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Evil
May 29, 2022, 2:12 AM
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What is evil? What is a devil? What is a demon?
Are these things of myths or things of real life?
Could you accidentally say the wrong thing to someone and that becomes their demon? What responsibility have we.
Message was edited by: p6fuller®
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Oculus Spirit [93609]
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Re: Evil
May 29, 2022, 9:49 AM
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Evil is any perversion of Holiness.
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Psa 51:5
My SOP during my lifetime has been to point out things which I refuse to do and think myself better than those doing them. I have been inflicted upon myself the most Heinous act of self-righteousness.
One of the most profound and truest sayings I know is 'There but for the grace of God go I.' Many times have I said in my heart, 'I would never do that,' in judgement of other. I have no excuse, no justification and for me did Christ bleed and die.
"Who can understand his errors. Deliver me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then shall I be upright. Then shall I be innocent of the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer."
End of Psa, 19 I think.
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Re: Evil
May 30, 2022, 4:49 PM
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No doubt. Condemnation of others is spiritually dangerous, at the very least.
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Oculus Spirit [93609]
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Re: Evil
May 31, 2022, 11:50 AM
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From Luke Chapteer 13 where Christ taught relativity to be a cancer.
"1 There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?
3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."
In other words, 'Shall the sin of others justify your sin?'
Again He taught:
"4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?
5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."
Then He shows how God's judgement works.
"6 He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.
7 Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?
8 And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:
9 And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down."
That tree was judged alone, it was not judged relative to those around it. The master of the orchard did not say 'Well, this tree brought forth no fruit but those other trees didn't either so let them all continue.' He said 'Cut in down.'
My fear when I see others doing wrong I will rationalize that because I refuse to commit their sin, I may deem myself better than them. How can I be guilty of self-righteousness with the truth so laid out before me.
That's our nature and was so from Adam who said 'The woman gave me the fruit.' Then said to God, 'You gave me the woman.'
My problem is that I want to gauge evil on a sliding scale and our limit of acceptable evil is me. Imo, that is a fault common to all men. I recommend Psa 139.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 9:36 AM
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This helps when I'm feeling self righteous - Noooo not meee  ">. Simple truth brother
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” - Luke 18:9-14 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke18:9-14&version=ESV
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All-In [29823]
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Re: Evil
May 29, 2022, 4:32 PM
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Whew you are tossing out some whoppers here, P6.
I'm sure a full discussion of "evil" could take a lot of posts. It's one of those big "little" words that probably encompasses way too much for its size. Like trying to pack 20 pounds into a 5-pound sack.
There's been a lot of thought on the nature of evil, but short of a diatribe on the classics and the philosphy of ethics, it's often simply described as "the absence of good." Which of course leads to the obvious question "well then, what the heck is good?
By that particular definition, both evil and good then become purely relative to each other.
Onto that tetter-totter I always cast a human angle. Like Descartes started with "I think therefore I am" as his foundation of all thought, I always like to think first of an empty universe.
That is, if there were an empty universe with nothing but stars and orbiting rocks and clumps of gas, would there be good, or bad, or love, or hate, etc?
I don't usually think of two rocks loving each other, as least in any way that I can sense, so that restricts those things to something beyond the purely natural world. Then I toss in a few animals to make the equation a little more complex. maybe an earthworm, or an eagle.
Does and earthworm love? Can an earthworm do evil things? Well, maybe, but he probably needs another earthworm to be evil to, or at least some extra-universal standard that he would be breaking.
Then I go up the ladder and toss a man into my imaginary universe. Could a man by himself, with nothing else in or outside of this universe, be evil? And by what measure?
Even if you consider, say, God, to be internal, or external, to the universe, in order for evil to be in violation of some standard, that standard has to exist...which makes it relative again.
If you say God doesn't exist, and there's only this man, in his universe, with no internal or external standard, how can he be evil? Or good for that matter. Which brings us right back to relative again.
It's a heck of a question and a great one worth a lot more discussion...
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Re: Evil
May 30, 2022, 6:40 PM
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Thanks for the reply. Well written and thoughtful, as always.
Your post reminded me of a discussion my brother and I used to have as kids. Is it right because God says do it, or does God tell us to do certain things because they are right? We were coming from a Biblical Christian perspective (ten commandments, words of Jesus type of thinking).
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Re: Evil
May 31, 2022, 9:52 PM
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p6fuller®
It's a heck of a philosophical/religious question you and your brother were tossing around. Here's why:
If you say that good and evil things are independent from God, that takes away from God's "power", or omnipotence, you might say. That is, some things are good or evil regardless of what God thinks or does. There is some higher standard than even God in that case.
If you say that God determines good and evil acts, then that makes all actions neutral till he casts judgement, so to speak, on them. So they become relative, subject to his determination. That's kind of weird too though, because in that case God actually creates evil, by declaring it to be.
That would be consistent with Isaiah 45:7 KJV, "I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." Which of course would run counter to some folks position that God could only be good. I suppose those two things could be independent though. As odd as it sounds, you'd have a good God making evil, which is not a part of him, I guess.
But put more simply, if God made everything, and evil exists, he presumably had to create it. Unless there is another creator.
A palatable middle ground might be that good is not good, and evil is not evil, until we choose one or the other, and then our action creates one or the other. That would be based on whether we chose the "Godly" way or chose against it. That pushes the creation down the line to us, but someone still had to create both good and evil if they exist, so it has to be us or him. That would make us creators.
And if we create good and evil, that gives us a Godly ability. So it's a prickly little dilemma.
On a related note, there is a thread through the Bible about God's fear of man becoming "as a god." It shows up in the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel story, where God comments on the possibility that "they may become as us". Another example would be our own soul. If our soul is immortal, as opposed to our mortal flesh, that would give us yet another shared feature with God. We all live forever. And of course, he has a will, and we have a will. And I don't know if even God could change your will, without changing you.
I mean, say P6 likes hotdogs, and God says you don't like hot dogs. Now, I presume he could MAKE you not like hotdogs, but then would you be P6 anymore? Because P6 likes hotdogs. Would you then be P6A, or P7?
Maybe "being" in his image involves more than just looks. Deep stuff.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 12:00 PM
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Easy buddy - the Lord loves hotdogs . He has to, he just has to.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 7:28 PM
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Do you reckon Hebrew National is his chosen favorite?
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 10:44 PM
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That's getting a little more into religion.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 7:29 PM
[ in reply to Re: Evil ] |
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Do you reckon Hebrew National is his chosen favorite?
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 10:50 PM
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You should do one of your great stories on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Favorite Bible story my Father told me, as a child.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:01 PM
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Lol, I sang a song about them in school when I was in 1st grade I think. It went something like:
"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
lived in Jordan a long time ago
They lived long ago and they lived far away
and I'm here to tell you their story today"
Buit that's all I remember. Hahaha.
It's a good idea though. I'll see if I can weave something up on it. I plan to spend a lot of time on the Bible when we get there.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:08 PM
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Where?
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:44 PM
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The plan is to cover the ancient Mid East political context, then the Mid East religions as they developed in that political world, then on to Yahwism, then Judaism, then Early Christianity through Modern Christianity.
Along the way I've gone off on some tangents, and will take even more, but there's a full story arc at play here. After that, if there's any interest, I'll move over to the Eastern religions and do it again.
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Re: Evil
Jun 3, 2022, 1:09 AM
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Moshin - mind of no mind stuff. Hip toss is like a jab. Defensive and Offensive. 69 stuff.
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Re: Evil
Jun 3, 2022, 10:08 AM
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This 69? ">">
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:13 PM
[ in reply to Re: Evil ] |
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Reminds me of a song my Mimi taught me - Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he. Zacchaeus climbs up a sycamore tree. Jesus said, you come down Zacchaeus, for today you're going to sup with me.
Tax collectors - amarite?
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:38 PM
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And what's worse...a ROMAN tax collector. As much as my Sunday School teachers taught me, they left out a ton of the political stuff that was shaping people's viewpoints and the writings in the Bible.
Which is exactly the stuff that I find so interesting today. No religious document anywhere, ever, was written in a vacuum. So to fully understand what they were writing and why, you have to understand what they were going though in their lives.
Weeping by the waters of Babylon means nothing unless you understand the history of the Exile. Then, like pieces of a puzzle, everything begins to click together. It's all like that, in every religion.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:47 PM
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You seem weird, like me. I've been following politics and religion since I was 6. Trading at a market around that age. When I was a student, and got tired of being at Clemson, I would go visit my Grandma, who lived in a home in the woods. We would chew tobacco and watch Larry King and talk politics.
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:51 PM
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Blame my Grandma for this thread
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:55 PM
[ in reply to Re: Evil ] |
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If there's one thing I have learned from history, it's that people have been people since there have been people. They were arguing over, and fighting over, the same things 10,000 years ago as 10 days ago.
The tools are different, but we are the same. One of my favorite tid-bits was the Egyptian pharaoh who wrote a nasty letter to a foreign king because the king gave him a gold-plated, not a solid gold statue in tribute.
That's no different than finding out last week that my now ex-mechanic was installing old parts on my car. People are people, always.
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Re: Evil
Jun 3, 2022, 1:13 AM
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DEMOCRATS ARE NOT PEOPLE -
just kidding
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Re: Evil
Jun 3, 2022, 1:44 AM
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Grandma would disagree, of course
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Re: Evil
Jun 3, 2022, 10:21 AM
[ in reply to Re: Evil ] |
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At this point in my life I've been everything, and so now I'm kind of nothing. Sort of in the middle of it all, religiously and politically. Once one has experienced the other side of anything, and understand what those folks are thinking and why, it sort of drives you towards the middle. It has for me at least.
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Oculus Spirit [93609]
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 12:39 PM
[ in reply to Re: Evil ] |
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Context. Isa 45
2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:
3 And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.
4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.
5 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else."
"7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."
It seems so easily understood that light is the opposite of darkness and comparatively evil, in this context being the opposite of peace means war.
"1 Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;..."
When we think evil, as the OP expounded, we think of sin. All that we consider evil is not sin. What sin is the evil of a tornado? What sin is the evil of a drought?
Here is the original sin exposed to us by the prophet Isa in chpt 14:
Isa 14
"12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."
Lucifer was first to established a will other than God's. That is the definition of sin. While sin is evil all we consider evil is not sin.
A teenager might consider curfew evil. A woman might consider her husband forgetting her birthday evil. 'God knows,' the man will repent in dust and ashes and offer sacrifices flowers for a wave offering, of gold and precious jewels for a sin offering to be forgiven of that evil but most we men view it as an accident, right?
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All-In [29823]
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Re: Evil
Jun 2, 2022, 11:26 PM
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I can easily see the interpretation of Is 45:7 as war. As personally unpalatable as it is, there's lot of examples of God ordering or waging war on folks...the Amalekites in Samuel, the Canaanites in Numbers if I remember, and the Midianites, too. So that interpretation would be consistent.
Your differentiation between evil and sin is an important one, too.
A common Christian definition of evil would be the absence of good, or that's at least what Aquinas thought. So in that case it's viewed as sort of a void. Or, evil might be a natural occurrence like a famine or earthquake, as you pointed out.
Judaism takes the view that God is only good, and so evil is something man creates through his choices.
In Islam though, all things are assumed to come from God, and good and evil is merely a perception of man, based on whether he is fully submitting to God's will or not.
But there are other views as well. In Persian Zoroastrianism, evil is not viewed as a void or a perception, but as an active, existing counter to good. That's a cool concept because just like Persia itself physically bridges East and West, that concept bridges eastern and western thought.
In the East, religion is not really about good v. evil, or even obedience and non-obedience. It's more about ignorance vs. wisdom. So there, evil is viewed as something a person brings on themselves due to their own lack of understanding of how the universe works.
So as with most things, there are as many viewpoints as people, almost.
It's the same thing with sin...a lot of different takes on it from disobeying God, to it being only a perception, to it not even existing at all in the East. Having no gods who demand obedience, sin makes no sense in their religious views.
It's a fantastic topic and if I wasn't so tired I'd go on and on. It'll probably come up again in one of my posts, cause I hate that all this good stuff gets buried where no one sees it.
tagged so it doesn't get lost
p6fuller®
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Re: Evil
May 30, 2022, 3:29 AM
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I'll throw in a little more thought because something just popped into my mind. I don't normally think of animals doing animal things as being evil, but sometimes it can skirt the edge.
I bought some seafood a couple weeks ago and the lobster tanks in the market just happened to be full, so I watched about 20 or 30 lobsters sitting there doing their thing while I waited for my order.
Now, they were pretty tightly packed in this tank, and they all had their claws rubber banded so they couldn't really hurt each other, and there was a small opening, about maybe 18" long, that formed sort of a bowling alley/arena in the middle of the tank. At each end was a medium sized lobster.
Left lobster was really, really aggressive. Right lobster was clearly more chill. And left lobster kept pushing right lobster into the pile of lobsters behind right lobster. Now left lobster couldn’t actually hurt right lobster, but he was swinging away with his bound claws. And right lobster kept backing up until he actually climbed up on top of the other lobsters at the right end of the tank.
Along the way, left lobster passed big lobster to his right and little lobster to his left. He stopped at both to feel them with his antennae, but didn’t pick a fight with either. He went right back to tormenting right lobster. Now, you might say he was just being territorial, but he had all the territory, the whole center of the tank, once he had pushed right lobster back. He had far more territory than anyone else in the tank, including big lobster, who just sat and watched him box his way by.
It got to the point that it was like left lobster was terrorizing right lobster, who was trying to yield the whole way. Left lobster came off like a mean old bully, so maybe there is evil in the animal world, we just don’t pay attention to it or attribute it to instinct instead.
If you attribute evil to conscious intent vs. instinct, you still run into problems. Like, I kill things all the time but I don’t feel evil. We are instructed by “thou shall not kill”, but I kill lots of animals and plants in order to eat and survive. Even if you exclude food, I kill lots of things just because they bother me. I wash fire ants away hoping that I kill them, same a spraying wasps or yellow jackets. And I wash my hands with the sole intent of killing any life forms living on them like bacteria or microscopic nasties.
So evil is a tough one once you dig into it. I have no problem killing a cricket or a worm to use as fishing bait, but Mrs. Fordt won’t do it. I’ve never asked her if it was for the yuck factor or that she was taking a life. On the other hand, she has no problem shooting a deer, and I’ve never killed anything bigger than a squirrel.
So all I see ton of variable conditions that determine what evil is, all of them relative. But it’s a great discussion topic and I know there are as many viewpoints out there as there are people. So hopefully you will get a broad spectrum of responses.
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Replies: 28
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