Evil for Christian Theologians, One

Evil

For Christian theologians, one of the most troubling questions is the presence of evil in the world. If God is good, and the world is good, how can the world God created contain evil? One possible solution that has been offered is that evil is like the 'hole in the doughnut,' or the absence of good. For example, walking past a child starving in the street without a second glance is evil, because of the lack of compassion shown to the child. To be good would be to feed the child, and to try to eradicate the forces that produced that child's poverty.

The absence of good, however, also means that there must be an absence of God, and if God is everywhere, how can God exist in the presence of evil? The presence of some demon might explain the presence of evil, but if God created the entire world, than He created such demonic beings and actions, even in his infinite wisdom.

For others, such a passive definition of evil provides little comfort. Evil does not 'feel' like an absence: evil often has a highly active presence, as in the case a child being abused, or in the ultimate example of evil in the modern world -- genocide. People have even committed horrible crimes in the name of 'good.' To be evil might be better described as working against the presence of goodness and therefore against God, and acting as a destroyer of His creation, principles, and life itself. The ultimate act of evil is shutting out the goodness of another living being, whether in the form of another human or an entire race of individuals.

My own personal definition of evil is similar to that of the 'hole in the doughnut' of goodness theory, but slightly more subtle. Evil is the inability to see yourself in the eyes of others. Evil is the anti-Semitism of the Nazi, evil is murder and the silencing of life. Evil is allowing poverty and inequality to exist, ignorance, and violence: evil is saying I have more of a right to live in the goodness of creation than yourself.

Definition: Religion

For many individuals from Western culture, what constitutes religion seems obvious: it is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or perhaps a smaller, break-off sect of one of these major faiths. But viewing religion as an enclosed category of society is a relatively Westernized concept. In many so-called primitive cultures, religion is a part of everyday life. Rituals are both sacred and civic -- paying homage to the nation's gods is political and spiritual. Religion is a communal system of rituals and ethics, not just a personal belief in the divine. This was the case in ancient Rome, where there was no clear distinction between worshipping the gods of the city, and a citizen's civic obligations.

Religion seems to convey within its structure an enclosed network of beliefs and assumptions about the world. Yet several of the world's so-called major religions, including Buddhism, Daoism, and Shinto, focus more on a philosophy, rather than attempt to prescribe a specific way of life for the adherent. For example, in Japan, many individuals practice both Buddhist and Shinto rituals depending on which set of ideals suits their life at the time, even if the beliefs of these two religions may clash.

In the East and West, people may identify as being of a particular religion without necessarily believing in a numinous, omniscient, divine and powerful being. Some Buddhists observe the principle of non-attachment as part of their religion, rather than manifest a belief in God -- although other Buddhists do believe in gods, as the religion is not doctrinaire in this respect. Many Jewish people believe they participate in a sense of common philosophy and nationhood even if they do not believe in God.

"I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." Conversely other people state that they dislike the formality of religion, of beliefs and practices, but do believe in God and in some sense of 'higher truth.' This confusion might be best addressed by doing away with the category of religion altogether -- religion is whatever a society defines it to be, and the term has grown so meaningless, people even speak of making golf or music their 'religion' simply because they love these hobbies so much.

Absolute truth

In this postmodern age, the idea of absolute truth has ebbed away. In medieval times, absolute truth for Christians was manifest in Jesus; for some empires the word of a great leader was a manifestation of absolute truth, and for Buddhists, the absence of any 'absolutes' in the world is 'the truth.' Philosophy and science have a more rigorous but also a narrower set of criteria for the establishment of absolute truth. Perhaps truth can only be properly understood by setting limits of knowledge: for example, when constructing a deductive syllogism, it is possible to say: 'Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, ergo Socrates is mortal.' But a higher sense of truth that exists outside of these constructed boundaries may not exist.

Absolute truth cannot be proven unless we have a definition of what is 'absolute.' In science, which has its own set of boundaries and rigorous sense of what constitutes empirical knowledge, a hypothesis can be proved through experimentation. But in the world outside of scientific epistemology, truth becomes more flexible -- in a court of law, witnesses remember events differently. People demand 'absolute truth' in terms of proof of someone else's love, but emotional truth is always subjective and can shift from moment to moment. And in studying history the idea of absolute truth seems to completely dissolve -- once upon a time, the absolute truth for Aristotle was that women were inferior beings and slavery was inevitable. This is seen as absolute falsehood today, because of cultural changes and the way we have come to reinterpret what is truth, and what is humanity.

Understand the function of an ideology