How to get out of deep trouble

Many people have, in their personal lives, their work, or in their "beliefs," have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble, and wonder how to extricate themselves. They also worry about their children, particularly to protect them from making the same mistakes or, as is also true in many cases, how to help extricate the children from the same mistakes the adults had made.

One can receive no better advice for this problem than consulting the first Psalm. Here it is and I will comment on specifics.

Psalm 1

1 Happy the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked, nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent,
2 but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade. [Whatever he does prospers.]
4 Not so the wicked, not so; they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
5 Therefore in judgment the wicked shall not stand, nor shall sinners, in the assembly of the just.
6 For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes.

This is one of my favorites psalms, even though it is not full of beautiful song and imagery, even though it is only six lines long, and even though it seems obvious on the surface. It is one of my favorite psalms because I can point to it to advise people who are in serious messes how to get themselves out, in a very practical step by step way. You can also think of this psalm as being like an abstract, a summary of what is in the rest of the psalms. It is also like a prescription for an ailment.

If you and/or your children are enmeshed in a bad situation, here is how to follow the "prescription" of Psalm 1, step by step.

1. "Follow not the counsel of the wicked"- no longer take the advice of the troublemakers and that includes stopping both conversations and also your reading of their writings.
2. "Nor walk in the way of sinners"- no longer emulate any part of the behavior of those who you had been either associating with or looking up toward.
3. "Nor sit(s) in the company of the insolent"-no longer hang around with not only the troublemakers listed above, but also anyone who has a sneering, irreverent attitude toward ANYTHING, since insolence is contagious and a barrier to further development and understanding.
4. "Delight in the law of the Lord"-this means to start to understand how God's unmeasurable love for each human being is the source of all of his instruction, even the "don'ts" that people do not easily understand. So read scripture and other (authentic) religious writings and practice understanding that the source of all the "law" of God is founded in his love for each person.
5. "Meditate on his law day and night"-This does not mean give up your job or your activities and just sit around thinking about God. It means that your awareness of God and his sayings and instructions should be like a constant companion who is valued, not something brought out of the closet only once a week during worship service.
6. "He is like a tree planted near running water"-Recognize that if you are to be a good tree, you need to be near constantly running, new refreshed water. Thus "plant" yourself where you can receive this type of constant encouragement in goodness and renewal. This may mean transferring from a low morals school to one of higher spiritual goodness, for example, as a practical step. This could mean changing jobs or co-workers, so that you are surrounded by those who constantly refresh with positive attitude toward each other and life, and not the negative. New friends who bring constant refreshed goodness into even the small parts of life (like shopping, sports activities, etc) should be cultivated and surround yourself with them, rather than those who recycle the same stale water of depressiveness and negativity.
7. "The wicked...are like chaff which the wind drives away"-To explain the image, when one harvests wheat for making bread, the outer layer must be removed from the grain, and this paper thin coating is called the chaff. Wind (from hand held fans) is one way that people in Bible times separated the heavy good grain on the ground from the light chaff which blows away and is discarded. So goodness is "heavy weight" while the wicked are "light weight," even though it may not seem that way because of the power of the assets and persuasiveness of the wicked. Thus this advice means to start withdrawing any assets you have invested in the wicked, whether it be actual assets (money and time) or virtual assets (the attention that you pay to them and their messages). When you withdraw your money, your time and your attention from supporting the wicked, you move your assets to the good and "lighten" the wicked, so they can be blown away, by removing their base of operation. So do not donate your money or time to "causes" that the wicked advocate (even those that are supposed or even legitimate charities) because your good intended donations keep the wicked weighed down in place. As you pull away you and your children's involvement with even "good" activities that the wicked pursue, you will start to lighten the anchor of the wicked, and they will more easily topple when it is their time.
8. "The Lord watches over the way of the just"-You must remember EVERY DAY and also teach your children that God knows absolutely everything you have ever thought, to say nothing of what you have actually done, whether in secret or open, whether openly aggressive or passively aggressive: God knows ALL of it, even before you do it. It is important that your children and YOU understand that, because that will give you the knowledge and strength to pull away from wickedness NOW and not "later." God's knowledge is not delayed.
9. "But the way of the wicked vanishes"-When support for wickedness is withdrawn, it vanishes. Think of all the evil people who have existed in history whose names don't even exist in history books, etc. Life is good and forward looking, and if left alone, wickedness dries up on the vine, blows away, and vanishes for good. HOWEVER, humans have a temptation, which is to do "research" and record the deeds of the wicked (and write "suspense" fiction novels about wicked people, both real and fictional) which hinders the natural drying up and disappearing of evil. You must wean yourself and your children away from documentation, either fictional or non fiction, of wickedness. Stop producing such works and stop consuming them.

Now, more about point 9. I'm not an old party pooper who is trying to censor. I enjoy a good murder mystery novel, such as by Agatha Christie, as much as anyone. But it is the dosage that is the problem. Normal human beings living during normal times are not supposed to be immersed in the constant awareness, study and entertainment that are created based on wickedness! It's like the debate about TV. In a normal life, unless there is war, most humans never saw except maybe once in their life the criminal killing of a human. Yet within a few years after TV was developed children have seen dozens of killings, both real and imagined, a DAY on TV. It is a matter of dosage, whether in reality or entertainment.

Understand that humans have short memories for a reason: that is part of God's plan to allow wickedness to dry up on the vine and blow away in the wind. People hinder their own health and God's plan when they chase the evil "chaff" in the wind, capture it, put it on film or laminate it, so that people can be "entertained" or "never forget" or "learn about history." You must wean your children-and your selves-away from contemplation of the works, either fictional or real, of wickedness, so that in the natural cycle of things they dry up and vanish. Water yourselves with the constant flow of goodness (or at least reality based normalcy!) Do not chase after or feed the works of the wicked, and let them vanish as their support does. Do not succumb to the hubris and temptation (like Saruman in the "Lord of the Rings") of "studying" or, worse, as people do today, are "entertained" by rehashing and recycling wicked deeds in the past, the present news, and certainly not the flood of "entertainment." It is like judicious salt, once in a while, sure, read such a book or produce such a movie, but in the way it is now, the wheat is trampled underfoot while the chaff is glorified, put on digital or other media, and floods the lungs and the air of everyone who is trying to follow the way of good, but is saturated by echoes of wickedness.

I hope that this helps! It will if you just do it!

Understanding God and the forces of evil

I was going to blog about something else, but I go where the need is greatest ;-)

People who know me know that I love the Rev Billy Graham, and am a great fan of his. When I used to post links, before I simplified this blog, his daily question column was highlighted. I urge you all to read his daily column; it's just wonderful.

He's limited by the space of the column, but I am not, ha, so I will add things to what he says, as I will today.

Today's questioner asks the Rev Graham if God is strong enough to overcome evil. Billy Graham gave a great answer, which is that yes, of course God is, and that the only thing that God "cannot do" is to lie, be false, do anything imperfect or evil since God is of course the source and thus the purity of all perfection and goodness (my words not his). I'm just doing a summary as lead in to what I want to add.

However, I spotted something that I'm used to looking for, which is any potential error in assumption that is behind the question itself. This is not criticism, as there is no bad or dumb question except for the question that goes unasked. But sometimes, in fact often, a person asks a question assuming something that is false (behind the question itself), and he or she then assumes that if the questioner answers the question that the conscious or unconscious background assumption is also true. This is an urgent case of this phenomenon in today's column.

I am quite certain, since I've heard this background assumption MANY times before, that the questioner is asking "if God is powerful enough to overcome evil" while at the same time assuming that God IS combating evil at this time. Thus the questioner logically wonders why evil seems so strong if God is combating evil, and God is all powerful. Well, here's the rub. God is not combating evil at this time, as he has left THAT to human free choice. Here is the how and the why.

Adam and Eve, through their free choice, selected evil over good. Adam and Eve had perfection of life as provided by God in the Garden of Eden, yet as soon as they were offered "more," (and the only thing that "more" is, really, is power over other humans via evil knowledge and deeds), they accepted the serpent (Satan's) offer.

Likewise, Satan appears to Jesus, offering him power over the world (which Jesus already has, but Satan means that he wants Jesus to "power share" with him, which means to gain presumably "greater power" since evil deeds, which God will not do, would be "OK.") Jesus of course not only turns down the "offer," but corrects Satan's misconception that any additional true "power" can even be offered, since it cannot. There is perfection of "power" only through God, and only in total service and obedience to God, the source of all power, both on earth and in eternity.

Now, here's where modern people are often confused (the truly older generations were not confused about this), so you young people, pay particular attention to this. Yes, Jesus was given by God to humans to redeem them from original sin, the sin of disobedience caused by Adam and Eve. We've discussed many of the "reasons" and gifts that Jesus brought, such as bringing God's face to humanity, fulfilling the role of Messiah and Savior, the New Covenant, etc.

But neither Jesus nor any of the prophets, nor any human alive has done what the questioner and many assume is actually happening, which is to lead or declare combat "against evil."

Understand this difference. There is a huge difference between refuting evil (proving that evil is wrong) and "declaring war 'against' evil.'" Neither God nor any of his holy humans, or any human that ever lived, or ever will live, is actively "combating" evil. Why? Because to combat evil means to erase humanity and bring about the end of all time. Evil is "baked into" the human condition and psyche because of their own brokenness, woundedness and continual evil choices through the generations. If God actually "declared combat 'against evil'" God would simply do what he is going to do one day, as explained in the Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse) and allow the end to all humanity, rendering the Final Judgment.

You young people have grown up with a fantasy and science fiction view of being a "hero" who is "for good and against evil," which is totally wrong headed. It's not your fault, since you were raised that way without understanding. Genuine heroes, including, and especially, the saints, live among evil infested and evil choosing humanity, and REFUTE evil by LIVING goodness as mandated by God. Evil is "combated" only through the myriad of individual and group choices that people make in normal life. It is not some "toon" with skinny superheroes "fighting evil," and with people (or aliens, or 'mutants') conveniently labeled "good or evil," "hero or villain." That's not life, that's not reality, and it's also not how evil and good work.

Remember that Jesus himself, who is all goodness, would not allow an admirer to call him good. Jesus did that to point out that only God is good. What does that mean? That means, as the Bible constantly teaches, that ALL humans carry the capacity and the active accommodation of evil, ever since, and indeed, as a consequence of, Adam and Eve's first choice to do so.

Previous generations were never under the delusion, that moderns are today, that humans are running around all full of goodness and sugar and 'light,' but fall astray due to that bad old evil. No.... not exactly. As Jesus has stated, no humans are good, only God is good, in the absolute sense. So it's not like perfectly good humans are running around then being tripped up by some 'agent of evil.' Evil is carried and nurtured and accommodated within each and every human, and all societies, generation after generation. Understand there is evil on a grand scale (such as Nazism) but also on the day to day accommodating of evil in the mendacity of the ordinary lives of average people, as they accumulated knowledge of evil, accept evil and indeed even re-label evil (fool themselves that what they are doing is normal and not evil), as regular tools in their lives. There is also the enormous evil of 'missed opportunity,' where people allow evil to happen and deny the choice of goodness and sanctity.

Remember that Adam and Eve did not help the serpent run out and do an evil deed. Adam and Eve chose to accommodate evil, by accepting its knowledge.

All humans enable evil and all generations accumulate knowledge of evil, and expand their accommodation of it, lately of an alarming degree.

So you must understand that God is not 'combating evil' because that would assume that there are "two sides" in a conflict, those who are 'good' and those who are 'evil.' Humans are not good (in the sense of being comprised entirely of goodness, or the potential for being all good), and all humans have at the very least a widespread daily accommodation of evil. For God to 'combat evil' he will allow humanity to destroy itself (under the Antichrist) and then he will send Michael to "officially" 'combat evil,' which means Satan is chained, sure, but um duh, that's because all humans are dead so it's moot whether he walks among them supposedly "causing evil," or not, since the vessels of the potential for evil, humanity, will have all perished and been judged.

So sure, God can "combat evil" with a nanosecond of his tiniest amount of will power, and he will do so, and that means the end of all things human, with the entire world where humans chose evil in the first place passing away out of existence. The resurrected who occupy the world to come, the New Jerusalem, will not have even a speck or particle of temptation to elect evil, so evil will not exist at all, since it will never be given an opportunity for 'birth,' in the world to come after this one is destroyed.

People need to stop thinking about "combating evil," and instead, combat personal and group sin and temptation, so that you can hope to be saved and achieve heaven, and the resurrected world to come, and not go, as MANY, so very many have and will go, to hell.

I hope this helps.

An analogy to understand God's view toward evil

I've written before in this blog explaining that God simply will not personally intervene to stop humans from performing evil against each other, whether it is individual "person on person" evil, or the most vile acts, such as the Shoah of World War II. Whenever one tries to understand God and his ways, and tries, from the perspective of an imperfect and flawed human being, to understand God, who is perfection himself, one has to approach such understanding both in layers and also from a number of perspectives. Whenever I think of a good one I have blogged it here. For example, I explained that God will not reach down and save every person who drives drunk and hurts someone because if God interferes with the natural law that he established (natural law being that if something big, heavy or pointed strikes a weaker object, such as a human in a car crash, that matter and energy may result in death or injury), humans will very quickly be unable to survive in the world. They will lose their ability to reason their way through things such as building safe autos, teaching good and safe driving, developing addictions programs, weighing punishment alternatives, and being able to better treat such injuries. If God reached down every time a drunk driver killed someone, and God brought the victim back to life, how in the world would humans function in a world that still operates according to the reality of physics, chemistry, biology and mechanics? So I have blogged that one perspective about why God "allows" evil.

Tonight I have thought of another helpful analogy.

Whenever one is tempted to think "Why did God allow a certain bad thing to happen to another person" (and here, since we are speaking of evil, I mean a bad thing where someone bad harms someone else, not a natural calamity, for example), before one can answer that question, first one must have more of a perspective that reflects God as he really is.

Think of a person's entire life, such as your own, from birth to death as being a single drop of water. Now, visualize that drop of water compared to all of the water that fills the oceans and other bodies of free flowing, frozen, or atmospheric water on earth. It is mind boggling to think of a drop of water "next to" all of the water that exists on earth.

That, brethren, is a suitable analogy, even though it is not grand enough, to describe the difference between a person's time in mortal life (being alive in their material body) and the time that a person spends in eternity after death (either heaven or hell, both of which are absolutely real).

Thus, the drop of water is like one's time while one is alive, and the rest of the water on earth is like one's time as the soul continuing on after death in either God's presence (heaven) or not (which is hell).

God's "priority" then, if you think of God as having priorities, is the saving of souls, since the soul lives on for all eternity, which is immense beyond human understanding, and the soul is either in saved, rewarded bliss in heaven, or in the unbearable pain, torment and total exile from God, which is hell.

Thus, no matter how vile someone is toward another person, either individually or collectively, any vile action is still only a part of that single droplet of water.

Humans MUST learn to manage their own ability to find goodness, under God's direction, within that drop of water. It's not that God does not care or feel the pain and sting of injustice for each and every one of his human children because, as scripture, most particularly the Gospel of Jesus Christ shows, God most certainly does love the person who is suffering, knows their pain, and feels huge wrath toward the evil doer.

But God wants humans to understand what they must understand, which is how to keep perspective and proportionality of how small a life span really is compared to eternity. People need to understand that what they do on earth, during that tiny droplet of water of time, results in either eternal reward and comfort, or eternal chastisement and damnation.

So it is not a matter of an innocent person suffering when something evil is done to them by someone else, for those events occur within the droplet of water. However, the sufferer, if he or she continues to hold close to God, knows that eternity in his presence will be theirs one day. And the evil doer, likewise, must understand that no matter how small or large the evil, that deed is a most certain risk that they will spend eternity in the total torment of hell.

That is how one must understand the Beatitudes, spoken by Jesus as he preached. Think about specifically:

Matthew 5:10

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousnesses' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Many people make the easy mistake of thinking that Jesus mean persecution for the faith, in other words, those who are persecuted and harmed for being Christians. Thus people sometimes gloss over this beatitude thinking that it refers to martyrs and persecuted faithful. Yes, Jesus refers often to those who are reviled who belief in him (and in 5:11 he compares those who are persecuted for their faith with the prophets, most of whom were persecuted, who went before). But do not miss a key phrase "for righteousness' sake."

If Jesus meant only martyrs, he would not have said "for righteousnesses' sake," since being "persecuted" is quite clear in its meaning that the persecuted are those who suffer at the hands of evil-doers because of their faith.

No, Jesus is actually extending the meaning of the persecuted to mean not just those who are persecuted for their faith, but those who have wrongness inflicted on them, unrighteousness meted out to them. Righteous people are not just those of the greatest piety and faith. Righteous people are those who do the right thing, who treat people correctly and kindly, and who obey secular and moral laws. Thus, who persecutes the righteous? Those who are unrighteous, which means evil wrong-doers. Thus this Beatitude means that those who suffer as others inflict wrongs upon them, are given "the kingdom of heaven." It is not only the martyrs and those persecuted for the faith who can, according to Jesus, consider the kingdom of heaven "theirs," but all who suffer for the sake of righteousness: of those who continue to be righteous when unrighteousness and wrongs are poured down upon them.

This Beatitude, therefore, must be understood as not only comforting but also specifically referring to the kingdom of heaven as "theirs," to those who suffer through perhaps a really bad event done to them by a criminal or cruel person, to those who suffer martyrdom for the faith, to those who suffer on a grand scale, such as in a genocide. This Beatitude comforts the person who is deliberately impoverished by a robber baron and oppressor, for example, as much as it comforted a saint who went to his or her martyrdom, to those who went to their death in the Shoah. This Beatitude explains that all who cling to righteousness, as they suffer life events, whether the routine sufferings of life when one is afflicted by a wrongdoing, or the extraordinary evil that erupts periodically, can be assured that "theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

This, then, is one way you can better understand God's bigger "picture" and his bigger "plan." Individual human-on-human acts of wrongdoing and evil are of the greatest concern to him, but not in the way that a human, who is by definition living within the droplet of water time frame, may think God is focusing. God has established an unchanging ordering to the matters of heaven and earth whereby unrepentant evil doers (great and small) are not saved and wind up in hell for all eternity, while those who clung to righteousness even as they suffered are given as "theirs" the kingdom of heaven.

This is not to say that one is helpless in all circumstances of being the victim of evil, and that God will never intervene or that the Holy Spirit does not move to try to aid the victim and convert the heart of the tormentor. But I thought that this analogy of the water droplet, combined with a commentary and explanation of the Beatitude to enlighten the reader of God's "viewpoint" would be an important foundation as to why God does not seem to be as totally in the moment of an innocent person's suffering at the hands of evil doers as one might expect or hope. The real tragedy is that humans have stopped a large part of their own evil behavior regulation as they stopped understanding that hell and eternity are very real and inevitable consequences of continual and unrepentant evil doing.

Paul describes well the two types of righteousness. There is the righteousness of the faith (which is what most people think of when they read that word in the scriptures) but there is also the righteousness of doing the right thing versus wrong doing, including in secular matters. Remember that much of the Law given by God through Moses to the Israelites dealt with secular matters, such as how to treat people justly, settle disputes, provide wages and so forth. So read this and understand how Paul is referring to the righteousness of faith, but also the righteousness of routine deeds in life (which was given to the Jews under the law).

Romans 10:5-6

For Moses described the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which does those things shall live by them.

But the righteousness which is of faith speaks on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above).

Here Paul is not trying to explain the distinction that I point out here, since this passage of his concerns the difference between obeying what God has said to do (both in religious rites and in righteous living, including secular matters) and having righteousness of faith which, for these early Christians that he is addressing, focuses on belief in Jesus Christ and that he was raised by God from the dead.

So I include this so you can see scriptural foundation for what I am explaining, which is when Jesus Christ used the phrase "for righteousnesses' sake," he would say so knowing that the audience would understand that righteousness meant not just righteous faith before God but also righteous living, in both a faith based and a secular way.

I hope that this has given you another aspect of how to view with better perspective God's insistence that humans regulate within what he has given to them their own good behavior (being righteous and avoiding wrongdoing and evil), and that God's emphasis, for lack of a better word, is to remember that life is such an infinitesimally small portion of the eternal life, in either bliss or punishment, that each soul exists throughout and beyond the end of time. God simply will not intervene in 99 percent of the human-on-human evil doing, but God most certainly renders perfect and inevitable judgment and dispensation to either heaven or hell as a result of those deeds.

An analogy for understanding why evil exists

I thought of an analogy tonight while reading “Life Wisdom from Billy Graham,” which was a Christmas gift to me. Regular readers know that I am a great fan of Billy Graham’s. I was reading the section where he writes about the question he most commonly receives, “Why does God allow evil?” I also read the address that he made after September 11, 2001, that I had watched as it was broadcast from the National Cathedral in the memorial service, which also touches on that important and puzzling subject. As I was reading his words I was imagining us in conversation, and what I’d say and the analogy that I would explain to him was what occurred to me. Here it is. Remember, it is an analogy, which is an aid in understanding, not a complete answer in theological terms.


Think about when God created the angels, who are separate from God’s creation of humans and animals. The angels dwell in heaven, which is outside of the material realm of space, time, matter or energy. Thus the angels are created of a uniform spiritual substance that is of God. Upon creation the angels are complete and had only one “decision” to make, which is to serve God or not. This decision is made after their creation. In other words, God did not withhold creating angels that he knew in advance would refuse to serve. God created the entire order of angelic beings, knowing that some, a very few of the uncountable numbers of angels, would refuse to serve.

This is the first example of God as love that one can study in the scripture. God does not play “eugenics,” to use an abhorrent human concept, of culling by suitability. God did not omit creating angels at all, or certain angels, to cull in advance those who would not serve. God loves them, regardless. So God creates the angels, a few refuse to serve him, and they fall, but do not perish or are taken out of existence by God. I can’t speak for God but you can wisely elicit from the fact that God does not destroy the angels that disobey him that God always leaves the door open and loves even the most incorrigible. That is the nature of God, as the source of all love. This does not mean he accepts or enables the angels who disobey. It means he will exile them but not destroy them, nor does he wish he never created them, nor does he cull them out from being created in advance based on his all knowing of which angels he creates will serve and which will not.

Now think about humans and animals. Unlike angels humans and animals live in a universe with physical boundaries and realities of time, space, matter and energy. Thus humans do not spring into being fully grown and able to choose, or not, God. Humans and animals are born as infants and have long times of growing before they are even mature and capable of making worldly decisions, say nothing of consistently choosing God throughout their lives. Further, humans and animals live among each other in the physical universe, not among God’s realm like the angels. Thus humans and animals interact among themselves and other species, and are formed and shaped according to their interactions in the physical world.

So instead of angels all being created out of the spiritual substance that allows eternal life in heaven, humans and animals are each like a hunk of marble that is yet unformed. A sculptor will use that blank stone to create a human, or an animal, in the “finished product.” However, unlike the actual art of sculpting there are two differences. The sculptor is the human him or her self and his or her companion humans who chip away at the stone to reveal the finished product of human within. Also, the process of revealing the finished product within is the entire corporeal lifetime of the human. Angels were made, “Voila!” and then they chose. Humans sculpt themselves and each other as a “work in progress” through their entire lives and the finished product is the human on the threshold of their death and hopeful joining of God in heaven.

So let us use a real example of a person most of the world knew who has died, such as Mother Teresa. Imagine that as she was born she was that rectangle of marble, with her God given soul within. As Mother Teresa was an infant, named Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu, pieces of the rock would be chipped away by herself, as she learned as all babies do that she is alive, an individual, a human, a member of a family, and by her parents and rest of her family and caregivers. Mother Therese herself would “hold the chisel” on herself, her family would use their chisels on her, and society and her environment at large would also use their chisels on her. So what is evil? Evil are events and actions that as they chisel at the marble of the individual do that person harm.

Thus think of typical events in an infant’s life. Being kept warm, fed, safe, and cuddled with love are all loving events that chisel the person out of the marble block in productive ways. But what if someone struck her? That is an evil act because it is harmful use of the “chisel” that forms the person out of their foundational block of marble. As she is fed wholesome and adequate food she grows and thrives and thus the environment and her family provide “good” chiseling. But what if she grew up in a polluted area where she was exposed to a toxic chemical as a child and became sick or deformed? For example in Japan many were stricken with mercury poisoning in their seafood in the 1960’s. That would have been an “evil” act, as the polluters and the environment wielded the chisel on her in a destructive way. But you see, that is the complexity of evil. Slapping an infant is pure evil. However, a polluter is not psychic and does not plan to harm an individual or group of people in the future through their mindless dumping of a toxin. Thus the outcome is evil but the actions are not necessarily that of an evil person. Further, suppose that we continue to think about the example in Japan for a moment. There is a range of outcomes from a mindless act of neglect that range from evil to good. At its worst it truncated the lives of the innocent, killing or maiming them, and thus there were evil outcomes of the pollution actions. However, others who observed what happened and learned from it and, better yet, gained knowledge of the danger of pollution and how to remediate it, obtained “good” chiseling out of the “evil” act.

Thus you must recognize that when people ask “Why does God allow evil?” they are usually referring to an obvious event of evil that has demolished goodness through murder or other evil mayhem. We used the example of slapping a baby. Mostly people ask that question after an act of terror or a heinous crime. But the reality of a corporeal limited life in a physical environment of time, space, matter and energy is that there is a continuum of results generated by people interacting and chiseling themselves and each other as “works in progress” out of the marble. Thus in our example of pollution, one person’s cruel demise or crippling as a result of the pollution, and thus suffering from evil, is another person’s character building and good opportunity, as doctors develop remedies and governments and companies seek to curb dangerous pollution. You now start to see that it is not like evil is a set of independent events that God should purge out of life and then everything would be fine. For example, it is evil if someone burns another person. But it is not evil that fire consumes substances, including humans. If God were to “not allow” evil in such as case where one human burns another, should God have done so by 1) changing fire so that fire does not consume substances and thus it no longer exists, 2) stop the person assaulting the victim with fire by stepping in and holding back his or her hand, 3) do what God did not do with the angels and that is, cull in advance any human who God knows will commit evil at some point in their life (how many people do you think would ever have populated the earth at all then?)

Evil is the chisel that is cruelly used on one’s self, on another person, or on society as a whole. Thus an addict commits an evil when he or she uses and thus abuses the gift of their mind and body from God. An abuser commits an evil when he or she strikes a baby. A tyrant performs an evil when he or she performs genocide in society at large. But the definition of evil is the harmful impact of actions that are otherwise part of life. For God to eliminate evil, God would have to either 1) cull in advance all who will ever commit evil and as I said, I would not bet that there would be many humans at all left or 2) take away from humans much of physical law (fire burns, hands can be used with great force, and humans can order others to do things on a large scale through blind loyalty or fear). How would humans live if fire was no longer fire, if fire no longer burned and thus no one could ever harm someone else by setting them on fire again? But if fire no longer burned and thus did not exist, how would the sun shine and how would humans have ever been warmed? Many plants only germinate after a fire. There would be no life without fire.

So if you turn to God and ask why God allows evil, think about the example that is giving you the heartbreak and frustration, such as the terrorist attacks, and think of the component actions. Which would you wish that God denied to humans? Airplanes? Combustion? Zealotry? Fanaticism? Thus to not permit evil, which physical laws should God change or ban, or which humans or their behaviors should God cull in advance, when he did not even do that for the angels who he knew would, in some small number, refuse to serve? Should God never allow humans who will commit an evil to ever have been born?

It is easy to say, for example, that a murderer of a loved one should never have been born and that your loved one would still be alive today. That is entirely understandable, especially in the pangs of one’s grief. But when you are going to be thoughtful and scholarly about the subject, think about the specifics. Suppose that the terrorist or murderer had been a father or mother before he or she committed evil. Should their children then have never been born since God, knowing in advance the parent’s future evil plans, not allow the future evil doer to be born at all? I wonder how many people would be alive today if God did not allow evil ancestors to live and procreate! All humans have the potential for evil and all commit more evil than they realize. Much evil, such as the example I gave of the toxic pollution, is evil of sin of omission or neglect and not as dramatic as a Hitler or a murderer, or a child abuser. How does not then “extract” “evil” from the condition of being alive?

So look back to the example of Mother Teresa. She received her calling, and her fame, from ministering to those who suffer from the evil of poverty and neglect. Much of the marble that was chiseled from her foundational block of stone that formed her was therefore a chisel that did not harm her personally, but was in reaction to the harmful and often evil chiseling of others. Thus “evil” had a hand in carving out of the stone the goodness of Mother Teresa. “Evil” has a hand in carving out of stone the goodness of every trauma emergency room physician. “Evil” has a hand in carving out of stone each child advocate, each lawmaker, and each parent and each concerned citizen and enforcer of the law who responds to the crisis of child abuse. So as evil seems to target a victim, at the same time that evil is a part of the misuse of natural law (hands can build or hit, fire can warm or scar) and evil is the catalyst for the carving of goodness out of the respondents out of their individual blocks of marble.

Thus when one asks, “Why does God allow evil,” it is a question that God understands that one cries out in anger and hurt, and thus is a valid question, but it is an unbalanced question. It presumes that evil is a separable quality that God could “exile” or “forbid” if only he wanted to. But now with this analogy you can understand that everyone uses the chisel on themselves, on others, and on society and the world at large in ways that can lead to evil even if unintentional. Remember how Nobel invented TNT? Suppose that God, responding to people’s cries about eliminating evil, thought about all the people who would be killed through TNT and thus decided that Nobel should never have been born, or “not permitted” to invent TNT. Yet TNT was essential for much safe construction as it was used for blasting rock and demolition, saving humans from back breaking work and danger. It is easy to point to the obvious examples and say, “Why did God ever allow Hitler to be born?” But first, do not forget that most evil in the world is very small scale and mundane, horrible for the individual child who is abused and that family, for example, but not of the grand scale of the tyrants of history. So recognize that one is selecting what seems like the obvious and fungible example when one uses say a Hitler as an example. But far more evil is done through neglect or love of money or power or spontaneous hysterical hatred. Look at Rwanda where something like 800,000 people were killed in only a few days. Look at the Sudan. These are all the less obvious examples of evil at work.

And here is the second problem with let us say, why did God not stop Hitler from being born? How do you know that “everything would have been fine” otherwise? Humans have all sorts of mischief and it is constantly leading them astray. How do you know that even if there was not a Hitler that a German scientist might have still worked to invent the atomic bomb? Without World War II the Allies would never have developed atomic bombs on their own. Atomic bombs were developed in response to Hitler trying to develop a bomb, which was the ultimate horror scenario. But how do you know that in that “alternate scenario” of Hitler having never been born that some other nut might not have worked in secret for an atomic bomb, and then used it, or sold it to an unscrupulous government? So perhaps there would have been no Hitler and no Holocaust, but instead some mad scientists develop the atomic bomb and test it on Paris and Geneva.

Humans are too singular in their thought processes about evil and they can’t help it, which is one of the problems of the human brain and ego. They think that individual persons and actions are fungible, as in they can be taken “out” of action and then history will trundle along better, having eliminated that “problem.” Only God, however, knows all the “what if’s.” Only God knows what else humans would have done even if there never was a Hitler. If you do not believe me, just look at the evidence in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. There is a constancy of temptation of great evil among very average and mundane humans. That temptation does not “go away” if God smites or “doesn’t allow” individual evil doers to be alive and for them and all around them to have freedom of choice. Evil is the doing of very bad things using very good physical law. Does God eliminate the physical laws (such as fire, which is actually necessary for life), entire classes of behavior (thus God treats humans as robots, something he did not do even to the angels who are of his very spiritual substance), or does God eliminate all who would ever do evil (and thus all their offspring) and then, well, how many people would actually be alive on earth at all?

To wrap up this analogy, let’s look again at Mother Teresa. Who was she and what was the completed work of individual sculpture that emerged from her marble stone at the end of her life, the finished work? Her words live on after her in the book “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.” One of the realities of the human limitations of perspective and vision is that each person does not understand their own completed sculpture. Only God knows who a person really is in total. Mother Teresa received her calling and her goodness by ministering to those who, one can safely argue, suffer from genuine evil of poverty, prejudice, untreated illness, loneliness and neglect. I argue that conditions that allow so many who would need a Mother Teresa in that vocation is an evil, for humans by now should have been much better at sharing the bounty and helping all the poor, the sick and the lonely. So Mother Teresa was in a large part chiseled out of her interaction with that large reservoir of evil in the world which is human deprivation and neglect of their fellow human beings. So on the one hand the evil of deprivation and neglect rubbed and chiseled great goodness out of the marble block that is Mother Teresa.

But interaction with evil and its products can be a two edged sword and cause damage and confusion to the do-gooder him or herself. This is particular true with those of the religious or spiritual persuasions. I’m not a sculptor so excuse my possibly ignorant examples, but let’s assume that sculptors use a range of tools, from blunt ones to remove much stone like a hammer, to finer and finer chisels, and then eventually to sandpaper to rub finished parts smooth. When one is totally melded to unrelenting and total ministering to what is evil and dark, it is like being constantly sculpted with the hammer and never allowing one’s self to be chiseled or smoothed gently. Mother Teresa is the poster child of this problem. All social workers know about “compassion fatigue.” Well, religious or spiritual humans are vulnerable to a compassion fatigue that is much worse, as it is rather than a compassion fatigue a goodness starvation. Social workers who have compassion fatigue have a work crisis, for example, but they still have access to normal parts of life beyond their social work, which is their own families, friends and other pleasures of life. Someone like a Mother Teresa willfully deprive themselves of all that is balancing and good in life, allowing their entire spirit to be subsumed by the evil that they are ministering to. Thus you read very odd and dark lacks of understanding such as the following:

Mother Teresa believed her mission would continue beyond her death. Her mission statement says this plainly: “If I ever become a saint-I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from heaven-to light the light of those in darkness on earth” (p. 338).

I cringe whenever I open that book, by the way, and read those types of thoughts and this incredible inflation, as in this:

Mother is here to help you, guide you, lead you to Jesus. Time is coming closer when Mother also has to go to God. Then Mother will be able to help each one for you more, guide you more and obtain more graces for you (p. 338).

She actually viewed herself as a dark saint, full of drama, able to pop back and forth from heaven to earth, helping others (as obviously no one else can but her, classic signs of inflation) and worst of all “obtain more graces for you.” How can a woman of God, a Christian, become so fundamentally detached from the most basic doctrine and rational balance, where she anticipates being a dark co-mediatrix with Jesus dispensing graces? Good grief, what a mess.



The problem is that she became totally absorbed in the damaging effects of the evil of deprivation and neglect and allowed that to skew her perception of God as being likewise wounded and only of the suffering. The book states that she “always led us to Jesus,” but there are two problems with that. She started assuming that she was actually leading people to Jesus and thus necessary to the process and that simply is not true. All conversion and all grace come from God alone. She started believing that if she was not there that she’d actually have to come back from the dead or “reach down from heaven” in order to ‘bring people to Jesus.’ Whoa, is that a real problem. I guess she figured that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were lax on the job and could not do it without her.

I am being blunt but not unkind. I mean, if she’s so essential to bringing people to Jesus, why is India more hostile to their own Christians than ever AND why are countries like China finding their own way to greater belief all without either literally her or an equivalent “Mother Teresa?” Every religious knows that all grace and conversion come from God through the Holy Spirit, not through individuals. Look at what Billy Graham said:

If anything has been accomplished through my life, it has been solely God’s doing, not mine, and He-not I-must get the credit (p. 55).

That is our mission… to be Christ’s ambassadors to the whole world, asking people to be reconciled to God. The primary message that I’ve tried to carry all over the world has been that God loves you. He gave His Son to die for you (p. 59).

I don’t have any supernatural power to do something for you. I am just a man, like you are. I am just a preacher. And my message is that God loves you, He accepts you and forgives you. He is ready to enter your hearts today (pg. 61).

The deepest problems of the human race are spiritual. They are rooted in man’s refusal to seek God’s way for his life. The problem is the human heart, which God alone can change (p. 78).

Jesus must increase, and I must decrease. I sort of cringe when I hear my name called in something I know has been the work of God through these years (p. 96).

All that I have been able to do, I owe to Jesus Christ. I feel I am a spectator watching what God is doing (p. 98).

I feel so undeserving of all the Spirit has done, because the work has been God’s and not man’s. I want no credit or glory. I want the Lord Jesus to have it all (p. 100).

As I look back over the years…I know that my deepest feeling is one of gratitude. I cannot take credit for whatever God has chosen to accomplish through us and our ministry; only God deserves the glory, and we can never thank Him enough for the great things He has done (p. 103).

God measures people by the small dimensions of humility and not by the bigness of their achievements or the size of their capabilities (pg. 17).

Without [Lists people he has worked with]-and all the other people who have served on our board and worked on the crusades-our ministry would be nothing. You would never have heard of me. I give all the credit and glory on this earth to them. And all the glory we give collectively to God, because without His Holy Spirit, we couldn’t have done it (p. 33).

Now, Billy Graham is the evangelist and if anyone could claim to “lead people to Jesus” it would be he. Yet read the constancy through the decades of his ministry of his humility and recognition that it all comes from God through the Holy Spirit, and not through any man or woman. I know that he would cringe at what I am doing but it must be said because without pointing out the corrosive effects of evil on good people, such as Mother Teresa, by comparing to one who uses humility and God’s grace as a protective shield, as does Billy Graham, the errors will continue. Great social work and sacrifice does not a saint make. Worse, a constant view of social work as evangelizing (when one is actually not even evangelizing) leaves harmful scars in one’s personal sculpture and the role model that one sets.

Through embracing her interior darkness, Mother Teresa became a “saint of Darkness.” Jesus’ call “Come-carry me into the holes of the poor.-Come be My light,” urged her “to give [herself]-without any reserve to God in the poor of the slums and the streets.” Disregarding her own suffering, she reached out to others whose suffering seemed greater than her own, bringing the light of God’s love to the hopeless and the helpless, to the poorest of the poor. Though she had carried Jesus into many “dark holes,” there were many more; and even when her strength was notably failing her spirit remained resolute. She carried on (p. 336).

Oh-my-goodness; the entire book makes my hair stand on end. She is “carrying” Jesus into “many dark places?” You mean Jesus is not there unless she brings him there? This is inflation and a martyr complex and not healthy devotion, regardless of the merits of her social work.

One must recognize that evil has strange effects beyond the obvious. It’s like a triple boomerang, if such a thing exists. On the one hand there is the evil of deprivation and extreme poverty and neglect, which harms those who suffer from it, but ennobles those who address it, such as Mother Teresa. So the evil harms the innocent, but the worthy step in and rebuke the evil with their works. But then a certain number of those who constantly immerse themselves in what they think is combating evil or being the only way by which people achieve God now get smacked in the head and soul by the evil in a secondary effect. They succumb to the temptation to believe that they are co-redeeming and co-dispensing of grace along with God; that God is less successful without them!

All of Mother Teresa’s personal writings can be read as a diagnosis of this problem. The boomerang of evil of poverty and deprivation is thrown and hits the innocent. Mother Teresa catches it and throws it back unceasingly through her total devotion to not God where he is, in heaven and among everyone, but “God in the poor.” By only seeing God as being completely in the poor and in fact she takes credit for CARRYING “Jesus into many ‘dark holes’” she then is smacked herself in turn by the evil of deprivation in a way she never recognizes: By being an acolyte of the suffering of deprivation she has now deprived herself of the comfort, the reality and the all glory and power to God and God alone.

I get into this whole tangle to show you that evil is a subtle and multistep process, not simply the obvious example of a great evil deed, and that it is impossible to separate from “good” life. The problem is succumbing to the temptations of evil, which is to study it too closely, to unconsciously or consciously emulate it, or to take credit for that which only God can do.

She was called to share in a distinct way in the mystery of the Cross, to become one with Christ in His Passion and one with the poor she served. Through this sharing she was led to a deep awareness of the “painful thirst” in the Heart of Jesus for the poorest of the poor (p. 335).

WHAT? Where is THAT in the Bible? Jesus on the Cross had a “painful thirst” for the poor in his Heart that he “called” her to share? Oh-my-goodness. Um, not to be a critic but she needed some time out and a strong and not co-enabling spiritual director as she dabbled in heretical and inflationary thoughts.

Her painful darkness mysteriously united her so intimately with her crucified Spouse, that He became the sole “object of her thoughts and affections, the subject of her conversations, the end of her actions and the model of her life" (p. 335).

Christ as spiritual Spouse is not the problem, and even her meditations on the crucified Christ, which is a rich and valid Catholic tradition. But to interpret his crucifixion as being about the poor is like she came from another planet and never read the Gospel.

I don’t have to repeat what I most recently blogged regarding why Christ was crucified, and it was not because his “Heart” had a “painful thirst” for the “poorest of the poor.” To correlate God sending his Son to redeem humans from the bonds of original sin and to establish the New Covenant with Jesus supposedly having a “painful thirst” in his “Heart” for the “poorest of the poor” makes me sympathize with Protestants who shake their heads at Catholics.

Thus evil tarnishes even the good.

The worst of evil is not the raving maniacs who murder, though that is the most heinous. The broadest impact of evil is to diminish God’s power and glory rather than diminish one’s self. The broadest impact of evil is thus to succumb both consciously and unconsciously to temptations of imbalance, whether it is the imbalance of the deprivation of poverty and access to life sustaining sustenance, or the imbalance of thinking that one is actually carrying Jesus around and he can’t go certain places without you taking him there. I’m not saying Mother Teresa was evil, but I am using her as a case study of a very good person who is eroded in what she could have been as the “finished product” by the corrosive effects of constant immersion in the despair of evil, the evil of deprivation. She was so long among the deprived that she started thinking that it is normal that God is deprived too, that Jesus was crucified because he had a “painful thirst for the poor of the poor.” (I keep expecting my laptop to go up in flames every time I type that phrase, good Lord).

What Jesus said:


John 12:7-8
So Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Um, does that sound like Jesus has a (watch for the laptop on fire) “painful thirst for the poor of the poor,” one that he disturbs the peace of mind of one Mother Teresa with, in person, two thousand years later? “You always have the poor with you” does not sound like someone with a “painful thirst” for the “poorest of the poor.”

In fact, it is the judging and stern Jesus who admonishes that in the final judgment those who saw him in the poor and ministered to them will be rewarded, while those who neglect the poor will be punished. That is far from saying that Jesus needs to be lugged by one woman and placed in “dark holes” (hopes my laptop does not catch on fire as I really can’t afford another one right now).

So God allows evil because evil is the sum total of the physical world and human condition since evil is simply misuse of natural law (hand can built a home or strike an infant caused by the same force equals mass times acceleration natural law) and succumbing to temptations, from the most appalling and wicked to the most insidious and subtle. Evil cannot be eliminated in any form without removing natural law and human independence of action, and doing either of that would really eliminate human life. Animal life could certainly continue on since animals have no concept of evil, only survival and raising their young. This then means the only answer would be for God to cull in advance anyone he knows since he is all knowing will perform evil, and again, we have the problem that few humans would exist. Look at the odds. Out of Adam, Eve, Abel and Cain, three of the four performed evil and the fourth was killed as a result of the evil act. If God eliminated evil he should not have created Adam and Eve in the first place (knowing they’d commit evil in advance) and thus there would be no humans in faith history. Obviously as with the angels example God is demonstrating that love is all powerful and is the reason, and that he will never close the door by culling like some sort of animals those angels or humans he knows will disobey and do evil. A lot of “good” people alive today descend from someone who did a lot of evil somewhere along the line, and if the line ended there, there would be a lot of whales and polar bears on earth but not a lot of humans, if any.

Jesus does not have to be “carried” into the slums; Jesus, like God, is already there.

John 12:26
“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.”


John 14:20
“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”

John 14:27
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”

Evil is contrariness to the will of God, so it is not only the breaking of Commandments and other laws of God, but it is the cruelty and misleading of humans by other humans. A subtle but destructive form of evil and temptation is the destruction of the peace of Jesus, which is not just the peace of a lack of war and conflict, but also the serenity of peace of mind. Jesus does not teach an obsessive compulsive philosophy of works. He gives peace even as the world is in its flawed condition, and he tells all to NOT let their hearts be troubled or afraid. Jesus is about as far from having a “painful thirst” as you can imagine. (Is my computer getting hotter, or am I just imagining it?) I better wind up this blogging.

I hope that you have found this rather lengthy commentary helpful.

Understanding God "why bad things happen"

I've decided to write a little bit about the question of "why do bad things happen," also asked in the form of "why does God allow evil" before continuing in the series of describing God's attributes. This is because everyone pretty much sees that the world is in a crisis place where this is on the mind of many, and whenever I think of an aspect of improving human self awareness and faith, I present it. That is why I wrote the little perspective in the post before this one about the problem of thinking one is "righting a wrong."

Just now I had read some commentary and comments on chabad.org about the problem of understanding why God allows evil, which is obviously an ongoing philosophical and theological question for those of the Jewish faith, who have endured much, culminating in the Shoah (Holocaust). Obviously with the terrible loss in Mumbai, this is on everyone's mind anew. So I thought to use those events and some other things from the news to put forth one layer of understanding in this particular blogging. By "one layer" I mean a set of facts that one must always keep in mind while contemplating the question of evil and "bad" things.

When one reads the news, one quickly sees that there are crime victims that are newborn (sometimes even pre-born if their mother was assaulted), ranging in every age to the eldest, those in their nineties of age. So there is no age that is immune from human on human crime. You'll also see that crime victims include men and women, boys and girls. They are of every race, legal citizens or undocumented, of every faith, or even atheist. Crime victims are rich or poor, or the vast middle class. They are "good guys or gals" or "bad guys or gals." So crime, one can observe from the facts, is something that no group has a free pass from.

Let us also look at natural disasters. In the earthquake in China, we saw many school children die due to shoddy school construction. Again, though, people of all ages, faiths, gender, goodness or badness, occupations, all were vulnerable to suffering or dying in the quake.

At the same time the cyclone hit Myanmar and again, the vulnerable were of all types of people, but like the children in China, it was location, location, location. The cyclone hit the fertile rice paddy areas and thus the poor farmers were the most wounded.

In wars, both combatants and civilians die.

And then let us look at terrorism. When the World Trade Center twin towers collapsed, it lived up to its name of being "world trade," since many people of different nationalities or cultural backgrounds perished, mingled together without discrimination in the rubble.

In Mumbai, despite early reports of westerners being targeted, investigations show that creating havoc by killing indiscriminately was the priority. Thus we read about poor and rich, different faiths, different nationalities, children and adults, Jews, Christians, Hindus, probably Muslims too (since passers-by were shot without any "identity checking") and those who were "spiritual" and those who were not.

Even the Holocaust was not just about Nazis and their sympathizers killing Jews. Millions of non-Jews were also killed through activities of extermination.

In World War I the "cream of Europe" was killed in conflict by the millions. The young men of an entire generation were wiped out in many areas, and society to this day is very different than it would have been as a result.

Why am I presenting all of these facts? To help you better understand what exactly it is that you are "asking God."

Humans do not, as a whole, no matter how noble they think that they are, spend a lot of time contemplating "why evil" and "why bad things" until it happens to their special interest group. Suddenly one wakes up and notices crime, when a family member is harmed in a crime. Suddenly one notices drunk driving, when a friend is killed in a wreck caused by one. Suddenly one notices genocide when it is directed against your own group. Humans do not hold weekly meditation sessions and prayer groups about "why is there evil" and "why bad things happen" until it happens to them. Yet obviously "evil" and "bad things" were there all along, throughout human history.

So if you ask God, "why is there evil" or "bad things," do not be surprised if God first asks you (knowing the answer of course), "Why do you ask?"

Not being able to lie to God, you'd have to reply with what example of evil or bad brought it to your attention. God might then ask, "So why did you not care about the bad and the evil in the world before now?"

Ah. Yes. You see? That is part of the problem, and part of the answer. Humans tend to not care about evil or badness until "their own ox is gored," to use an old expression.

One reason why "the bad" and "the evil" exists in the world is that until it strikes close to home, humans just don't tend to notice or care if it happens on the other side of the world, or to "the other guy or gal," or even on the "other side" of your own community.

Bad and evil are like weeds that flourish because people only tend their own personal garden (if even that) and ignore everyone else's lot in life.

Therefore, while I'm not giving as yet an answer about the "why" of badness and evil, I am explaining their obvious popularity among humans. Here is a summary of the facts and associated concepts I've presented here.

1) No human of any category has ever been immune to the possibility of being the victim of evil or badness by another human, or by a sad tragedy or natural disaster.

2) Humans tend not to care about individual or group instances of evil or badness until "one's own" cohort group is harmed.

3) Despite the above facts, human have an unspoken but real assumption that somehow immunity from badness or evil is possible (e.g. "how can God allow this car crash to happen to such a good person?") This is an especial problem among wealthier countries where prosperity have both physically and mentally insulated people from so many of the risks of life, an assumption has crept in that there are ways to avoid bad things happening by belonging to certain "protected groups." I know for a fact that there are many people who secretly think they can evade badness and evil by belonging to the "right" spiritual "system." Yet the facts constantly demonstrate otherwise. The most wicked people in the world sometimes are themselves victims of badness or evil, just as the most innocent and saintly are victims too.

4) So when people challenge or question God in their minds, or out loud, there is no problem, that is understandable, but to be intellectually honest, you must confess that sometimes you are thinking "Gosh, she belonged to the 'right religion'" or "He has done so many 'good deeds'" so how could bad things happen to them?? Human history has constantly demonstrated by the facts that the only genuine democracy that humans have achieved seems to be that everyone everywhere has the potential to be victims of human-on-human (or human-on-animal) "badness" or evil.

This common basis for understanding what exactly you are asking will help you find the answers in your dialogue with God.

Just to leave another thought in closing, you have to understand that human beings having a very high tolerance for wickedness, bad or tragic events, and outright evil is, in part, a biological and psychological defense mechanism and survival instinct. So God does not condemn people for their own human nature, which is to ignore evil so long as it is going on in someone else's back yard. God understands (for sure more than humans ever could understand themselves) that it is a survival trait to "mind your own business" and "shut out the crying and suffering of other people." But that is exactly what Jesus most strongly warned people to beware of, and that is the meaning of "loving one's neighbor as one's self." You should not think that terrorism or oppression, or crime, or the suffering of poverty and illness is silent and "not on your radar" so long as it doesn't hit your own family or circle, and the suddenly you wake up and demand to know from God "Why is there badness and evil? What were your 'reasons' for this human bad behavior?!" God understands that is human nature, and that is why Jesus taught what one must do to be not only more "human," but more humane, and closer to the divine in truthful honesty, and not in your own hypocritical imagination.

A quick observation about the question of evil

I was just reading the obituary of John Templeton, the legendary fund investor, and this led me to looking at the list of those who have received his Templeton prize. This prize is mostly given to those who bridge the religious and science 'divide' that so many see as mutually exclusive. I agree with Templeton that they are not mutually exclusive and enjoyed just now reading about several of the prize recipients.

Whilst reading one of them I noticed his pondering about the classic question of, to put it simplistically, "if God is good why is there evil?" You must understand that it is only the recent generations that really think that is such a serious question to ask. People through most of their civilized history were subsistence farmers, hunters and gatherers. They really did not recognize "evil" so much as a force. To them life was something they had to work to maintain day by day in often harsh conditions. So early humans were really too busy trying to survive to really ponder (or actually experience) very much "evil."

So it occurred to me to explain to you that there have been since then kind of three stages in humans' understanding of evil, even though they don't seem to be aware they've gone through these stages, LOL. Here they are in just a few words.

1) After the subsistence phase that made up so much of human history, as I described above, sufficient leisure resources accumulated so that people could even contemplate matters such as religion. Evil was very simple for them to understand because they simply defined it as failure to follow the laws of God or their culture's "supreme beings." In other words, they did not think of evil as a "force" per se, and one that must be accounted for. They viewed disobeying God or whatever their cultural pantheon of supreme beings as being "evil doers."

2) With the development of the "enlightenment" and the glorification of rational and scientific thought, often at the expense of religion, "modern man" split into two bodies of mind about evil. The religious faithful correctly observe that in addition to those who simply break God's laws (and thus were "evil" in the classic definition), that there is a drive or a force that seems to lead a segment of the population into committing truly evil acts. These people attribute the extremes of these examples to Satan or demonic forces, and understand that the rest are due to people doing "very bad things" albeit not necessarily or even frequently being diabolical, just bad examples of humanity.

The scientific/atheist/"rationalist" side denies evil as a force and simply ascribes it to very bad behavior, but with "a reason," such as social injustice, poverty, prior abuse or mental illness. In other words, they tend to dismiss the idea of "evil" as a force and consider the whole question of bad behavior to be an individual by individual, or overall societal question about some lacking or injustice. So even a great horror such as the Holocaust, Cambodia or so forth, they will focus on identifying the socio-political factors rather than ascribe any part of what happened to a force of evil.

This phase 2 is pretty much where humans are today, in that kind of split, depending on whether people are primarily religious oriented or "rationalist" oriented. It's really an artificial split, and work is being done to bridge it, which I call the third phase.

3) Understanding that religion and science are not incompatible, people can rationally and faithfully come to the conclusion that while the vast majority of individual and collective "bad behavior" that is so extreme it can be called "evil" can be explained with rational reasons, there remains a human capacity to do something that can be identified as truly an example of having a resonance with an evil "force," for lack of a better word. Thus one can, for example, discuss Nazi Germany in both "rational terms," identifying the social and political forces that created the evil, but also acknowledge a national "possession" (as Carl Jung described it) that recognizes that classic undefinable "evil" as a force did exert a power.

So really, when people ask "Why does God 'allow' evil to exist," this is really a modern affectation and not as common a question as people today now think. It's understandable, because that's what a lot of people ask when something goes terribly wrong and tragic: asking that question is like a person having a natural reflex when their knee is tapped, for example. But the rationalist side has seized on that question as kind of their reflexive attack on the religious side, because they know most people cannot answer that question, and are left feeling somewhat inadequate in the "defending their belief in God" camp. In other words, it is a litmus test question that really should not be one.

The reason I say this is that the rationalist side conveniently ignores the many religious believers who accept evolution as a scientific reality, although they tend to argue about who is wagging, the dog or the tail, since they continue to consider God "in charge" even if evolution is one of his chosen methods for exerting his will. Now, if you believe in evolution, as just about everyone really does today, let's be serious for a minute, you can gain insights into "evil" simply by studying the animal kingdom, from which man descended. Is there evil in animals?

The answer is "no," there is no "evil" in animals because animals operate on instinct and survival requirements. There is nothing that animals do that is consciously malevolent, hence they cannot be accused of evil. HOWEVER, there are examples where one must think for a minute. The most obvious one is a film I saw some years ago about a wild troop of chimpanzees.

A pregnant female chimp had withdrawn from the troop to have her baby. The film documents how cautious she is to bring the infant back to the troop because for no survival reason at all, members of the troop are malevolent toward the infant. The narrators explain that before she can return to the troop she must gain the protection of an alpha male. (I'm not using the most exact terminology here, but you get my point). The film footage was really hair raising and scary. Why? Because it's one of the few examples you will see of what can be called conscious and malicious tendencies in an animal that has no instinctual reason or survivability imperative. It's not like there is scare resources, or the male kills a litter that is not his own. These were mostly "women" chimps and lesser males who wanted to hurt the infant.

The deep thinkers of this century will start to make the connection between biological evolution of humans, and how unresolved and unevolved malevolent tendencies arose from predatory and other survival imperatives that have gone awry, as the chimps in that example demonstrate, and deviance from God's natural law, which is a compensatory remedy for these impulses. In other words, God more than anyone understands humans (obviously), and the laws that God established were to provide boundaries and channels to allow humans to "let their morals catch up to their biology." Without belief in God and obedience to God's laws and will, you end up with a species that evolved too big brains, too much technology, too much non-survival related time on their hands, and a taste for malevolence. So far from God "allowing evil" or "obviously God's not there because he lets bad things happen or he doesn't know about it so he's not all knowing" blah blah blah, God put in place laws of conduct to contain the growth of evil when humans first showed their first "taste" for it: Adam and Eve, and then Cain and Abel.

"Rationalists" should not dismiss "Adam and Eve" and "Cain and Abel" as myths and fairy stories or morality tales. That is being disrespectful of the obviously very real and careful genealogy that is recorded and preserved in the Old Testament. If it was not Jews and Christians but instead some small tribe on Whatever Somewhere island, they'd be falling all over themselves with respect for the "historical" record that the natives maintained. Yet humans have managed to actually record the first two instances of humans willfully and consciously doing something "evil" and this is scorned, not prized for its insight in deep human history and development. Notice that the first killing was not sexual jealousy or for possessions. It was "pure evil" because it was not driven by an animal like survival imperative (like those examples would have demonstrated), but one brother envied the spiritual goodness of the other brother. That is an awful lot like the chimp troop who wanted to harm the new infant just because they could, and because it was helpless and "good."

There is so much information out there that serious scholars could write many of their PhD's about, and help society while they are at it, if they stop with the question of "evil" as just a way to bash or trivialize the "other side's" beliefs, and start to take seriously the moral and spiritual side of this complex equation and a fresh look at the new and sophisticated science that evolutionary psychology and biological systems/genetics provide that were not understood even a few years ago.

I hope you found these thoughts useful, even if I got the chimp species "wrong" or something LOL.

Part 1: Why suffering and evil in life

People have always wondered why there is suffering in life and as a corollary to that question they ask why evil exists. This question usually comes up in the context of discussion about God. Here are some answers that I hope you find straightforward and useful. There are books and articles that while well meaning and philosophical, do seriously miss the mark and as a result are not as comforting and helpful as they could be. I don’t want to write a lot here, so I’m going to organize it as points, starting with the largest issues and working to more specifics.

1. Why is there death?
Everything and everyone dies because nothing lives forever except God. God exists outside of time. Everything else lives within time. Therefore everything that exists, whether it is a star that lives for millions or billions of years, or a humble small animal, has a beginning, changes continually through life, and an ending. People wonder why humans die, why there is a death, but forget to notice that everything dies in time. Entire galaxies die, for example, in time. The definition of life is that a physical body is born, grows, changes, and eventually dies. Even non living things, such as the star and galaxy examples I give that sustain life but are not of themselves living have a limited “life span.” Eventually they burn up the fuel that sustains them, for example. So death is not “personal,” it is not a punishment or limitation that is given to humans to make them sad, but it is the state of all things, both living and inanimate. Only God is deathless because God is the entirely of existence that is outside of time, not within time. When people say God lives forever that implies that the clock never runs out, while to be more precise, there are no clocks or passage of time within God.

2. Why did some Biblical humans have enormous life spans?
As I explain above, within God there is no time. Adam and Eve were the first humans to walk with God in the garden. As such Adam and Eve were directly exposed to God in the form of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the breath of life from God and as such can confer long life span. Therefore even after the sin and fall of Adam and Eve certain people still walked with God’s Holy Spirit and as such gained long life span, not as a “reward” but because it is like having perfect bodily sustenance within one’s vicinity, giving the body ultimate benefit of life. You can see this effect with some martyrs and saints whose bodies are uncorrupted today. This does not mean that uncorrupted bodies indicate a holier person than everyone else and indeed, many of the holiest saints have only bones remaining or have had their bodies naturally degenerate. But some saints had the side benefit of their exposure to the Holy Spirit translate into sweet smelling oil, or bodily incorruption. Other people have other benefits of the Holy Spirit. But these saints with uncorrupted or slowly corrupting bodies are examples that people can see of how the Holy Spirit works within holy people (and ordinary people) in different ways, where sometimes there is a physical “benefit” of proximity to the Holy Spirit, either extraordinarily long lives for some of the early Biblical fathers and mothers, or uncorrupted bodies of certain saints.

3. Why then do some dead souls go to heaven while others go to hell?
As I explained God is the only condition of eternal life. Therefore for a soul to live forever in heaven the soul is “brought to God,” because by being “within” God’s “hands” in heaven, one is able to be sustained by God throughout eternity. In other words one lives within the Holy Spirit in heaven, achieving the sustenance the soul needs to continue. The opposite state of that is hell. Certain souls who are tainted with sin are not allowed to be within the presence of God, therefore the absence of God is by definition the horror of hell. I’ve explained in a previous blogging that heaven is the state of total purity, truthfulness and authenticity. Anything that is impure cannot exist in heaven, and the example I’ve used is that it is like a human who breaths only oxygen cannot live in an atmosphere that is only hydrogen. Or an ice cube cannot exist in boiling water. So it is not like God is stopping someone who could otherwise “live in heaven” but chooses to be mean or arbitrary, but rather, the person who goes to hell has made his or herself unable to live within the reality of heaven. Let me give some examples using analogies. A person who believes in the reality that Jesus existed but who lives in an anti-Jesus way is like a person who wears an “I breathe hydrogen” T-shirt yet has trained themselves on earth to only breathe oxygen. That person is in very likely risk of hell because his soul has been allowed to reject heavenly “conditioning” and cultivated instead sinful conditioning. So yes it is a punishment to go to hell, but it is the inevitable outcome of the person’s own choices. It is like a person who insists on staying on the conveyor belt that goes to hell. This is why legitimate death bed conversion is real and valid, where at the last moment even the worst sinner can jump off of the conveyor belt to hell. However, the person who deliberately rides the conveyor belt to hell, sinning and harming others, and who figure to jump off the conveyor belt to hell in a cynical way will not “fool God.” This is because like I’ve explained in previous blogs, God knows all and sees all, and people can not explain away a deliberately dirtied soul. So hell is not really an example of evil or suffering, but rather the reality of the physical location that is the absence of God. People who cannot exist within the pure place of grace, truth and purity that is heaven send themselves to hell. Final judgment for these people is not God deciding “yes” or “no” to heaven, but rather these people having the scales fall from their eyes as they see all that they have done while alive and are held to full reckoning. That is part of the horror of hell, the realization at that moment that it was not all a bluff.

4. Why does physical pain exist?
Pain is the condition where bodily circuitry called nerves work together with the brain to alert the person that something is wrong. If something is wrong with the body the nerves send a signal to the brain that is unavoidable and urgent, therefore is experienced as unpleasant pain. People sometimes imagine that feeling pain is a bad or mean design for the human body, but they forget two things. One is that many parts of the body do not have sensitive nerve endings at all, so there is not “over-wiring.” An example is the normal digestion of food. There are many fewer nerve endings inside the body than outside because otherwise there would be a pain reaction to normal events. You would not want to feel pain in your stomach as a result of the contractions that grind up the food and digest it, for example. This is one reason that people sometimes have enormous inner growths that they do not even know about until it gets to like grapefruit or bigger size and hence presses on a more externally located nerve. So the human body is not over-wired in order to feel continual false alarm pain and if anything is slightly under-wired to not feel pain until it is generated by an extraordinary medical or physical condition to the body. Examples are infection, cancer that is breaking down the body, burns that by definition are the destruction of the body exactly where nerves are most congregated. Oddly, because of this slight under-wiring of pain, some bodily assaults are not initially felt, such as some stabbings or bullet wounds, where a person may only feel a sting or pressure at first. The body has evolved to balance being sensitive to danger and harm via pain with there being no living advantage to feeling constant or excessive pain. So God does not make certain illnesses particularly painful (if anything some are under-wired, as I explained), it is a condition of how humans (and different species of animals) evolved to self monitor bodily threat or injury according to their body structure and environment. The second thing to remember is that this is necessary even in our “safe” world. There is a rare disorder that has been reported recently where some people do not experience pain at all. Rather than feel relief they are in mental anguish because they have no knowledge if their limbs are being harmed, they are being burned or even scratch themselves too hard, bang against furniture, and the many daily hazards that having pain protects people from experiencing harm unaware. Interviews with these disorder “sufferers” are very enlightening about the necessity of pain as a sheer survival trait. So of course cancer or burns are painful because they are assaults on the body that the body has to be in a continual state of alert via pain signals to the brain.

(To be continued in further blogging).