Benedicamus Domino!
There are times when I really do believe that I think too much and that my thoughts deal with concepts and ideas which are truly out of my league. However, this doesn't seem to stop me from thinking, and occasionally, expressing them. The following entry is such a collection of thoughts. I may well be writing about things which are way over my head in this post, but I'm going to do it anyway. Sometimes being cut down to size is beneficial, after all.
In my last forray into things spiritual, I discussed the fact that we live in a fallen world and that we are sometimes confronted with tragedies or wrongs done to us that have been caused by another person's clear chain of choices which may be fundamentally irresponsible and unjustifiable. The answer to avoiding the soul-destroying desire for revenge given by the church is to forgive the person, and the path to forgiveness has to begin with our own realization that we ourselves contribute to this fallen world as much as anyone does and that the right to judge rests with God and, on the earlthly plain, with the legal system. It sounds so easy, doesn't it? Would that it were! Being a Christian, or being a person who tries to live to a higher ideal than this world demonstrates, is really hard work! With Christ, there is grace, but that doesn't mean that the path will be easy to tread.
So, what does this mean? Are we trying to live beyond this world? Is this world evil in itself, and are we evil because we are sinful people? The church teaches that we are sinful and that this was the reason for Christ's death and resurrection: to reverse the effects of sin on humankind, and ultimately, in the universal resurrection, to redeem all of creation from its fallen state. So, is sin itself evil? I personally believe that sin is not good, but if it is evil, it is evil in seed-form. Sin begets evil. Sin really is misdirected desire, and it is these desires which, if unchecked, can lead to true evil. We as humans are not born evil, according to the church. Indeed, children who are unbaptized, so Orthodox teaching has it, if they die, do not go to some weird limbo-place. They just return to God from whence they came. They are innocent and have nothing counted against them in the judgement.
As we grow older, and our idea of "me" and "mine" grows, we turn more easily to our misdirected desires and instincts. The idea of worshipping God is replaced by idolatry of the self or lust for the bodies of others. The fire of love and zeal is transformed into the fire of anger and vengeance. The desire for fulfilment in God is changed to fulfilment in this world: overindulgence, acquisitiveness, the need for validation in the eyes of other human beings and the need to get ahead of other human beings. However, is all of this evil? If sin in itself is merely the seed of evil, then what does evil look like in its full flowering?
The conundrum of the fallen world is that there is always a little bit of sin in every merely human virtue, and there is always a tiny bit of virtue in every sin. True evil can only be done when there is no redeeming quality in the deed whatsoever, and it is the demons who tempt us to this kind of action. It was the devil who tempted us to fall in the first place, but he fell first. He used the gifts he was given by God to wage war on his Creator, and after his fall, he tempted man to set himself against God by transgressing the commandment about eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Ironically, this was a fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and man would have learned this knowledge in God's own time. However, because the knowledge was acquired in the wrong way, only parts of it were learned by man, and so guilt and shame came into the world. Guilt and shame are not repentance. They are usually barriers to true penitence and remorse. They are forms of pride, actually. All could have been forgiven if Adam and Eve had just taken responsibility for their actions, but instead, they blamed others. Eve blamed the serpent (the devil,) and Adam blamed his wife. This signified that they were now afraid of God, where before they had known Him in a way that we in our current state cannot even imagine.
Now that we are fallen, it is easy for the demons to tempt us. Our carnal desires (as opposed to those of the spirit) are not evil in themselves, but when combined with unrestrained self-interest, then evil is born. Sin is a fact of our world. Evil is when sin is unchecked by any sort of virtue, and I maintain that the greatest evils in this world are committed by people who have become slaves to demonic temptation and whose souls have been ground down by their own fears and ambitions. However, it is said in the gospel that love casts out fear, and the great thing about God is that he loves his fallen creatures even if they commit unspeakable evils. The problem comes when the evil is too much for the human's soul and it causes him or her to be unable to hear God's voice over the rejoicing of the demons. This is where intercessory prayer comes in, because as long as a person is walking this earth, there is a chance for him or her to return to God. Praying for a person who seems lost can cause a beacon to shine in the darkness of that person's life. This is not due to our own virtue or holiness, but rather due to God's grace working through our prayers. Indeed, I rather believe that even at death there is a chance for change, but if the person's soul is mired deep in fear and mistrust, it will be difficult for the person to recognize love, even God's love.
Sin is like a spiritual wound. It weakens our spirits and leaves them languishing. Evil is something else again. If we commit a true evil, we kill our soul, or the devil does it for us. Christ says several times in the gospels that we should not fear the one who can kill the body (either humankind or death itself,) but that we should fear the one who can kill the soul (the devil.) Sin can be healed with mercy and tears of repentance, because these give us access to Christ's redeeming power. Evil must be exorcised, whether literally or figuratively. Evil must be dealt with as a man would deal with a ferocious beast, and its killer must be God. So, this is why we ask Him again and again to "lead us not into temptation," but also to "deliver us from evil," because He is the only help we have against the continuing war which the demons are waging in our world and in our hearts.
I sometimes marvel that more people do not believe in a literal devil or in demons. I know that it may sound naive to do so, but there are some things in this world which have to be brought on by demonic temptation. The kinds of brutal and painful sufferings that we are capable of inflicting upon each other seem to go beyond most humans' ability to comprehend, so much so that we call the perpetrators of said evil "inhuman monsters" or "unfeeling creatures." In short, we cast these people out of our race, deeming them to be animals or worse, when the truth is that they were born innocent. They were born as children of God, but something got twisted inside of them along the way and they lost, or all-but lost, their souls. It is hard to pray for people like this. We want to see them pay for what they have done. We'd rather they did not share our planet for longer than necessary. However, even Christ prayed for his killers. They killed Him simply because they were frightened of Him. The legal system didn't want him dead, but the mob had their way in the end, and He said that they didn't know what they were doing, so they should be forgiven. In the same way, it is Christian to pray for those who have committed great evils, and also to trust to God's judgment. I often say: "May God reward him or her according to his or her deeds." This sounds hateful, but the fact is that I don't know a person's every action or what lies in a person's heart. However, God knows this, and He'll do what needs to be done. The point is that my opinion of the person's actions doesn't really matter. It is my ability to pray for the person that does matter, and if I can't do this, then it's myself that I have to examine.
By the way, I'm not saying that I have reached a stage where I can pray for people who have done acts which shock or appall me without being angry with them, but it's a thing to work on and to ask God to help with. As I said before, being a Christian is not a walk in the park, but the path does lead to something truly wonderful and worth having!
Deo Gratias!
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