Unless and until a human being has become fully one in God, all that is not-God is problematic in his or her life.
Many of the problems for our being-in-God arise from having to deal with “the necessities of nature,” with our having bodies. Of course the body is not evil or bad, but it can and often does weigh down the person’s ascent into God, especially with its need for sleep and its being subject to illnesses of all sorts. The body is ever subject to the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” as Hamlet laments.
The great deterrences to union with God come not from without, but from within: all that is called “sin” in the biblical tradition. Sin is essentially the orientation of the soul, of the human person, away from its proper end (God), and an immersion in what passes. This formulation may sound like regurgitated Plotinian or Augustinian thought; I write it because it seems true to experience. Either one is turning the gaze of one’s mind towards God, towards the complete Good, or one is allowing the mind and its affections to be inundated in and by all “created things,” or all that is not-God. In St. Augustine’s early work, “On true religion,” when he was indeed highly influenced by Plotinus, we find those well-known words: “In the consideration of creatures, one must not exercise a vain and perishing curiosity, but take steps to ascend to that which is immortal and everlasting.”
According to the great thinkers of the western tradition who have written profoundly on the problem of evil--including Plotinus, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas--evil is not “substantial,” not an independent reality, but a lack of goodness, and ultimately a lack of being, a lack of reality. When one dabbles in evil, one is immersing himself in nonreality, in what does not lead to God, but away from divine reality into nothingness. In New Testament thought, evil is generally portrayed as “the devil,” or “demons,” or as demonic activity. That is one way to get at the problem of evil. It is ever good to return from symbolic expression to underlying and engendering experience. And so we ask: What does one experience in “the presence of evil”? One feels pulled towards a seemingly infinite void of non-reality, into an abyss which has no end, no limit, no escape. In simplest words, one “feels bad,” and may feel a chilling cold, in the presence of the vortex of evil. Although evil is masked by what exists, it is felt as an undertow into a realm from which the traveler does not return. A person with sense or common goodness instinctively wants to flee from the experience of this void. One knows it because one feels it: Evil destroys.
Goodness and reality--what is--are essentially one and the same. Evil is the absence of good, and hence, a void in reality, a kind of spiritual “black hole” that can have an allure to a being not set on seeking complete and true goodness--or what Judaeo-Christianity has symbolized as “God,” or “the God.” At times one can experience a kind of magical pull from evil, as though it casts a spell on a person, and lures him from his better senses and grounding in reality towards a bottomless and lightless pit. Evil has nothing to give, but it may promise joy, knowledge, even life.
Evil loves to hide. Evil deceives. Having nothing to give--for evil is nothing but a lack, an emptiness--evil covers itself in apparent goods, in beauty, in charms, and hence attracts those who cannot see it for what it is. Evil deceives the unwary mind, and makes a person think that it is good and beautiful, but it is not. The powerful pull of evil, as noted, is the powerful pull of an intense vacuum, a whirling vortex into nothingness. Unless one keeps setting his course towards the full and real good (that is God), one will be subject to the allure of evil. Its magnetic pull can be great indeed.
Human beings who habitually yield to evil become dark in spirit, lifeless, deceitful, hateful, destructive, and powerfully envious of those who do good. Those who dabble in evil hate the good they believe they cannot attain. In the words of St. John’s Gospel, “Those who do evil hate the light, and refuse to come to the light, lest their evil deeds be exposed; but those who do good come to the light, that it may be clearly seen that their deeds are wrought in God.”
I cannot imagine any force of evil in human existence as strong as the sheer will to power, the desire to dominate others that may masquerade as “service” or even as “love,” but in reality is self-seeking, controlling, manipulative, dominating. At its worst, evil as will-to-power shows up in the attempt to silence truth, to deceive people, to present itself as good, and ultimately to destroy whatever is most truly good, true, beautiful, and one. Why? Because evil essentially is nothing but the negation of whatever is good, true, beautiful, one. All it can do is negate, destroy, deceive. Evil has nothing of goodness or truth to bestow.
In God is no evil. “In Him there is no darkness at all.” The movement into God requires of necessity repeated and frequent turnings away from all that passes, and especially away from the negation of truth and goodness--from evil. One must constantly and steadily keep turning towards “whatever is good, and true, and beautiful, and honorable” (Philippians 4).
Choose wisely: There are those whom we meet who themselves are not turned towards God, and who would distract others from the movement into God. And there are those we meet who are making the exodus from what passes away into true reality--that which IS--into God. Those who love truth and goodness inspire us to arise and move in the same direction. Those who have fled the light, who have sought passing goods as if they were the real good of life, drag others down on the same path.
Blessed are those who can discern good and evil, who take their inspiration and direction from the light that comes from the Light, and not from the deceitful, swirling power of nothingness. Happy the soul arising by love into goodness, by self-control into the joy of divine truth.
Many of the problems for our being-in-God arise from having to deal with “the necessities of nature,” with our having bodies. Of course the body is not evil or bad, but it can and often does weigh down the person’s ascent into God, especially with its need for sleep and its being subject to illnesses of all sorts. The body is ever subject to the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” as Hamlet laments.
The great deterrences to union with God come not from without, but from within: all that is called “sin” in the biblical tradition. Sin is essentially the orientation of the soul, of the human person, away from its proper end (God), and an immersion in what passes. This formulation may sound like regurgitated Plotinian or Augustinian thought; I write it because it seems true to experience. Either one is turning the gaze of one’s mind towards God, towards the complete Good, or one is allowing the mind and its affections to be inundated in and by all “created things,” or all that is not-God. In St. Augustine’s early work, “On true religion,” when he was indeed highly influenced by Plotinus, we find those well-known words: “In the consideration of creatures, one must not exercise a vain and perishing curiosity, but take steps to ascend to that which is immortal and everlasting.”
According to the great thinkers of the western tradition who have written profoundly on the problem of evil--including Plotinus, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas--evil is not “substantial,” not an independent reality, but a lack of goodness, and ultimately a lack of being, a lack of reality. When one dabbles in evil, one is immersing himself in nonreality, in what does not lead to God, but away from divine reality into nothingness. In New Testament thought, evil is generally portrayed as “the devil,” or “demons,” or as demonic activity. That is one way to get at the problem of evil. It is ever good to return from symbolic expression to underlying and engendering experience. And so we ask: What does one experience in “the presence of evil”? One feels pulled towards a seemingly infinite void of non-reality, into an abyss which has no end, no limit, no escape. In simplest words, one “feels bad,” and may feel a chilling cold, in the presence of the vortex of evil. Although evil is masked by what exists, it is felt as an undertow into a realm from which the traveler does not return. A person with sense or common goodness instinctively wants to flee from the experience of this void. One knows it because one feels it: Evil destroys.
Goodness and reality--what is--are essentially one and the same. Evil is the absence of good, and hence, a void in reality, a kind of spiritual “black hole” that can have an allure to a being not set on seeking complete and true goodness--or what Judaeo-Christianity has symbolized as “God,” or “the God.” At times one can experience a kind of magical pull from evil, as though it casts a spell on a person, and lures him from his better senses and grounding in reality towards a bottomless and lightless pit. Evil has nothing to give, but it may promise joy, knowledge, even life.
Evil loves to hide. Evil deceives. Having nothing to give--for evil is nothing but a lack, an emptiness--evil covers itself in apparent goods, in beauty, in charms, and hence attracts those who cannot see it for what it is. Evil deceives the unwary mind, and makes a person think that it is good and beautiful, but it is not. The powerful pull of evil, as noted, is the powerful pull of an intense vacuum, a whirling vortex into nothingness. Unless one keeps setting his course towards the full and real good (that is God), one will be subject to the allure of evil. Its magnetic pull can be great indeed.
Human beings who habitually yield to evil become dark in spirit, lifeless, deceitful, hateful, destructive, and powerfully envious of those who do good. Those who dabble in evil hate the good they believe they cannot attain. In the words of St. John’s Gospel, “Those who do evil hate the light, and refuse to come to the light, lest their evil deeds be exposed; but those who do good come to the light, that it may be clearly seen that their deeds are wrought in God.”
I cannot imagine any force of evil in human existence as strong as the sheer will to power, the desire to dominate others that may masquerade as “service” or even as “love,” but in reality is self-seeking, controlling, manipulative, dominating. At its worst, evil as will-to-power shows up in the attempt to silence truth, to deceive people, to present itself as good, and ultimately to destroy whatever is most truly good, true, beautiful, and one. Why? Because evil essentially is nothing but the negation of whatever is good, true, beautiful, one. All it can do is negate, destroy, deceive. Evil has nothing of goodness or truth to bestow.
In God is no evil. “In Him there is no darkness at all.” The movement into God requires of necessity repeated and frequent turnings away from all that passes, and especially away from the negation of truth and goodness--from evil. One must constantly and steadily keep turning towards “whatever is good, and true, and beautiful, and honorable” (Philippians 4).
Choose wisely: There are those whom we meet who themselves are not turned towards God, and who would distract others from the movement into God. And there are those we meet who are making the exodus from what passes away into true reality--that which IS--into God. Those who love truth and goodness inspire us to arise and move in the same direction. Those who have fled the light, who have sought passing goods as if they were the real good of life, drag others down on the same path.
Blessed are those who can discern good and evil, who take their inspiration and direction from the light that comes from the Light, and not from the deceitful, swirling power of nothingness. Happy the soul arising by love into goodness, by self-control into the joy of divine truth.
