Well, tonight at church was fun.  The youth Bible study time was done as a panel discussion about predestination, and I got to be on the panel.  One question that was raised that we did not address (mainly because I raised it) was this: What is evil?  With the predestination discussion, something with clear lines drawn, the kids in the crowd were in over their heads, so we all knew this one was too deep for them, so we didn't talk about it.  But I'm going to do so now.  This is a sort of monologue, and I would love some input from others who read this.

Evil itself is difficult to define.  It's an idea.  For me to say something or someone is evil means that that thing or person has done something from which no good can come.  I'm beginning to rethink this definition, however, as I'm finding that good repercussions can come from the most dastardly things.  For example: the destruction of the WTC.  This was a terrible thing, and I used to say it was evil.  However, good came from that.  Had the WTC not been destroyed, I would not have begun evaluating my life, and would not be nearly as in-depth into spirituality and philosophy as I am.  This trait of mine is what drives me to succeed in my various endeavors; ergo, had the WTC not been bombed, I would not have retained my scholarships and remained in school.  Believe it or not, I can prove that.  Now, look at the ripple effect.  While I'm at school, I am allowed multiple roles for friendship, service and leadership in which I can spread love to others.  Had the WTC not been bombed, I would not be able to see Daniel again; hell, I probably never would have even gotten to know anyone at Tech, much less ever seen more than a picture of Daniel.  Because of how I was affected by the WTC disaster, the last 5 years or so of my life have been irrevocably changed.  There is no way at all to be able to determine who or where I would be right now.  I would say that I have been changed positively by that, meaning that, since a good change came out of it, it is not an evil thing.

Even beyond that, the Bible tells us that "All things work together for good for them who love the Lord, to them who are the called according to His service."  Wouldn't that mean that there is no evil at all?

Looking beyond this, we can take in the possibility of relativism on the scale of evil.  Because I was positively influenced by the WTC thing, I would say it wasn't evil.  However, because someone else was negatively influenced, they may say that it was.  By this, I mean that the effect that an occurence or person has on another person determines the evilness/goodness of that occurence/person in relation to the receiver of the action.  To the Jews in the Holocaust, Hitler was evil, because he condoned their deaths.  To me, Hitler is not evil, because his political prowess has helped me to develop my own rhetorical skills.  I do not believe that this is a true system.

So, excluding relativism and pragmatism in regards to evil, with what am I left?  We can always drift back to the black/gray/white areas, allowing a set code of moral guidelines to determine what is evil, but, as I stated last night, I am not really feeling that one right now.


I suppose that I could look at what evil is not.  Let's presuppose that Man is capable of holding an unconditional love for all other Man.  In this environment of ucl (unconditional love), let us suppose that Man would live by the Smith/Nash ideal that Man would do what was best for himself and the group because preserving the strength of the group would preserve the safety and stability of the individual.  In this world, there would presumably be no evil.  However, what if, to insure the preservation of the group, one man had to kill himself?  Not only would this defeat his goal of protecting himself, but it would defeat his goal of preserving the group because the loss of an individual lessens a group.  We are then left with a paradox of which good is less good - the suicide or the survival.  Looking into the ripple effect of this, his suicide would cause everyone else to fail in preserving the group; however, if his suicide would in fact help to preserve the group, they would be guilty of non-preservation by allowing him to live.  In the end, everyone is right and everyone is wrong no matter what he does.  That sucks.


Okay, switching gears.  With many of the suppositions about God, let's look at evil and its relationship with Him and Man.

1. God knows everything.
If God knows everything (is omniscient), then He knew, before creating Lucifer, that he would rebel.  He knew, before creating Man, that he would rebel.  He knew that, if He put the tree in the garden, Lucifer would tempt Man and Man would sin.  Why, then, would God do it?  Some say to give Man the choice.  There would be no choice if God had not created it.  Therefore, God created the choice between good and evil, purity and sin, for Man.  If we charge a man for giving a loaded gun to a child and watching the child shoot itself, we should charge God for giving us evil, knowing we would choose it.

2.  God does not know everything
If God does not know everything, then He is an unreliable source for any hope or promise, and may as well have just made us evil in the first place.

3.  God predestines every action
If God predestines/foreordains/whatevers every action, then He caused Satan and Man both to sin.  Therefore, God created evil.

In all of these scenarios, God is as guilty, if not more so, than Man in the introduction of evil into the world.  Unless God is evil, there must be something else behind all of it.  If nothing else, this raises the age-old question: Why is Man here?  If Man was doomed from the start, then can there really be an answer to that question, besides "To be doomed."?

Okay, here's an epiphany I just had: the Bible teaches that, to God, all sin is equal, whether it is telling a little white lie to a dying senior citizen or murdering a nursery full of babies.  We ascribe varying degrees of evil to these things.  To God, there is no evil as we see it.  There are just things that are contrary to His nature, which is a self-sacrificing love.  In the aforementioned society of ucl, had they lived as God, meaning in a society in which they preserved the group at possible detriment to the self, then the groups chances for survival would drastically increase if individuals focused entirely on the group, meaning that if the team works as a team all the time, the loss of individuals will not be as costly as it could be.

Evil is something not motivated from a self-sacrificing, unconditional love.

Please, discuss.