One of my favorite lines from Shakespeare is when, as Macbeth approaches, one of the 3 witches chants, "by the twitching of my thumb, something wicked this way comes."
Well, my thumb is just twitching away. I do not trust the military junta that is taking over Washington, but this blog is not about politics.
No, today, I want to write about evil. Well, I really don't want to, but I feel I should. The existence of evil is a topic that has plagued religious thinkers for as long as we have been on this planet. Theodicy, the moral nature of God, is one of the thorniest subjects you can tackle, and I have no intention of doing so,
All I can say, is that evil exists, always has, and very likely, always will. Why? I can only say a couple of things. First, the Cosmos seems to work on a polar basis, with opposites interacting constantly. Good/evil, hot/cold, positive /negative, etc. and the interaction of these opposites is required to keep things running.
Second, God, by whatever Name you use, has given His/Her Creation freedom, within the scope of the physical laws. As such, evil must be allowed. Since it must be allowed, it also serves a purpose. It tests us. It gives us resistance, friction, and keeps us from becoming nothing more than lumps of spiritual goo.
Somewhere in the Old Testament (I am terrible about remembering Chapter and Verse), God says that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. He/She also says that He/ She will use evil to do good. So, I guess the best thing we can do is avoid doing evil as much as we can and trust the somewhere down the line, everything will work out, at least for a little while.
It is also useful to remember that the extreme ends of the poles, good/evil, are just that, extreme. Almost everything exists somewhere between the two extremes. So, don't ever be in a hurry to judge.
Still, every now and then, my thumbs start twitching.
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