Read this till the end, and please use the words God or universe interchangeably or with your own higher power’s title. If you don’t have a higher power, you most likely don’t believe in Good or Evil, but stay for the conversation.
I read something today that was a perfect prompt to share my thoughts on spirituality and I wanted to share it, because I think it explains why I don’t share in the belief of “good & evil” that so many people do.
The Moral Grey Area
I have been a self described pantheist since 2020, and began sorting this logic out in 2016. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. I believe that all “evil” starts as something “good” and then is perceived by humans as bad. I believe that something can be “evil” and “good,” and that the moral grey area when assessing the extent to which something is good or evil is a spectrum of perception. The truth is that even evil is a reflection of the universe… (insert higher power choice of word here… God for my Christian friends.) Part of why perspective shifting is so important to me is because so many of us hurt our own hearts over and over because we can’t forgive ourselves or others.
I was raised Christian, Lutheran in fact. I learned early that The Bible tells us that “he” is within all of us and even the Bible explains that God created Satan. When I was looking for the passages where it describes God’s creation of Satan I found a Christian website. It shared that God created Satan (John 1:3; Colossians 1:15-17) but didn’t create the evil but gave no scriptures to back that up. With out something to suggest otherwise, I disagree, respectfully of course, that God didn’t create the evil. I can say this with confidence. I watch evil get created in this same way every day.
The Argument
This argument is assuming that Satan and God as depicted in the Christian bible are real and humans are made in God’s image – including emotions and fears. One could argue that when Satan disobeyed God, he was committing “evil.” However, if Satan was one of God’s creations and children, wouldn’t God have nurtured that behavior? Or, in his desire to control Satan, and his furious wrath and casting out, could God have created a wounding.
Imagine your extremely strict parents require you to obey them without question… and when you break the rules they cast you out and have the power to cast you into a hellish place… sorry but that would mess the lot of humans up. How Satan expressed and acted in defiance, is what is a natural thing to abuse and abandonment.
Proof in Nature
In theory… God (or higher power) cannot be controlled, and in creating the universe and everything spiritual and physical, God created the need to be unruly. Because of the chaos in the univers, there is an absolute truth that in some things there appears a linear structure, and in others, there is evidence of chaos and that is as it should be and none is better or worse than the other. Additionally, mathematicians will tell you that in randomization, there is organization.
(Personally I imagine that whatever higher power is out there – if there is one that has the power of creation – that it created the universe as an experimental force to observe or participate in… or as a playground – which would require it the universe to NOT abide by the rules in order to surprise and delight our higher power to create challenges for the purpose of learning and/or entertainment.)
So where does evil come from?
Anyway, back to evil… When God shunned Satan, casting him out, he directly created a wounding in Satan that was so deep that it created evil. I believe that when we think about human “evil” it is expressed after a wounding (either physical, mental, or spiritual.)
Consider every war, going back to Cain and Abel. There is a perception of right and wrong at the start of every war. Someone does what they feel is “right,” and in response another person responds with their emotional justice. The consequent actions are dictated based on the perception of what is right and what is wrong.
“Good” creates “Evil”
Many of us have heard the phrase: ”hurt people hurt people.” Truthfully sometimes we can hurt ourselves through the way in which we look at something. For example, Cain’s perception that Abel was more favored by God even if God never told him that.
Newtons law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And the bigger the injustice we perceive the bigger the reaction. For those who have not yet found this, the reactions can come with out stepping back to see the context.
So who created evil?
If you ascribe to the idea that God is the creator of all, then by his own rules. Satan is an expression of God. From God’s perspective, his actions may have been neutral; one may argue good, but we will say for the sake of this argument, neutral. In this story, Satan is created, and crosses the line, disobeying God. Is it because in satan’s eyes, it was the right thing to do. Just like humans value freedom, free will, and liberty. We can even go less decisive and say that Satan was simply curious and testing boundaries. If you’re a parent you understand this. Either of these scenarios logically explains Satans behavior of disobedience.
Instead of gentle correction, or compromise – God casts Satan out – exiles him presumably into solitude and abandonment. His reaction does not seem to be logical to Satan. I can imagine him saying, “I was doing what I thought was right.” Or “I was just playing.” Humans respond this way when they push boundaries, and thus creates the wounding. A perceived disproportionate(unjust) reaction to the driver behind the initial behavior.
You can watch this battle of perceptions and how “good” creates “evil” play out between Israel and Palestine right now. One action begets another, begets another and it escalates to war. In reality neither Israelis or Palestinians are “good” or “evil” they’re just human. Humans, over centuries perceive, “evil” in one another and believe that they are doing the right thing, but in the retaliations and disagreements and “fighting for what’s right” they create more injustices that are perceived as “evil.”
The human experience is both good and evil
Now for a moment consider that Jesus came long after Satan… as did Buddha and Mohammed…. No matter which religion the idea is that the higher power sent these messengers to share teachings to better the human experience.
If God is a human like being, these subsequent teachers taught us to love others, accept them, and turn the other cheek when we are hurt or wounded for a reason. God learned how deeply those “reactions” based on perception can affect the intentions of good and create evil.
I genuinely believe that when we look at “evil” as an expression of God, our own hearts will heal and allow us to see the light in everything. When our hearts heal, we can see all of the beauty that truly is a manifestation of God. We can only then truly forgive the woundings that we have experienced and exist as an expression of the universe (or God, whatever you’d prefer.)
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