These may not be what you think. If the good is what accords with truth and evil is what deviates from that then they are certainly not what most people think. For most people entirely disregard the spiritual and even those who think they believe in the spiritual usually put it behind the material/worldly/human in practical terms. They define good by worldly good but if worldly good puts itself above spiritual good or even ignores the prior claim of spiritual good then it is evil. Jesus came to save souls not to set up the perfect human society. In fact, he seemed to have had no interest in that at all which may have been why Judas turned against him, Judas being a typical modern person more interested in political change than spiritual awakening.
But let's go back to basics. If there is no spiritual is there even any such thing as evil? There is bad, certainly, but evil implies something more than bad. It is not just destruction of material things, the body, physical life, for personal advantage but destruction of essence, and essence is spiritual. Bad is the opposite of good but evil actively works against good, seeking to undermine it, pervert it, corrupt it, destroy it because of hatred. Perhaps just as good is love so evil is hatred and if hatred is love deformed and turned against itself so evil bears the same relationship to good which is to say that good is the reality and evil is that reality gone wrong.
What I am saying is that good and evil are spiritual concepts, concepts rooted in a far deeper reality than just the material world. So, if you deny the spiritual you really have no business talking about evil. Conversely, if you accept evil you must acknowledge the spiritual, and if you acknowledge the spiritual you must see it as primary and the material as its support. We have reversed this relationship and reduced the spiritual to either nothing, an expression of the material or, as with most followers of religion, something to be defined in terms of the material.
For practically everybody today good is material good, what increases material comfort and reduces material suffering. Evil is what does the opposite regardless of other considerations. This partly explains the extraordinary behaviour over the last year. But this was not how Jesus saw it. Good was what did the will of his Father which was bringing souls back to him. Jesus healed the sick and fed the hungry but not very often and probably only to demonstrate the reality of divine power. What he did continuously was preach the kingdom of God and tell us how to get there. He was concerned with spiritual good more or less to the exclusion of anything else.
At the moment there is an all-out assault on spiritual good not by attacking it directly but by replacing it with a lower good or, better put, a false good, a good that relates to human beings as they are in this world and, by virtue of that, seeks to keep them and their attention in this world. This false good denies the soul, the spiritual component of man, and that makes it evil in the true spiritual sense. So, this is not evil as obvious wickedness but evil masquerading as good in order to destroy the true good. It is Satan appearing as an angel of light.
Any morality not centred in God or, at the very least, a higher reality is actually immoral. This is because it creates and reinforces a false good so blocking out the true good and preventing growth in that good. Paradoxically, the strictest adherents of such a morality are the most spiritually immoral.
What people need to understand now is that the nature of evil has changed. Now, it has moved from being principally a material thing (murder, violence, lying, cheating etc) to being a spiritual thing - denial of God. Or reality since God is reality. And this denial can only come from a misaligned spiritual will so it is never innocent. The old evils still remain, of course, but a deeper sin has been added to them, all the worse for not being regarded as such.
The difficulty for so many people is that good and evil are not clear so millions of ordinary, decent people (decent by conventional standards) are actually on the side of evil. But that is because we look at good and evil in materialistic terms rather than, as we should, spiritual terms. Once you start thinking of the material world as a place designed to bring out spiritual choice then everything becomes a lot more obvious.
Most people want to be good but for that to be possible you have to know what good is and for that to be the case the heart must be rightly oriented. Our hearts are not rightly oriented and that is our own fault.
To sum up, let me say that whether you are for good or evil now depends on whose side you are on. God and creation or the world as it is presented in current belief systems, some of which are actually religious. It is not so much whether you are a conventionally good or bad person, though clearly you should always seek to be good and sincerely repent your failures. It is determined by whether your heart inclines towards God or the teachings of this world which deny God. And if you are not for God then, as the scripture says, you are against him. There is no neutral ground, certainly not any longer. This should be a wake up call to the millions of people who just go along with things as they are. You cannot now say "It's not my fault. It's how things are. I can't be held responsible if I just do as others do." The truth is always within you. You are responsible.
This post echoes recent ones by Bruce Charlton and Francis Berger though most of it was written before I read those. I believe this indicates there is something in the air now saying that a serious choice is being demanded of us and we need to make that choice soon.
4 comments:
Brilliant post. I think you hit the nail on the head here: "Jesus came to save souls not to set up the perfect human society. In fact, he seemed to have had no interest in that at all which may have been why Judas turned against him, Judas being a typical modern person more interested in political change than spiritual awakening." I also think this captures the problem: we have "reduced the spiritual to either nothing, an expression of the material or, as with most followers of religion, something to be defined in terms of the material." Well said.
As an aside, I seem to be losing the ability to be outraged when so many things are outrageous. I wonder if we, like soldiers in war, could become acclimated to the terrible environment (ex: when everything is outrageous nothing in particular is outrageous)... However, on the positive, I have no love loss for this World and I have no desire for any carrots the System can offer.
To continue the point Magnus drew from saving souls, not society - this emphasis on society is a terrible distortion of life itself; and one to which I (along with most people) am prone, and against which I must be alert.
Properly understood, there seems little doubt that the salvation Jesus offered is open to everyone, everywhere, in all situations - and yet so many people (including self-identified Christians) seem to *demand* pretty detailed social conditions as a pre-requisite for Jesus's message - and assert that such and such a particular society is a Christian failure -- rather than all, and all possible societies being a failure in terms of what Christ wanted!
*But* all that does not matter for salvation, for knowing Jesus and following him.
Yet we get eminent bishops and Bible scholars who strongly imply that we must *first* Sort Out society and the world (always on Leftist lines!) *before* we can really get down to the Christian message... That is what comes-across at any rate (even when they would deny it explicitly).
Thanks both. I would say, Magnus, that we need to be outraged by the world but detached from it too, a difficult position to take but one that means we don't become desensitised to the spiritual degradation but don't get caught up in it either.
"All possible societies being a failure in terms of what Christ wanted." Yes, that's exactly it. Jesus was only really interested in individuals not collectives at all. That's my understanding anyway. When individuals are facing in the right direction everything else falls into place naturally.
Just to be clear, what I meant was that Jesus was only interested in our spiritual awakening and development. How we are organised in this world should always be at the service of that and not for any fulfilment in the here and now. That is not immaterial but it is always secondary.
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