According to the bible, God gave a few commandments, do this and do that but DON'T eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

Eve was manipulated into eating the fruit and disobeying God, therefore, giving her knowledge of good and evil as she committed the act. 

The thing I don't get here is why should she be punished?  She was not aware of what evil was until after she ate the fruit, so how can she be punished for willingly committing evil if she was unaware of what evil was? 

According to many bible believer's, evil at it's sourse would be Satan.  The opposition.  So where did Satan come from? When he was an angel in heaven he became proud and desired to be worshiped.  Why did he start feeling that way? Where did his evil desires come from? From a different devil before him? 

I believe that good and evil have always existed.  We are all seperate beings and for that reason we can't help but think selfishly most of the time. 

We can never really truly understand the value of goodness until we have been exposed to evil otherwise all we know is goodness and as a result we would not have anything to compare it to, so its value wouldn't be fully understood. 

Thanks,

Bishop B

"Where did evil come from?" It comes from the abuse of children. Bad parenting creates bad adults, who do bad things to try and make the hurt go away. That and psychosis, sick brains. Did Hitler have bad parents or was he just psychotic? How about Cortez? Charles Manson? I bet they all had issues in their childhoods.

I think we are all born inately good. Nature contains half dark, half light, but it's not evil in the way people can be evil. I think nature's "darkness" is part of creation, and should not be shunned, but understood, feared when appropriate and respected, and that the universe works exactly as it should. There can be no light, without dark. Bad people on the other hand need to be tended to, in whatever means appropriate.

No it's not evil to seek the knowledge of good and evil. People need to know what's what in order to gain wisdom.

I suspect that evil is a natural part of the human condition.  It is not original sin.  It is not the product of some evil mythological monster called Satan.

Evil has never been satisfactorily explained. 

In addition to the human condition we also have folks who are mentally ill and unaware of their own evil.

Shalom

Mate

Hi Bishop:

Appearantly, Adam and Eve forgot to eat from the Tree of Life. Had they eaten from it, they would have remained in Paradise, and become as gods.

Quickly, let's eat some of those Golden Apples!

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing no less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well...

T.S. Eliot

She is being punished for not obeying God.  She is being punished for questioning God.    She also was punished more than Adam because Adam and Eve were equal in the Garden and after they got kicked out God made Adam her ruler.

those reasons seem right. werent they punished equally?? childbirth was made hard for women from then on out and the earth no longer was kind to adam, nor would it be to any of his children. ..eve was created of adam and therefore adam needed her to function properly. man and women were made to fit. (no offense to any homosexuals who may be reading this ^_^) did god actually give adam power over eve?

breaktown;

Do you really believe that Adam worked alone in the garden?  Don't you think Eve helped him with his primitive farming?  So Eve got a double curse.

I don't see where God made Adam "rule" over Eve or that the penalies were any more harsh for on than the other except that Eves penalty was mentioned as birth pains which are internal, same with the "time of the month"

Adam's penalty however however was the toiling of the ground as they were not allowed in the garden anymore & the fruit grew without the work of thier hand.

Which leads me to believe that Eve didn't help Adam as he worked in the garden, I don't think they worked or even thought of it as work.

 It was paradise & it was probably more like a permanent vacation in Belize or something.

That's a pretty loaded question GordW and likely to instill a multitude of answers.

So I'll through my pennies in and say that what we think of as 'evil' is subjective by each of us personally. We stir a lot of emotion when we talk about about good and evil. So rather than attempt to negotiate down that path I'm going to try to look at things from a more logical point of view.

We see the world around us, both the very large and the very small subject to cycles. Whether it's the rotation of an electron around an atom or our Sun around the Galaxy, or, in our more personal lives where we are subjected to the daily rising and setting of the Sun every day and the seasons of every year. "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven", as the good book says. Could not the fall of Man and the rise of Christ also be part of a great cycle in nature? Evil, I think, comes about because nature falls and rises in time. And not just on a physical level as in the motions of the planets and the stars, but whole empires rise to power and fall in time, world economies thrive at some points and fall at others, fashions come and go, people live and die, etc., etc.,

I think that what we call 'evil' is still part of nature and part of God. It's up to us to go with the flow and work with what we have. The old saying goes: if it wasn't for darkness, we could never define light. This is the same with good and bad. We live in a world where we need to become One with God and so this called evil is the means by which we do this. Without the temptations of live we would have nothing to overcome, we would never expand our awareness to include larger and wider horizons. Life would be a rather stagnate existence. Which could be good in it's time but not, apparently, for us right at this time.

I think man was punished WAY more than women. We have to deal with you PMSing all over the place.

JUST kidding!

But back to the issue at hand, I think evil was born from Lucifer's rebellion. Nothin else to it.

Excellent answer, Neo!

I just filed your Yin/Yang symbol in my picture folder. Thanks!

Like Neo's yin/yang symbol, I believe evil comes from the universe's need to be in balance; therefore, good is balanced by evil.  The introduction of the Tree of Knowledge gave humans free choice between good and evil and thus the ability to have some control over his or her own destiny.

I wonder if evil is like a fence that hopefully corrals us closer to God? We're all tempted to climb the fence but it was never God's intention that we should.

Come on man. i shouldn't know this better than you; i've only read the parts of the bible they read in elementary school:

 ¹⁶To the woman he said,

   I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;

   with pain you will give birth to children.

   Your desire will be for your husband,

   and he will rule over you.

It's there. Pretty sexist. Also about Adam and Eve and the quality of their work in the garden or whether they both worked or not: none of this is dealt with in the bible. You're thinking of John Milton's Paradise Lost. That book is also where the following notions came from (or were at least first collected, articulated and massively printed):

1. The serpent was satan

2. satan was a fallen angel (and all of his assorted reasons for rebelling against god)

For me, all things are created by Creator. All things... inlcuding evil or what we believe to be evil. In the story of the Garden, God places a tree with knowledge of good and evil.

For me, to have free will, we must be able to make choices. The other choice must exist and so to must the temptation to make it.

So, answering your questions, for myself alone:

"So where did evil come from?"

For me, it comes from the Creator of all things.

"Was evil there before the "beginning of the beginning"?"

That, I would answer, is up from grabs. Did the choices need to exist for freewill and the temptation to make then need to exist before humans were created? It is like what came first the chicken or the egg for me. Were all things created at once?

"Was evil part of the "us" the story mentions when humanity are created (men and women at the same time in this story)?"

Again, up for grabs. For me, the us could be God's many natures (like the many names)....  or it could be the feminine/masculine sides the culture knew... it could be the creative "us" of  whatever existed prior to humans, creation born of creation and the creative process.... The dust could be part of the "us" needed, would it not? Would their preception of God want it expressed that God said "us" implying togetherness? It begs that question, "would God say please and thank you"? 

"Is evil in fact part of God?  OR part of the creattion that is called good?

Why is it either or?

For clarity, the "in fact" you used troubles me because I know nothing "factual" in this realm. For me, God is all. So, yes evil would be part of God and part of the creation called good.

"Remembering that the general role of Satan in the Hebrew Scripture is that of tester, is the serpent doing what God wants or needs to happen in the 2nd Genesis account of creation?"

I would not go that far. Your use of  "wants or needs" is what troubles me. I believe that the Hinderer does what God designed the Hinderer to do. I do not believe God wants or needs us to be hindered.

"Does God need humanity to know good and evil inorder to develop?"

I do not think God needs it. I do believe that we do. 

"If so is it really evil to seek that knowledge?"

I do not believe that the biblical story ever has God label it "evil" to seek knowledge of good and evil in the story. God simply told Adam not to eat the fruit from that tree is what I get from the story.

"Where does evil come from?" 

From the Creator, creation and the created.

"How does it enter the equation?" 

It enters where it enters, where it is brought into the equation. For me, it is internal and not an external force.

"What is it anyway?"

Well, again only for me, I do not have separate and competing powers, good and evil. For me, there is human nature and God. There is being guided to the best choice or not allowing ourselves to be guided. For me, there is my realization that there is no darkness, only absence of light. There is no place God is not. So, for me, there really is not so much evil as there is a choice lacking in good.

Neo, yes, nice post, well described. I still don't think evil is an inate part of nature though, because I don't think death, animals eating each other, disease and temptation are evil. They're just the darker part of nature of which we are a part. Of cource Hitler was evil, and he was a part of nature so in that sence you are right, empires rise and fall. And also psychosis is part of nature, as no doubt Hitler was a psychopath. But still "evil" seems separate from nature to me. A hungry wolf isn't evil, nor is the black widow spider, nor is a rabid dog.

Thanks for posting the yin yang, I was thinking of mentioning it myself. "There can be no light without dark", is also a quote by the character "Darkness" in the film Legend. (Fabulous fantasy film which deals with this subject.)

Use of the term evil is a cop-out. To say that Hitler was evil is to dehumanize that person and deny the possibility of all humans to act in an unacceptable fashion.

To call Hitler evil is to simply write the matter off. The much more useful reality is to say that Hitler was a person with a seriously flawed belief system that led to acts that are extremely unacceptable in society.

Since what God made is good and God is good, I would say that evil is just the removal of God from the equation.

In any situation where we find evil can you think of God being a part of that. In all aspects of God we are called to stand against evil by the power of Jesus.

Be Blessed,

IB

To me, calling Hitler evil is writing the matter off, in a way. If, by evil we mean Satan did it, or the devil made him do it, the devil tempted him....  that we, by virtue of our own seriously flawed belief system,  write it all off. 

AntiSemitism was a real evil. Hitler was certainly not alone in that evil. One chooses between good and evil, as part of our human nature,  and I cannot find myself saying that Hitler or many of the inner circle chose much I could classify as good. Sociopathy exists and needs no real excuses to do evil. The atrocities epitomize what the choices between good and evil can look like.

That said, I do believe that we have demonized certain characters in history, made them evil incarnate, dehumanized them... while largely ignoring others. Does it benefit us to strip them of humanity? No, because it means we fail to realize the human potential. The potential within all of us to choose evil, to fail to choose good or to chose not to chose at all.....

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." ----Edmund Burke

Genocide happened long before Hitler and has happened countless times since.

Putting a forked tail and claws and fangs on someone, anyone,  lets us dehumanize them. It lets us forget that they are human, they are among us, and by virtue of living in that fantasy of some people as sub-human... it allow us to  repeat some of the most horrible events in history.

I attended a speech by a Detroit rabbi and Holocaust survivor, who I have long ago forgotten his name, that said to make Hitler evil, sub-human, was to ultimately make "us" into him. My job, he said, was that the world never be able to convince me that any person, at any time, in any place, under any conditions....could be said to be sub-human or evil.

I don't think there's really any such thing as evil. It all depends on whose judging, where we are in a historical and societal sense etc. For example - I don't htink Hitler thought of himself as evil.  Those folks who burnt all the "witches" thought they were doing a good thing in fact. The crusades...We're all relatively civil to each other because we're all relatively happy and healthy. I think you start to see the real nature of humanity when food gets scarce, when disaster hits, when war gets really, really nasty etc. It's human nature to be selfish which can lead to what we htink of as "evil". When it comes down to it, it (evil) is ingrained in us all. It's why we can ignore the pleas of starving children in other countries, pick up a gun and go shoot the "evil doers" or whatever. Just my opinion...unlike Elenorgold up at the top of this post, I think the oppposite is true - we are all born inately evil.

Oh, and then there are poeple who are mentally unstable as mentioned before.

But then what do you do about evil done in God's name, evil done that everyone thinks is good and Godly at the time (Crusades, witch-hunts, residential schools to name a few that leap to mind)?

I agree, 'evil' isn't an innate part of nature but our interpretation of it is. We wouldn't call a wolf 'evil' because it attack and killed a human being but we would consider another human being 'evil' if they did the same. Perhaps this concept of 'evil' only comes into play when we're dealing with thinking human beings, and is therefore a physiological aspect of human nature, while everything else is just nature.

I believe that there are involutionary and evolutionary forces working simultaneously in our Universe. We, as thinking and rational human beings, have the choice as to which side of the coin we work with. With the so called "fall of man" our spiritual nature became enmeshed with Matter, which itself is considered to be the opposite of Spirit, (an example of this concept in the Bible is where God gave Adam and Eve 'coats of skin' to wear after they realised they were naked)

Having identified ourselves with matter we then became separated from our true heritage, our true spiritual selves. Was this is an 'evil' act? Or was this a cyclic phenomena that, in the long run, enables the Spirit within to expand to the form without, thus to including within It's realm both Spirit and Matter? Is this not what Christ did when He said "I and my Father are One" or "Thy will Father, not mine". Christ was the quintessential example of Spirit working through and manifesting in Matter.

I don't want to focus too much on Hitler but there are so many in our world, both historic and current, who are still on the involutionary path. They are more intent on identification with form aspect of their being than the formless and spiritual aspect. This focus on the personality can only bring suffering, as the Buddha so wisely points out. Even a pyramid will pass in time and therefore nothing of form can bring everlasting gratification.

This whole concept of good vs evil being part and parcel of the whole circle of life brings out some pretty deep and philosophical questions. Such as who is this personification of the devil and why is it always tempting us towards carnal (and temporary) pleasure. Could it actually be that this is an aspect of God that has a purpose in nature? Without the concept of evil there is no concept of good. So it is really evil in the long run if by it's very denial it leads us to good?

Hey people do things in God's name all the time. How about the abortion doctor killers. Do you really think that is God's will?

You are confusing what may be done in God's name, that is evil, and the perpetrators think they are justifed by invoking God's name.

How about all the extreme Islamic suicide bombers. Do you really believe that that is God''s will?

If someone went and killed someone who offended you and claimed they were doing it for you, would that be the case?  Don't answer that!

Be Blessed,

IB

IBelieve, I hope you don't get me wrong here. I do agree that there are a lot of evil things that happen in this world, especially those that occur in the name of God. I'm only speaking philosophically here and looking at the very big picture. Without evil in this world we would not know what good is. This statement in no way condones evil, it simply looks at it from a dispassionate distance. And I totally understand that when something evil happens to anyone personally it almost impossible to see dispassionately. I do apologize if this sounds cold hearted, but there are times when I simply try to see things from a detached point of view.

Don't worry Neo,

I think we are in agreement with most of this.

Without night, day would not be recognized, without pain, wellness would not be recognized, without hot would we know cold ~ and on and on and on!!

Without bad would we be able to choose good?

I am so grateful for the tribulation I have been through, to be able to look forward to a reward that is good all the time, no matter how you describe it.

God talks about this all the time in the bible.

Without going through the bad and leaning on God's power would we be able to strengthen others, going through the same thing, with the assurance we have?

 Jesus gave believers words of hope to overcome trouble, distress, and sorrow: "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33 NIV).

Trouble and sorrow were not meant to be part of the human experience. Humanity’’s sin brought sorrow to them (Genesis 3:16-19). Sometimes God was seen as chastising His people for their sin (Amos 4:6-12). To remove sorrow, the prophets urged repentance that led to obedience (Joel 2:12-13; Hosea 6:6).

I agree with your point.  But then, just to draw the argument to its logical conclusion, what about the times when Scripture talks of God telling people to do evil things like genocide?

I guess I would have to go to those scriptures and study them in context and see if that was, in fact, what happened.

When I first started reading the bible there seemed to be so many contradictions but over time as I read more scripture and became more familiar with what was happening around the offending story, I would see that that was not what was in play.

All through the Old Testament are fragments of the same story but revealling more of the surrounding story. The more I study, the more the contradictions fall away.

I trust in God and He has revealled to me a loving parent-type of God. Sometimes, as children, we think our parents are acting in a mean way but we find out in the future that it was a loving act meant for our own good.

You have to remember that we are all in God's hands and He loves us all. So this would tell me that anyone who was killed in any fashion would still be in His hands.

If you don't believe in an afterlife with God then this would seem mean and not really matter to you.

Be Blessed,

IB

Thanks PG, StevieG, and Karen for the points about (people like) HItler. I was thinking that too after I made my post and left for town. What people do can be evil, but not the person themself. You are right.

Neo you are right, evil is a human concept, not a force that exists independantly. This proves the devil is only a human concept, to those who believe in "him", I hope. And once you know the devil is only a thought, "he" ceases to be real. I don't think there's any devil tempting us toward temporary pleasure. Pleasure, through our evolution, has usally meant bennefit to the human animal ie: this food tastes good so it will nourish me, all other pleasures work the same way I think. But we use our intelligence to discern whether the pleasure will be of long term benefit to ourselves and our tribe or if it will ultimately do harm. It's no devil, it's just using one's intelligence. And some people slip up due to strain on their minds or insufficient thinking capacity for whatever reason, no devil there either.

I don't think the concept of evil is necessary though. I think we can get along fine just with thinking: that is good, or that is bad. So maybe I don't believe in evil at all, only ill deeds.

Karen, we are born "innocent" of good or evil, and capable of both. ANd that very innocence, even though there is evil there, makes the infant inately good. We are born a blank slate for the writting.

Not sure the children of God called Amorites, Kenites, Canaanites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites,  Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Girgashites.... would see a loving parent who did it, or supposedly told others to, for their own good. 

Not sure that the loving parent thing works for everybody in Leviticus 26:7 either...

 Nope, probably doesn't work for everyone in Dueteronomy 7:1-2 or 20:16 either...

The words recorded being direct words of God or divinely inspired or innerant and any imagery of a loving parent God, are not compatible to me. For God not to be a monster, (again to me) someone must have recorded something wrong or not understood or it must be a myth, period. As divine word of God, it doesn't work for me when I read of  the people of Canaanite (Book of Joshua) or the tribe of Benjamin (Book of Judges).

For me, it is genocide... A different ethnic group is on your land. Nothing more and nothing less and,  like many other times in our own lifetimes and history, God is used as the reason or the excuse or God gets the blame.

Just curious as to why you reference these people as "children of God".

Since you are referencing the bible as to what happened to these tribes, I would think you  would also reference the bible when it says that we are created by God but do not become "children of God" until we accept Him and worship Him.

The scripture says that God loves everyone and wants no one to persish but the family thing is not an enforced thing, just desired!

Be Blessed,

IB

Hi GordW,

It would depend upon one's cosmology I guess.

For myself I do not think that Evil belongs to God's Creation so much as it belongs to human stewardship.  Its agency  is part of what Creation does not part of what the Creator does.

At least one quote from scripture points this way.

I lean more toward this all though I would say when the pronouncements of good and very good are made evil does not yet exist.  It is a possibility because there is for the moment the freedom to choose (Gasp not--the only place a Calvinist sees free-will as actual is prior to the fall--after that it is total depravity baby).

Hmmmmm.  No.  The command does not prohibit not coming to that knowledge ever it just doesn't allow for that knowledge to be gained through the fruit of that particular tree.

The command is not to remain ignorant.  The command is to not eat the fruit of this tree.

That's not just theological slight of hand either.  The justification given by the serpent "you will become like God" is theological slight of hand justifying disobedience.

The decision to ignore the prohibition.

Human agency.

Something to big to define acurately.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Sorry IBelieve, again a difference in theology.

You won't in any place where these people's stories are told, see what you hold to be "children of God". I believe you will need John 1 and letters to find what you refer to.

You seem to see only those born again as children of God.

For me, that is supercessionism. I see Dueteronomy 14:1 saying the Jews were children of God and do not see that familial relationship rescinded by God.

I believe that all people are children of God.

A difference in theology.

My point being that you reference scripture to point out "assumed" genocide by God but refute any other scripture that references "children of God".

I knew you believed that way and you used the one scripture in the Old Testament to justify it but it was talking about God's chosen family and not any of the tribes you referenced as God's children. If you had referenced the next verse you would have noticed that.

Deut. 14:1-2    "You are the children of the Lord your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor shave the front of your head for the dead.

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

The Christian faith is a new familial relationship, available to all who want it, through Jesus Christ.

Jesus bridged the gap for all and it is up to us to go to the table and fill our plate with love and acceptance and life.  All free. No strings!

But then I know you already know this from your baptism.

Be Blessed,

IB

~~

Here's my thing...

God is...perfection.

Evil is imperfection.

He created man in his image...a reflection of Him...but only a reflection...therefore, man is imperfect.

There is no imperfection in God since He is perfect...therefore, evil, which is imperfection, cannot be part of, or from, God.

Evil, then, which is imperfection, must issue from man.

~~~~

I do not believe in original sin...I refuse to believe in a doctrine that would accuse a newborn babe of being a sinner. I believe that all souls are born pure and unstained. It is only here, in this place, with us, that a soul becomes sullied...becomes...evil.

For example: If I steal money, I have allowed greed to influence my actions in a negative way…yet, what if I were to greedily hoard food for a year and then use it to feed those who are less fortunate or feed those who have just survived a tornado…then I have allowed greed to influence me in a positive manner and so...it can be shown that what was created By God is not evil...it is how man conducts himself that is the measure and we can see then that evil is from man.

Evil is not a thing...it is not substantive. It is a way of behaving...thinking...living. It was not created by God and it is not ruled by some faceless demon or fallen angel. Every attempt to make it so diminishes what God has created and falsely absolves us of our imperfection.

Peace

Attrus

~~

I have to agrede with SG.  We, all of us, were supposedly created in the image of God.  Therefore it only makes logical sense that all folks are his children.  In Matt. 25 Jesus invites into the kingdom those who fed the hungry etc.  He did not say they had to be of Jewish origin or any other origin.  You did this enter.  You did not ddo this so get lost.  Since you did this you did it to me.

Shalom

Mate

I'm having a nice picnic of devil'd eggs and borscht with my sweetie in the park. We're enjoying ourselves, seeing the eagles swooping...

PLOP!

We throw out our devil'd eggs and have to do with just the borscht.

Now, this bird attack sets me to thinking. Since I'm a curious creature:

o where did that plop come from?

o how did it happen?

o how can I find out?

o how can I seperate Speculation from Fact?

o how can I find out what I am responsible for?

Engaging anti-hornet field,

Inannawhimsey

I thought Borscht was supposed to have a big dollup of sour cream on top!!!

Be Blessed,

IB

That's funny!  I personally don't like borsh without the sourcreme.

Well y'see, up until recently, all Borscht did. Then came the Cream-Agains, who said that you had to get Doused (or was that Soused?) before your Borscht could have sour cream.

In Canada, the Borscht eats you,

Inannawhimsey

How about the Borscht Agains who don't believe that the sour cream has anything to do with it the final full supper?

BEETS me!!!

Be Blessed,

IB

Freundly-Giant, you are a tit. That is THEE most generic joke i have ever heard from you. ^_^

 I read through the majority of these comments and I haven't seen anyone mention St. Augustine on the topic of evil.

Evil is best seen as something that doesn't actually exist. Just like it is impossible to measure darkness or silence other than by the lack of light or sound, so we should see evil as the lack of good. Augustine points out from philosophy of Plato that everything points to some good. Drugs and sex are aiming for the good of pleasure. The means of obtaining this pleasure is skewed from what is good. By this definition, no action can be 100% evil or it would cease to exist. 

Also, I noticed a lot of fundamentalists posting on this forum. It's tough to understand these subjects when the entire Bible is taken literally. I don't believe there was a garden of Eden and I don't believe the Lucifer was an angel that rebelled against God. Evil wasn't "created" or "born" from some event. It is what we see as a side-effect when the Good is sought without the aim toward God.

You are confused about what "original sin" means. It is a common misconception that when we are born, God takes his clipboard and marks off one sin for being human. You are right in saying that we are all born pure. As you said before, we are in the "image and likeness of God." Try looking at original sin like this: We are born into sin, not with sin. This original sin is not a mark against us, but a temptation we are born into. This world is full of sin (not evil) and we are constantly tempted to sin through society and our human nature. Saying that Jesus was born without original sin means that he wasn't born into our temptation. Augustine refers to this as "competence" (knowing the good and acting on it). We see in Romans 7:1-25 that we can know what is good, but we still fail to act on it. Without Jesus, we easily fall from this impurity at birth. If you noticed, newborn babies are completely narcissistic. If we mature as we grow (maturity is not measured by age), we become less selfish and learn to think of others first. I haven't gone too far off topic.

Forgive me but I made a mistake. This particular idea is not from Augustine but from St. Thomas Aquinas. And he didn't get the idea from Plato but from Aristotle. St. Augustine suggested that evil cannot exist in it's entirety since everything God created is good. This was from Socratic and Platonic thinking.

 I see evil arising as a necessary dimension of free will and the capacity to discern. 

From any creature's point of view, shit happens. Without discernment, shit is merely a part of life. But we know that it's shit because we have discernment.

When we base our discernment on ourselves (on opportunism and self interest), we promote shit to the rank of Evil by whacking someone else in the face with with it (or its consequences). 

When we vest our discernment in consideration of others or a "higher being" (a greater overview of some sort) we achieve the dimunition of "evil" and promote the healing after a bad case of shit.. We may even turn in into "GOOD". We seem to focus more on our capacity for Evil than for GOOD and is an unhealthy focus. We can't "prevent" evil until we promote shit to Evil, and we do that by naming it and dishing it out.

Evil is second-hand shit and we conspire in adding to its depth and toxicity when we allow it to pile high on others instead of washing it off like Jesus tried to teach us to do. Evil does not happen where there is no capacity for discernment. There, it stays shit --  plain, simple, unpalatable and unpleasant, but not Evil: evil happens only with our complicity.

"Wherever there is good, there is already evil," said Lao Tsu 2,500 years ago.

Opposites seem to necessitate each other in this complementary universe of ours. To get away from evil, we have to get away from the good-evil duality into the state of nonduality.

This state of nonduality is a unitive state which, I think, is the ultimate state of being. In this blessed state of Grace we experience not only universal unity but also unitive love and compassion. If we act directly from the consciousness of that state, then we can't go too wrong.

I'm having a hard time with what you are saying, I may be misunderstanding you perhaps.

But I think I see it differently.

I think we promote evil to shit more than shit to evil, because the shit is birthed from evil, not the other way around, in my mind anyways.

I also disagree on that Jesus tried to teach a message of "washing off sin" so much as to offer a means to enlightenment of what was the intent of the law & the motivation behind prophecy from ancient hebrew text.

The law could only illistrate the "washing off" proccess, Jesus fulfilled it to the fullest degree by revealing what it takes for this "washing" to the next level, & that is love to a degree that is beyond our capability on our own.

Bolt