wounded child. The rationale for striking out is always secondary to the retribution being enacted, which has a healing and cleansing effect on the child. The adult portion of the personality provides the rationale (the principle), and that gives cover to the child. The striking out is usually extreme because the wounds of the child are repressed and festering. Not to get waylaid by psychology, my point is: Evil is good which has gone awry.
All evil people believe that they are doing good. Even a person who is completely self-centered may believe that "watching out for number one" is the right thing to do. The Norwegian man who murdered 78 people, mostly children, in 2011, believed that by killing children at a political camp, he was erasing the future leaders of the liberal movement, and in his mind that was a good thing because it would set the country on a different path. He also believed that he would jump-start a dialogue in his country about racial and national integrity and purity. (He didn't realize that no one would listen to the ideas of a murderer.)
In this country, periodically an angry gunman will slaughter a bunch of innocent people, which will set the nation into mourning. Even in cases where the gunman seems to be functioning out of rage and nothing more, somewhere in his head there must have been principles or beliefs that allowed him to do it. Principles and beliefs provide the On switch to unthinkable acts.
People who lose their faith after suffering a great loss (such as the 9/11 survivors) don't understand that nothing has been lost. Every person who dies is still alive (in an after-death environment, according to Seth) and will be reborn, so no one has actually died. Furthermore, Seth said that every person chooses the time and nature of his death in advance, albeit on an unconscious level. Indeed, Seth said that we choose the major events of our lives in advance also. The likelihood, then, is that both the victims and the survivors had spiritual lessons to learn from the tragedy that they endured. They will take those lessons with them, and their future lives will be enhanced by what they experienced.
People who blame God for the tragedies they suffer don't understand God's role in our lives. When explaining our relationship to God, my
favorite analogy is to say God is to us as the ocean is to the fish. The ocean is the fish's environment, but it is also the source
of the fish's existence because the ocean made the fish's evolution
possible. In the same way, God is both our environment and the source
of our lives. If a barracuda comes along and eats the fish, the fish
doesn't blame the ocean. The fish doesn't look to the ocean and say, "Why didn't you protect me?" In other words, God is not to blame. As
observers of this tragedy, we aren't able to see that the fish isn't
actually dead, that the fish will reincarnate, that the fish chose its
"death" beforehand, and that
the fish also chose the nature of its death. If we could see
those things, we'd know that there was no tragedy at all, only a
transition. If the fish experienced some horrific events during its
life, or a horrific death, it chose those experiences for spiritual
reasons that are not apparent to the rest of us (such choices are made
on a level that we aren't aware of). The fish invited those horrific events for its spiritual growth. If the fish had family members for
whom the death of the fish was a great tragedy, those family members
had something to learn from the event, and they chose to be a part of
it.
The Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition would have us believe that God is a protector and/or a dispenser of punishment, kind of like a loving but stern father. When something good or bad happens to us, we often talk about God's "will" or God's "plan" for our lives. But Seth said that God doesn't determine the events of our lives. As I have said in other articles, God gave us our freedom during the Creation, and that freedom is absolute. If God had a "plan" for our lives, we wouldn't be free (in other words, any plan that God made for us would be a restriction on the freedom he gave us). God's role is to provide us with life and a universe in which to exist, not to determine the events of our lives -- and God has performed that role very well indeed since, according to Seth, we are all immortal and provided for. According to Seth, the greater universe in which we exist is a loving and supportive place, giving us unlimited opportunities for growth. If we intuitively feel that there is a plan for our lives, then it is a plan that we have made for ourselves. When we pray to God, it is our inner or "higher" self that listens and responds.
God's gift to us is continuous new beginnings. I like the analogy of infinite new canvases. With each new life or phase of our existence, we receive a new blank canvas on which we are free to paint whatever picture we care to paint. If we paint a picture of horror, we have only ourselves to blame. Learning to create better and happier lives (pictures) for ourselves is part of the learning process. The Christian idea is that we have one life in which to "get it right", but the reality, according to Seth, is that our opportunities to "get it right" are infinite.
Part of our confusion stems from the plane of existence that we presently inhabit (i.e., this physical universe or Earth plane). Each plane of existence has its own natural laws, or "root assumptions" as Seth called them. In this Earth plane, we have death, destruction and chance as root assumptions, among others. As a result, some deaths will seem capricious and therefore tragic. But as I said above, that caprice is an illusion. If, as Seth said, we choose our deaths before-hand, then there is really no caprice at all.
All of the following things which we accept as basic parts of life are actually illusions which are spawned by the root assumptions of this plane of existence: aging, deterioration, death (mortality), powerlessness, chance, error, forgetfulness, conflict and destruction (and maybe others I can't think of now). Time and space are the most basic root assumptions, and they are false.
To put it succinctly, living a life on the Earth is like enlisting in the army, forgetting that you enlisted, and then complaining that boot camp is too difficult. Seth described our universe as a "camouflage" universe in which we forget our past existences once we have entered. As humans evolve, that may change, and we may remember our pasts; but for now, we can't. Seth said that in the planes we occupy which are not "camouflage", the knowledge of God and the nature of the universe, and the awareness of our immortality, are available to all the occupants.
Before we were born, we chose to be human beings. Before we were born, we chose at least some of the challenges we would face. What makes it all seem so capricious is that we don't remember making those choices. But we did, and we need to have faith that we chose our lessons because we needed to learn them. If one of those lessons is particularly harsh, and if we lose our faith in response to it, God is not harmed. And when we've left our human form, we will be able to see the larger picture, and our faith will be restored.
Hinduism and Buddhism may have things to teach us here. Seth said that the concept of karma is an over-simplification of a deeper reality, that it is not just a matter of cause and effect (i.e., you cause bad karma by acting badly in one life, and you reap the effect, or punishment, in another life). Nonetheless, Seth made some very telling comments that seemed to support that notion. He said that if we could see the past actions of many victims of violence, we might not feel such a great sympathy for them. He said that many of the victims of the Holocaust had been Huns in former lives (the Huns were nomadic marauders who conquered most of Europe and the Roman Empire, and slaughtered civilians, apparently without remorse). Through the concepts of reincarnation and karma, Hinduism and Buddhism provide us with an explanation for inexplicable acts of violence. Christianity does not provide explanations, which may be one of the reasons Christians sometimes lose their faith when dealing with tragedy.
If this article sounds a little glib, as if I am telling you to "get over" your grief, let me say that I understand what loss feels like, having suffered my share. But the grief that we feel when someone is killed is really for ourselves. What I am saying is that we needn't worry about the person who died. It's important that we understand that victims of violence are playing out reincarnational dramas of their own. In this article, I have addressed the theological issues -- i.e., our expectation that God should intervene, or that God is somehow responsible. It is possible to feel great grief for the loss of someone dear without losing our faith in God. Simply say to yourself, "I am having this experience because I have something to learn from it." What's important is that we have a concept of God that is correct. If we see God as a benevolent and omnipotent father, God will always disappoint us. But if we see God as the great Ocean that gave us life, and which now protects our life, we will be in a better position to create happiness for ourselves.
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