Evil

[Ptarmigan]

Evil. Can people be born evil and not be redeemable? Or is evil a choice one makes? Or could it be both?

[MrsSmith]

Evil. Can people be born evil and not be redeemable? Or is evil a choice one makes? Or could it be both?

God can redeem any person, regardless of the evil done...but that person must choose to repent.  Once a person does repent, it becomes obvious to that person that their evil acts were choices, regardless of how "normal" or unavoidable they seemed at the time.

[thundley4]

Evil. Can people be born evil and not be redeemable? Or is evil a choice one makes? Or could it be both?

Yes.

[RightCoast]

God can redeem any person, regardless of the evil done...but that person must choose to repent.  Once a person does repent, it becomes obvious to that person that their evil acts were choices, regardless of how "normal" or unavoidable they seemed at the time.

My feelings are that God can only truly redeem evil people when He meets them face to face. 

[Duke Nukum]

Evil is an illusion.  It appears to be very real to us, but that is the point of an illusion.  Evil appears to exist so we buy into the illusion of the world, fear binds the world and love sets it free.

Most of what we call evil is a fear of dying, a fear of losing our bodies, but the thought came to me the other day in meditation, "If you aren't really here, how can you die here?"

To undo the evil of the world, look past it to what is commonly referred to as the Kingdom as that is real and the evil isn't.  The Kingdom is all around us but we don't see it, mostly because on some level, we prefer the illusion.

Eventually, we will all go home together, and in fact this has already happened.

To quote Einstein:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

This isn't to say we shouldn't have laws and we shouldn't punish people who appear to break the laws, or people who appear to violate the life and liberty of others, but the first step to undoing an illusion is to recognize it is an illusion.  And the thing about judging people and things as evil is it makes it possible to stop thinking and just put everything into the "evil" box and never really examine the illusion.  Undoing the illusion is done at the level of the mind, not the level of the physical since the physical was created at the level of the mind.

To quote Einstein again:

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Which explains why almost every political "solution" is doomed to fail from the start.

[Hawkgirl]

Duke, are you a buddhist?

We are not an illusion...to quote science...Newton's  law of conservation of energy: energy can not be created or destroyed; it simply changes form....is actually consistent with the religious belief that we go "elsewhere" after death...our "energy/soul" is redirected.


As for evil, does it exist..ABSOLUTELY! one needs to look no further than the late Dr. Tiller.

[Celtic Rose]

I absolutely believe that evil exists.  I don't believe that people are born evil though, they become evil through their choices and actions.  Therefore, if they truly repent, then certainly God could forgive them. 

[USA4ME]

I'll go with "evil is a choice" and you can repent and be redeemed.  I also go with once you've been redeemed, you can still choose to go back to being evil.  But if you do that, you can still repent and be redeemed again.  While there's life, there's hope.

.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

When God shakes the heavens and the earth all that will remain will be the unshakable.
--George MacDonald

Depends on what you mean by evil. Contrary to popuar belief evil is not the opposite of good it is the corruption or privation of good. Even a sadistic tyrant who seeks little more than pleasure, security, power, etc is seeking things that in and of themselves are good, he is only going about it by evil means.

Were evil to be the opposite of good it would have a power to be self-existent and that would lead to dualism or it would be the creation of God who then would be less than holy.

That said: Anyone truly "born evil" could have no more capacity for immorality than a mere virus could be morally culpable for plagues; they would simply be another facet of creation. I had a friend in a yeshiva that said whenever someone with severe retardation entered a synagogue the rabbis would stand in honor of that person whom they claimed would be certain to pass into heaven because they lacked the capacity for true evil and God was just.

However, I would imagine a truly corrupt soul could be redeemed if Goodness were to sufficiently act upon that soul. Man cannot create his own goodness, having corrupted that which was already good prior to his own being, ergo it must come to him from a source outside himself and that would be the First Cause of all things good.

[Duke Nukum]

I would describe myself as closer to a gnostic than a Buddhist but it may be more accurate to say I am a recovering dualist.

In How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie writes at length about famous gangsters who caused great a bit of what people call evil in the world but never blamed themselves.  He quotes both Al Capone and Dutch Schultz as claiming to be public benefactors.  You can push against people like Tiller and call them evil but in their minds they are justified and it is the police, in the case of the gangsters, or the people who protest, in the case of Tiller, that are seen as evil in their minds.

To quote:

If Al Capone, "Two Gun" Crowley, Dutch Schultz, and the desperate men and women behind prison walls don't blame themselves for anything — what about the people with whom you and I come in contact?

One doesn't overcome evil by resisting it, that only makes more evil.  One only ever overcomes what isn't there by seeing past the it to what is real.

In a close system it makes perfect sense that energy is conserved but that doesn't make it any less illusory.  You can't really prove or disprove an illusion with another part of the same illusion.

Duke, are you a buddhist?

We are not an illusion...to quote science...Newton's  law of conservation of energy: energy can not be created or destroyed; it simply changes form....is actually consistent with the religious belief that we go "elsewhere" after death...our "energy/soul" is redirected.


As for evil, does it exist..ABSOLUTELY! one needs to look no further than the late Dr. Tiller.

[mamacags]

I have met 3 children who I believe were completely filled with evil.  I believe that there is almost no chance at redemption for them.  2 of the children were severely abused since birth in hideous ways, one was the product of a loving family but just flat out evil.  I would be willing to bet the first two are already dead or in prison since I knew the as children in the early 90s, the 3rd one will eventually be a serial killer.  Talking to these kids was like talking to demons.  They just kind of sucked the light out of the world.

[MrsSmith]

One doesn't overcome evil by resisting it, that only makes more evil.  

"One" doesn't overcome evil at all.  "One" turns to God and He overcomes evil for us.  We aren't capable of it.

[Duke Nukum]

"One" doesn't overcome evil at all.  "One" turns to God and He overcomes evil for us.  We aren't capable of it.

Yes, that would be God that is the reality I am talking about in the rest of my statement.  Looking past the illusion of evil to the only reality.  God is and nothing else is.  God overcomes evil for us by reminding us via his Voice, the Holy Spirit, that we made it up, it isn't real and there is nothing to overcome.  But he doesn't just wake us up out of this illusion because he knows we are fully capable of hearing his Voice and following it back to reality aka The Kingdom.

If God did abruptly end the illusion for us it would be akin to creating a rock that God himself could not lift, it give reality to illusion and fortunately for us God isn't an idiot.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Now might be a good time to punt this thread to the Religious Matters forum.

[DumbAss Tanker]

I'm a pragmatist, not a metaphysical kind of person, but logically if evil exists only humans can implement it, and therefore there must be evil people.  On the pragmatic side that's what hollow-points are for.

[Eupher]

I believe that evil can and does exist and that in order for it to exist, it exists outside of God. God knows that it's there and accepts the presence of evil, simply because in order for God to exist, there must be an antithesis to God.

Sounds like a lot of double-speak, but I do not question the existence of God. He has worked in my life countless times, too many instances to discount Him.

I agree with Mrs. Smith:

"One" doesn't overcome evil at all.  "One" turns to God and He overcomes evil for us.  We aren't capable of it.

We have the gift of free will. Evil persons separate themselves from God in order to choose evil even if that choice is blind and the evil person doesn't see it. Evil cannot exist with God, except when He chooses to confront it. Evil is powerless over God. But free will, being a gift from God, permits the existence of evil because a person can choose to separate themselves from God.

The closer I get to God, the happier I become. It's really that simple.

[RightCoast]

I'm a pragmatist, not a metaphysical kind of person, but logically if evil exists only humans can implement it, and therefore there must be evil people.  On the pragmatic side that's what hollow-points are for.

Well said.

[BlueStateSaint]

I'm a pragmatist, not a metaphysical kind of person, but logically if evil exists only humans can implement it, and therefore there must be evil people.  On the pragmatic side that's what hollow-points are for.

 

  to ya, DAT!