Spiritist Society Towards the Light

Good and Evil

December 2, 2016

 

Evil exists and has a cause.

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The evils of all kinds, physical or moral, which afflict humanity, form two categories which must be distinguished: the evils that people can avoid and those that are independent of their will. Among the latter, include natural disasters.

 

Human beings having to make progress, the evils to which each is exposed are a stimulant for the exercise of one’s intelligence, all their physical and moral faculties, and inciting each to seek the means of avoiding them. If we had nothing to fear, there would be no necessity that would induce us to seek the best, the spirit would delay us in inactivity, we would invent nothing, nor would we discover anything. Pain can pushes us forward, on the path of progress.

 

The most numerous evils are those which humans creates by their vices, which come from their pride, their egoism, their ambition, their avarice, their excesses in everything, which can be the cause of wars and the calamities that may surround them, of the dissensions, of the injustices of the oppression of the weak by the strong, of the most part, after all, of the illnesses.

 

God passed laws full of wisdom, having the sole purpose for the good. In themselves, human beings find all that is necessary to fulfill themselves. Consciousness traces the path, God's law is engraved in their hearts and, in addition, God reminds them constantly through His prophets of all the Incarnate Spirits who bring the task of improving, moralizing and enlightening,  and also with the multiplicity of disincarnated spirits that manifest themselves everywhere.

If we conformed strictly to the Divine laws, there is little doubt that we would remove ourselves from the most acute evils and live happily on earth. If it does not happen that way its by virtue of their free will; therefore they suffer the consequences of their proceeding.

 

While God, in all goodness, put the remedy in the dichotomy of evil, that is, it makes the remedy come out of one’s own ill-judgment.  A moment arrives when the excess of immorality or wrongdoing becomes intolerable and imposes on man the need to change their life. Inspired by such experience, they feel compelled to seek the remedy in the good, always by the effect of their free will. Necessity constrains them to improve themselves to be happy.

 

It can be said that evil is the absence of good, like cold is the absence of heat. Just as cold is not a special fluid, so evil is not a distinct attribute, one is the negative of the other. Where there is no good, there can be evil. Not practicing an evil already is a principle of good. God only wants good. The consequence of evil comes from man.

If, in creation, there was a being who is bent on evil, few could avoid it,

But given the cause of evil as brought about by man, yet having at the same time the free will and the Divine laws as a guide, can choose to avoid it whenever they please.

 

If human beings had been created perfect, they would always favor the good. Now, by virtue of their free will, they do not swing automatically for good or evil. God willed that they should be subject to the law of progress and that progress should result from their work, so that the fruit of this work may belong to them, so that they are responsible for any evil that they practice by that will.