evil

• not part of divine nature, but man’s experience with e. part of God’s self-realization

2:2.7Hu­man lim­i­ta­tions, po­ten­tial evil, are not a part of the di­vine na­ture, but mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence with evil and all man’s re­la­tions thereto are most cer­tainly a part of God’s ever-ex­pand­ing self-re­al­iza­tion in the chil­dren of time—crea­tures of moral re­spon­si­bil­ity who have been cre­ated or evolved by ev­ery Cre­ator Son go­ing out from Par­a­dise.

• defined as › inherently, automatically suicidal when undiluted
• result of evil › time lag of mercy before fruition of e.

2:3.5In any uni­verse con­test be­tween ac­tual lev­els of re­al­ity, the per­son­al­ity of the higher level will ul­ti­mately tri­umph over the per­son­al­ity of the lower level. This in­ev­i­ta­ble out­come of uni­verse con­tro­versy is in­her­ent in the fact that di­vin­ity of qual­ity equals the de­gree of re­al­ity or ac­tu­al­ity of any will crea­ture. Undi­luted evil, com­plete er­ror, will­ful sin, and un­mit­i­gated in­iq­uity are in­her­ently and au­to­mat­i­cally sui­ci­dal. Such at­ti­tudes of cos­mic un­re­al­ity can sur­vive in the uni­verse only be­cause of tran­sient mercy-tol­er­ance pend­ing the ac­tion of the jus­tice-de­ter­min­ing and fair­ness-find­ing mech­a­nisms of the uni­verse tri­bu­nals of righ­teous ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

• partial knowledge is potentially e.

2:7.4The false sci­ence of ma­te­ri­al­ism would sen­tence mor­tal man to be­come an out­cast in the uni­verse. Such par­tial knowl­edge is po­ten­tially evil; it is knowl­edge com­posed of both good and evil. Truth is beau­ti­ful be­cause it is both re­plete and sym­met­ri­cal. When man searches for truth, he pur­sues the di­vinely real.

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

3:5.138. Is un­selfish­ness—the spirit of self-for­get­ful­ness—de­sir­able? Then must mor­tal man live face to face with the in­ces­sant clam­or­ing of an in­escapable self for recog­ni­tion and honor. Man could not dy­nam­i­cally choose the di­vine life if there were no self-life to for­sake. Man could never lay sav­ing hold on right­eous­ness if there were no po­ten­tial evil to ex­alt and dif­fer­en­ti­ate the good by con­trast.

• defined as › immature choosing which, when willfully endorsed, becomes sin

3:5.15Through­out the uni­verse, ev­ery unit is re­garded as a part of the whole. Sur­vival of the part is de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion with the plan and pur­pose of the whole, the whole­hearted de­sire and per­fect will­ing­ness to do the Fa­ther’s di­vine will. The only evo­lu­tion­ary world with­out er­ror (the pos­si­bil­ity of un­wise judg­ment) would be a world with­out free in­tel­li­gence. In the Ha­vona uni­verse there are a bil­lion per­fect worlds with their per­fect in­hab­i­tants, but evolv­ing man must be fal­li­ble if he is to be free. Free and in­ex­pe­ri­enced in­tel­li­gence can­not pos­si­bly at first be uni­formly wise. The pos­si­bil­ity of mis­taken judg­ment (evil) be­comes sin only when the hu­man will con­sciously en­dorses and know­ingly em­braces a de­lib­er­ate im­moral judg­ment.

• defined as › potential e. is remoteness from divinity

3:6.2The sov­er­eignty of God is un­lim­ited; it is the fun­da­men­tal fact of all cre­ation. The uni­verse was not in­ev­i­ta­ble. The uni­verse is not an ac­ci­dent, nei­ther is it self-ex­is­tent. The uni­verse is a work of cre­ation and is there­fore wholly sub­ject to the will of the Cre­ator. The will of God is di­vine truth, liv­ing love; there­fore are the per­fect­ing cre­ations of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses char­ac­ter­ized by good­ness—near­ness to di­vin­ity; by po­ten­tial evil—re­mote­ness from di­vin­ity.

• result of evil › e. of one augments tribulation of all

12:7.11Broth­er­hood con­sti­tutes a fact of re­la­tion­ship be­tween ev­ery per­son­al­ity in uni­ver­sal ex­is­tence. No per­son can es­cape the ben­e­fits or the penal­ties that may come as a re­sult of re­la­tion­ship to other per­sons. The part prof­its or suf­fers in mea­sure with the whole. The good ef­fort of each man ben­e­fits all men; the er­ror or evil of each man aug­ments the tribu­la­tion of all men. As moves the part, so moves the whole. As the prog­ress of the whole, so the prog­ress of the part. The rel­a­tive ve­loc­i­ties of part and whole de­ter­mine whether the part is re­tarded by the in­er­tia of the whole or is car­ried for­ward by the mo­men­tum of the cos­mic broth­er­hood.

• result of evil › e. results when lesser is chosen over greater

16:7.7Man’s choos­ing be­tween good and evil is in­flu­enced, not only by the keen­ness of his moral na­ture, but also by such in­flu­ences as ig­no­rance, im­ma­tu­rity, and delu­sion. A sense of pro­por­tion is also con­cerned in the ex­er­cise of virtue be­cause evil may be per­pe­trated when the lesser is cho­sen in the place of the greater as a re­sult of dis­tor­tion or de­cep­tion. The art of rel­a­tive es­ti­ma­tion or com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ment en­ters into the prac­tice of the virtues of the moral realm.

• always results when personal evaluations are elevated to absolutes

19:1.4In this con­nec­tion, how­ever, it may be noted that Teacher Sons are the su­preme co-or­di­nat­ing per­son­al­i­ties of Trin­ity ori­gin. In such a far-flung uni­verse of uni­verses there is al­ways great dan­ger of suc­cumb­ing to the er­ror of the cir­cum­scribed view­point, to the evil in­her­ent in a seg­men­tal­ized con­cep­tion of re­al­ity and di­vin­ity.

• dealing with evil › when no opening for e., sin cannot be entertained

43:4.9Since the tri­umph of Christ, all Nor­la­ti­adek is be­ing cleansed of sin and rebels. Some­time be­fore Mi­chael’s death in the flesh the fallen Lu­cifer’s as­so­ciate, Sa­tan, sought to at­tend such an Eden­tia con­clave, but the so­lid­i­fi­ca­tion of sen­ti­ment against the arch­re­bels had reached the point where the doors of sym­pa­thy were so well-nigh uni­ver­sally closed that there could be found no stand­ing ground for the Sa­ta­nia ad­ver­saries. When there ex­ists no open door for the re­cep­tion of evil, there ex­ists no op­por­tu­nity for the en­ter­tain­ment of sin. The doors of the hearts of all Eden­tia closed against Sa­tan; he was unan­i­mously re­jected by the as­sem­bled Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, and it was at this time that the Son of Man “be­held Sa­tan fall as light­ning from heaven.”

• defined as › transgression of law

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

• human nature tends toward e.

53:8.9In gen­eral, when weak and dis­so­lute mor­tals are sup­posed to be un­der the in­flu­ence of dev­ils and demons, they are merely be­ing dom­i­nated by their own in­her­ent and de­based ten­den­cies, be­ing led away by their own nat­u­ral propen­si­ties. The devil has been given a great deal of credit for evil which does not be­long to him. Cali­gas­tia has been com­par­a­tively im­po­tent since the cross of Christ.

• defined as › produced by contrastive perfection, imperfection

54:0.1Evo­lu­tion­ary man finds it dif­fi­cult fully to com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance and to grasp the mean­ings of evil, er­ror, sin, and in­iq­uity. Man is slow to per­ceive that con­trastive per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion pro­duce po­ten­tial evil; that con­flict­ing truth and false­hood cre­ate con­fus­ing er­ror; that the di­vine en­dow­ment of free­will choice even­tu­ates in the di­ver­gent realms of sin and righ­teous­ness; that the per­sis­tent pur­suit of di­vin­ity leads to the king­dom of God as con­trasted with its con­tin­u­ous re­jec­tion, which leads to the do­mains of in­iq­uity.

• God does not create e.

54:0.2The Gods nei­ther cre­ate evil nor per­mit sin and re­bel­lion. Po­ten­tial evil is time-ex­is­tent in a uni­verse em­brac­ing dif­fer­en­tial lev­els of per­fec­tion mean­ings and val­ues. Sin is po­ten­tial in all realms where im­per­fect be­ings are en­dowed with the abil­ity to choose be­tween good and evil. The very con­flict­ing pres­ence of truth and un­truth, fact and false­hood, con­sti­tutes the po­ten­tial­ity of er­ror. The de­lib­er­ate choice of evil con­sti­tutes sin; the will­ful re­jec­tion of truth is er­ror; the per­sis­tent pur­suit of sin and er­ror is in­iq­uity.

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

54:3.1The moral will crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are al­ways both­ered with the un­think­ing ques­tion as to why the all-wise Cre­ators per­mit evil and sin. They fail to com­pre­hend that both are in­ev­i­ta­ble if the crea­ture is to be truly free. The free will of evolv­ing man or ex­qui­site an­gel is not a mere philo­sophic con­cept, a sym­bolic ideal. Man’s abil­ity to choose good or evil is a uni­verse re­al­ity. This lib­erty to choose for one­self is an en­dow­ment of the Su­preme Rulers, and they will not per­mit any be­ing or group of be­ings to de­prive a sin­gle per­son­al­ity in the wide uni­verse of this di­vinely be­stowed lib­erty—not even to sat­isfy such mis­guided and ig­no­rant be­ings in the en­joy­ment of this mis­named per­sonal lib­erty.

54:4.1An­other prob­lem some­what dif­fi­cult of ex­pla­na­tion in the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek per­tains to the rea­sons for per­mit­ting Lu­cifer, Sa­tan, and the fallen princes to work mis­chief so long be­fore be­ing ap­pre­hended, in­terned, and ad­ju­di­cated.

54:4.2Par­ents, those who have borne and reared chil­dren, are bet­ter able to un­der­stand why Mi­chael, a Cre­ator-fa­ther, might be slow to con­demn and de­stroy his own Sons. Je­sus’ story of the prodi­gal son well il­lus­trates how a lov­ing fa­ther can long wait for the re­pen­tance of an erring child.

54:4.3The very fact that an evil-do­ing crea­ture can ac­tu­ally choose to do wrong—com­mit sin—es­tab­lishes the fact of free-will­ness and fully jus­ti­fies any length de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice pro­vided the ex­tended mercy might con­duce to re­pen­tance and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

54:4.4Most of the lib­er­ties which Lu­cifer sought he al­ready had; oth­ers he was to re­ceive in the fu­ture. All these pre­cious en­dow­ments were lost by giv­ing way to im­pa­tience and yield­ing to a de­sire to pos­sess what one craves now and to pos­sess it in de­fi­ance of all obli­ga­tion to re­spect the rights and lib­er­ties of all other be­ings com­pos­ing the uni­verse of uni­verses. Eth­i­cal obli­ga­tions are in­nate, di­vine, and uni­ver­sal.

54:4.5There are many rea­sons known to us why the Su­preme Rulers did not im­me­di­ately de­stroy or in­tern the lead­ers of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. There are no doubt still other and pos­si­bly bet­ter rea­sons un­known to us. The mercy fea­tures of this de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice were ex­tended per­son­ally by Mi­chael of Neb­a­don. Ex­cept for the af­fec­tion of this Cre­ator-fa­ther for his erring Sons, the su­preme jus­tice of the super­uni­verse would have acted. If such an episode as the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had oc­curred in Neb­a­don while Mi­chael was in­car­nated on Uran­tia, the in­sti­ga­tors of such evil might have been in­stantly and ab­so­lutely an­ni­hi­lated.

54:4.6Su­preme jus­tice can act in­stantly when not re­strained by di­vine mercy. But the min­istry of mercy to the chil­dren of time and space al­ways pro­vides for this time lag, this sav­ing in­ter­val be­tween seed­time and har­vest. If the seed sow­ing is good, this in­ter­val pro­vides for the test­ing and up­build­ing of char­ac­ter; if the seed sow­ing is evil, this mer­ci­ful de­lay pro­vides time for re­pen­tance and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion. This time de­lay in the ad­ju­di­ca­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of evil­do­ers is in­her­ent in the mercy min­istry of the seven super­uni­verses. This re­straint of jus­tice by mercy proves that God is love, and that such a God of love dom­i­nates the uni­verses and in mercy con­trols the fate and judg­ment of all his crea­tures.

• result of evil › good cannot result from e. to one who does evil

54:4.7The mercy de­lays of time are by the man­date of the free will of the Cre­ators. There is good to be de­rived in the uni­verse from this tech­nique of pa­tience in deal­ing with sin­ful rebels. While it is all too true that good can­not come of evil to the one who con­tem­plates and per­forms evil, it is equally true that all things (in­clud­ing evil, po­ten­tial and man­i­fest) work to­gether for good to all be­ings who know God, love to do his will, and are as­cend­ing Par­adis­e­ward ac­cord­ing to his eter­nal plan and di­vine pur­pose.

54:4.8But these mercy de­lays are not in­ter­minable. Not­with­stand­ing the long de­lay (as time is reck­oned on Uran­tia) in ad­ju­di­cat­ing the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, we may re­cord that, dur­ing the time of ef­fect­ing this rev­e­la­tion, the first hear­ing in the pend­ing case of Ga­briel vs. Lu­cifer was held on Uversa, and soon there­after there is­sued the man­date of the An­cients of Days di­rect­ing that Sa­tan be hence­forth con­fined to the prison world with Lu­cifer. This ends the abil­ity of Sa­tan to pay fur­ther vis­its to any of the fallen worlds of Sa­ta­nia. Jus­tice in a mercy-dom­i­nated uni­verse may be slow, but it is cer­tain.

54:5.1Of the many rea­sons known to me as to why Lu­cifer and his con­fed­er­ates were not sooner in­terned or ad­ju­di­cated, I am per­mit­ted to re­cite the fol­low­ing:

54:5.21. Mercy re­quires that ev­ery wrong­doer have suf­fi­cient time in which to for­mu­late a de­lib­er­ate and fully cho­sen at­ti­tude re­gard­ing his evil thoughts and sin­ful acts.

54:5.32. Su­preme jus­tice is dom­i­nated by a Fa­ther’s love; there­fore will jus­tice never de­stroy that which mercy can save. Time to ac­cept sal­va­tion is vouch­safed ev­ery evil­doer.

54:5.43. No af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther is ever pre­cip­i­tate in vis­it­ing pun­ish­ment upon an erring mem­ber of his fam­ily. Pa­tience can­not func­tion in­de­pen­dently of time.

54:5.54. While wrong­do­ing is al­ways dele­te­ri­ous to a fam­ily, wis­dom and love ad­mon­ish the up­right chil­dren to bear with an erring brother dur­ing the time granted by the af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther in which the sin­ner may see the er­ror of his way and em­brace sal­va­tion.

54:5.65. Re­gard­less of Mi­chael’s at­ti­tude to­ward Lu­cifer, not­with­stand­ing his be­ing Lu­cifer’s Cre­ator-fa­ther, it was not in the prov­ince of the Cre­ator Son to ex­er­cise sum­mary ju­ris­dic­tion over the apos­tate Sys­tem Sov­er­eign be­cause he had not then com­pleted his be­stowal ca­reer, thereby at­tain­ing un­qual­i­fied sov­er­eignty of Neb­a­don.

54:5.76. The An­cients of Days could have im­me­di­ately an­ni­hi­lated these rebels, but they sel­dom ex­e­cute wrong­do­ers with­out a full hear­ing. In this in­stance they re­fused to over­rule the Mi­chael de­ci­sions.

54:5.87. It is ev­i­dent that Im­manuel coun­seled Mi­chael to re­main aloof from the rebels and al­low re­bel­lion to pur­sue a nat­u­ral course of self-oblit­er­a­tion. And the wis­dom of the Union of Days is the time re­flec­tion of the united wis­dom of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

54:5.98. The Faith­ful of Days on Eden­tia ad­vised the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers to al­low the rebels free course to the end that all sym­pa­thy for these evil­do­ers should be the sooner up­rooted in the hearts of ev­ery pres­ent and fu­ture cit­i­zen of Nor­la­ti­adek—ev­ery mor­tal, mor­ontia, or spirit crea­ture.

54:5.109. On Je­ru­sem the per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Su­preme Ex­ec­u­tive of Or­von­ton coun­seled Ga­briel to fos­ter full op­por­tu­nity for ev­ery liv­ing crea­ture to ma­ture a de­lib­er­ate choice in those mat­ters in­volved in the Lu­cifer Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty. The is­sues of re­bel­lion hav­ing been raised, the Par­a­dise emer­gency ad­viser of Ga­briel por­trayed that, if such full and free op­por­tu­nity were not given all Nor­la­ti­adek crea­tures, then would the Par­a­dise quar­an­tine against all such pos­si­ble half­hearted or doubt-stricken crea­tures be ex­tended in self-pro­tec­tion against the en­tire con­stel­la­tion. To keep open the Par­a­dise doors of as­cen­sion to the be­ings of Nor­la­ti­adek, it was nec­es­sary to pro­vide for the full de­vel­op­ment of re­bel­lion and to in­sure the com­plete de­ter­mi­na­tion of at­ti­tude on the part of all be­ings in any way con­cerned there­with.

54:5.1110. The Di­vine Min­is­ter of Sal­ving­ton is­sued as her third in­de­pen­dent procla­ma­tion a man­date di­rect­ing that noth­ing be done to half cure, cow­ardly sup­press, or oth­er­wise hide the hideous vis­age of rebels and re­bel­lion. The an­gelic hosts were di­rected to work for full dis­clo­sure and un­lim­ited op­por­tu­nity for sin-ex­pres­sion as the quick­est tech­nique of achiev­ing the per­fect and fi­nal cure of the plague of evil and sin.

54:5.1211. An emer­gency coun­cil of ex-mor­tals con­sist­ing of Mighty Mes­sen­gers, glo­ri­fied mor­tals who had had per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with like sit­u­a­tions, to­gether with their col­leagues, was or­ga­nized on Je­ru­sem. They ad­vised Ga­briel that at least three times the num­ber of be­ings would be led astray if ar­bi­trary or sum­mary meth­ods of sup­pres­sion were at­tempted. The en­tire Uversa corps of coun­selors con­curred in ad­vis­ing Ga­briel to per­mit the re­bel­lion to take its full and nat­u­ral course, even if it should re­quire a mil­lion years to wind up the con­se­quences.

54:5.1312. Time, even in a uni­verse of time, is rel­a­tive: If a Uran­tia mor­tal of av­er­age length of life should com­mit a crime which pre­cip­i­tated world-wide pan­de­mo­nium, and if he were ap­pre­hended, tried, and ex­e­cuted within two or three days of the com­mis­sion of the crime, would it seem a long time to you? And yet that would be nearer a com­par­i­son with the length of Lu­cifer’s life even if his ad­ju­di­ca­tion, now be­gun, should not be com­pleted for a hun­dred thou­sand Uran­tia years. The rel­a­tive lapse of time from the view­point of Uversa, where the lit­i­ga­tion is pend­ing, could be in­di­cated by say­ing that the crime of Lu­cifer was be­ing brought to trial within two and a half sec­onds of its com­mis­sion. From the Par­a­dise view­point the ad­ju­di­ca­tion is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the en­act­ment.

• dealing with evil › permit e. to run full course of own bankruptcy

54:5.14There are an equal num­ber of rea­sons for not ar­bi­trar­ily stop­ping the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion which would be par­tially com­pre­hen­si­ble to you, but which I am not per­mit­ted to nar­rate. I may in­form you that on Uversa we teach forty-eight rea­sons for per­mit­ting evil to run the full course of its own moral bankruptcy and spir­i­tual ex­tinc­tion. I doubt not that there are just as many ad­di­tional rea­sons not known to me.

• defined as › stimulative of choosing between truth and error

55:3.10On these su­perb worlds the child­bear­ing pe­riod is not greatly pro­longed. It is not best for too many years to in­ter­vene be­tween the ages of a fam­ily of chil­dren. When close to­gether in age, chil­dren are able to con­tribute much more to their mu­tual train­ing. And on these worlds they are mag­nif­i­cently trained by the com­pet­i­tive sys­tems of keen striv­ing in the ad­vanced do­mains and di­vi­sions of di­verse achieve­ment in the mas­tery of truth, beauty, and good­ness. Never fear but that even such glo­ri­fied spheres pre­sent plenty of evil, real and po­ten­tial, which is stim­u­la­tive of the choos­ing be­tween truth and er­ror, good and evil, sin and righ­teous­ness.

• defined as › gravity-resisting on mental and spiritual levels

56:10.14Ev­ery im­pulse of ev­ery elec­tron, thought, or spirit is an act­ing unit in the whole uni­verse. Only sin is iso­lated and evil grav­ity re­sist­ing on the men­tal and spir­i­tual lev­els. The uni­verse is a whole; no thing or be­ing ex­ists or lives in iso­la­tion. Self-re­al­iza­tion is po­ten­tially evil if it is an­ti­so­cial. It is lit­er­ally true: “No man lives by him­self.” Cos­mic so­cial­iza­tion con­sti­tutes the high­est form of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion. Said Je­sus: “He who would be great­est among you, let him be­come server of all.”

• most destructive of personality status is betrayal and disloyalty to confiding friends

67:1.3In all the ad­min­is­tra­tive work of a lo­cal uni­verse no high trust is deemed more sa­cred than that re­posed in a Plan­e­tary Prince who as­sumes re­spon­si­bil­ity for the wel­fare and guid­ance of the evolv­ing mor­tals on a newly in­hab­ited world. And of all forms of evil, none are more de­struc­tive of per­son­al­ity sta­tus than be­trayal of trust and dis­loy­alty to one’s con­fid­ing friends. In com­mit­ting this de­lib­er­ate sin, Cali­gas­tia so com­pletely dis­torted his per­son­al­ity that his mind has never since been able fully to re­gain its equi­lib­rium.

• defined as › partial realization of, or maladjustment to, universe realities
• defined as › suggesting deficiency of wisdom

67:1.4There are many ways of look­ing at sin, but from the uni­verse philo­sophic view­point sin is the at­ti­tude of a per­son­al­ity who is know­ingly re­sist­ing cos­mic re­al­ity. Er­ror might be re­garded as a mis­con­cep­tion or dis­tor­tion of re­al­ity. Evil is a par­tial re­al­iza­tion of, or mal­ad­just­ment to, uni­verse re­al­i­ties. But sin is a pur­pose­ful re­sis­tance to di­vine re­al­ity—a con­scious choos­ing to op­pose spir­i­tual prog­ress—while in­iq­uity con­sists in an open and per­sis­tent de­fi­ance of rec­og­nized re­al­ity and sig­ni­fies such a de­gree of per­son­al­ity dis­in­te­gra­tion as to bor­der on cos­mic in­san­ity.

67:1.5Er­ror sug­gests lack of in­tel­lec­tual keen­ness; evil, de­fi­ciency of wis­dom; sin, ab­ject spir­i­tual pov­erty; but in­iq­uity is in­dica­tive of van­ish­ing per­son­al­ity con­trol.

• defined as › partial realization of, or maladjustment to, universe realities

75:4.3Eve had con­sented to par­tic­i­pate in the prac­tice of good and evil. Good is the car­ry­ing out of the di­vine plans; sin is a de­lib­er­ate trans­gres­sion of the di­vine will; evil is the mis­adap­ta­tion of plans and the mal­ad­just­ment of tech­niques re­sult­ing in uni­verse dishar­mony and plan­e­tary con­fu­sion.

• Cano assured Eve persons with good motives could do no e.

75:4.5Eve had told Cano of this oft-re­peated warn­ing on the fate­ful oc­ca­sion of their se­cret meet­ing, but Cano, not know­ing the im­port or sig­nif­i­cance of such ad­mo­ni­tions, had as­sured her that men and women with good mo­tives and true in­ten­tions could do no evil; that she should surely not die but rather live anew in the per­son of their off­spring, who would grow up to bless and sta­bi­lize the world.

• defined as › righteous ends are e. when achieved in wrong way

75:4.6Even though this project of mod­i­fy­ing the di­vine plan had been con­ceived and ex­e­cuted with en­tire sin­cer­ity and with only the high­est mo­tives con­cern­ing the wel­fare of the world, it con­sti­tuted evil be­cause it rep­re­sented the wrong way to achieve righ­teous ends, be­cause it de­parted from the right way, the di­vine plan.

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

75:8.6All in all, there prob­a­bly never was a more dis­heart­en­ing mis­car­riage of wis­dom on any planet in all Neb­a­don. But it is not sur­pris­ing that these mis­steps oc­cur in the af­fairs of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses. We are a part of a gi­gan­tic cre­ation, and it is not strange that ev­ery­thing does not work in per­fec­tion; our uni­verse was not cre­ated in per­fec­tion. Per­fec­tion is our eter­nal goal, not our ori­gin.

75:8.7If this were a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse, if the First Great Source and Cen­ter were only a force and not also a per­son­al­ity, if all cre­ation were a vast ag­gre­ga­tion of phys­i­cal mat­ter dom­i­nated by pre­cise laws char­ac­ter­ized by un­vary­ing en­ergy ac­tions, then might per­fec­tion ob­tain, even de­spite the in­com­plete­ness of uni­verse sta­tus. There would be no dis­agree­ment; there would be no fric­tion. But in our evolv­ing uni­verse of rel­a­tive per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion we re­joice that dis­agree­ment and mis­un­der­stand­ing are pos­si­ble, for thereby is ev­i­denced the fact and the act of per­son­al­ity in the uni­verse. And if our cre­ation is an ex­is­tence dom­i­nated by per­son­al­ity, then can you be as­sured of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of per­son­al­ity sur­vival, ad­vance­ment, and achieve­ment; we can be con­fi­dent of per­son­al­ity growth, ex­pe­ri­ence, and ad­ven­ture. What a glo­ri­ous uni­verse, in that it is per­sonal and pro­gres­sive, not merely me­chan­i­cal or even pas­sively per­fect!

• dealing with evil › Socrates taught not to return e. for e.

98:2.6Xeno­phanes taught one God, but his de­ity con­cept was too pan­the­is­tic to be a per­sonal Fa­ther to mor­tal man. Anaxago­ras was a mech­a­nist ex­cept that he did rec­og­nize a First Cause, an Ini­tial Mind. Socrates and his suc­ces­sors, Plato and Aris­to­tle, taught that virtue is knowl­edge; good­ness, health of the soul; that it is bet­ter to suf­fer in­jus­tice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to re­turn evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. Their car­di­nal virtues were: wis­dom, cour­age, tem­per­ance, and jus­tice.

• always results when personal evaluations are elevated to absolutes

100:1.1While re­li­gion pro­duces growth of mean­ings and en­hance­ment of val­ues, evil al­ways re­sults when purely per­sonal eval­u­a­tions are el­e­vated to the lev­els of ab­so­lutes. A child eval­u­ates ex­pe­ri­ence in ac­cor­dance with the con­tent of plea­sure; ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tional to the sub­sti­tu­tion of higher mean­ings for per­sonal plea­sure, even loy­al­ties to the high­est con­cepts of di­ver­si­fied life sit­u­a­tions and cos­mic re­la­tions.

• human likes and dislikes do not determine e.

100:3.2To the re­li­gion­ist the word God be­comes a sym­bol sig­ni­fy­ing the ap­proach to su­preme re­al­ity and the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine value. Hu­man likes and dis­likes do not de­ter­mine good and evil; moral val­ues do not grow out of wish ful­fill­ment or emo­tional frus­tra­tion.

• isolated and purely selfish pleasures are relative e.

100:3.4Mean­ing is some­thing which ex­pe­ri­ence adds to value; it is the ap­pre­cia­tive con­scious­ness of val­ues. An iso­lated and purely self­ish plea­sure may con­note a vir­tual de­val­u­a­tion of mean­ings, a mean­ing­less en­joy­ment bor­der­ing on rel­a­tive evil. Val­ues are ex­pe­ri­en­tial when re­al­i­ties are mean­ing­ful and men­tally as­so­ci­ated, when such re­la­tion­ships are rec­og­nized and ap­pre­ci­ated by mind.

• defined as › originating in imperfection

105:6.43. The crea­ture reper­cus­sion to fi­nite-re­al­ity pro­mul­ga­tion re­sulted in the ap­pear­ance of per­fect be­ings on the or­der of the eter­nal in­hab­i­tants of Ha­vona and of per­fected evo­lu­tion­ary as­cend­ers from the seven super­uni­verses. But to at­tain per­fec­tion as an evo­lu­tion­ary (time-cre­ative) ex­pe­ri­ence im­plies some­thing other-than-per­fec­tion as a point of de­par­ture. Thus arises im­per­fec­tion in the evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ations. And this is the ori­gin of po­ten­tial evil. Mis­adap­ta­tion, dishar­mony, and con­flict, all these things are in­her­ent in evo­lu­tion­ary growth, from phys­i­cal uni­verses to per­sonal crea­tures.

• Adjusters pilot God-conscious mortals away from

110:1.2I wish it were pos­si­ble for me to help evolv­ing mor­tals to achieve a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and at­tain a fuller ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the un­selfish and su­perb work of the Ad­justers liv­ing within them, who are so de­voutly faith­ful to the task of fos­ter­ing man’s spir­i­tual wel­fare. These Mon­i­tors are ef­fi­cient min­is­ters to the higher phases of men’s minds; they are wise and ex­pe­ri­enced ma­nip­u­la­tors of the spir­i­tual po­ten­tial of the hu­man in­tel­lect. These heav­enly helpers are ded­i­cated to the stu­pen­dous task of guid­ing you safely in­ward and up­ward to the ce­les­tial haven of hap­pi­ness. These tire­less toil­ers are con­se­crated to the fu­ture per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the tri­umph of di­vine truth in your life ev­er­last­ing. They are the watch­ful work­ers who pi­lot the God-con­scious hu­man mind away from the shoals of evil while ex­pertly guid­ing the evolv­ing soul of man to­ward the di­vine har­bors of per­fec­tion on far-dis­tant and eter­nal shores. The Ad­justers are lov­ing lead­ers, your safe and sure guides through the dark and un­cer­tain mazes of your short earthly ca­reer; they are the pa­tient teach­ers who so con­stantly urge their sub­jects for­ward in the paths of pro­gres­sive per­fec­tion. They are the care­ful cus­to­di­ans of the sub­lime val­ues of crea­ture char­ac­ter. I wish you could love them more, co-op­er­ate with them more fully, and cher­ish them more af­fec­tion­ately.

• defined as › partial creativity tending toward disintegration

111:4.11This is the prob­lem: If free­will man is en­dowed with the pow­ers of cre­ativ­ity in the in­ner man, then must we rec­og­nize that free­will cre­ativ­ity em­braces the po­ten­tial of free­will de­struc­tiv­ity. And when cre­ativ­ity is turned to de­struc­tiv­ity, you are face to face with the dev­as­ta­tion of evil and sin—op­pres­sion, war, and de­struc­tion. Evil is a par­tial­ity of cre­ativ­ity which tends to­ward dis­in­te­gra­tion and even­tual de­struc­tion. All con­flict is evil in that it in­hibits the cre­ative func­tion of the in­ner life—it is a species of civil war in the per­son­al­ity.

• defined as › having origin in misuse, distortion, perversion

111:6.3The prob­lem of sin is not self-ex­is­tent in the fi­nite world. The fact of finite­ness is not evil or sin­ful. The fi­nite world was made by an in­fi­nite Cre­ator—it is the hand­i­work of his di­vine Sons—and there­fore it must be good. It is the mis­use, dis­tor­tion, and per­ver­sion of the fi­nite that gives ori­gin to evil and sin.

• dealing with evil › hate e.

126:4.3“Seek good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you. Hate the evil and love the good; es­tab­lish judg­ment in the gate. Per­haps the Lord God will be gra­cious to the rem­nant of Joseph.

126:4.4“Wash your­selves, make your­selves clean; put away the evil of your do­ings from be­fore my eyes; cease to do evil and learn to do good; seek jus­tice, re­lieve the op­pressed. De­fend the fa­ther­less and plead for the widow.

• Jesus › did not advertise e. by forbidding it

127:4.2By the be­gin­ning of this year Je­sus had fully won his mother to the ac­cep­tance of his meth­ods of child train­ing—the pos­i­tive in­junc­tion to do good in the place of the older Jew­ish method of for­bid­ding to do evil. In his home and through­out his pub­lic-teach­ing ca­reer Je­sus in­vari­ably em­ployed the pos­i­tive form of ex­hor­ta­tion. Al­ways and ev­ery­where did he say, “You shall do this—you ought to do that.” Never did he em­ploy the neg­a­tive mode of teach­ing de­rived from the an­cient taboos. He re­frained from plac­ing em­pha­sis on evil by for­bid­ding it, while he ex­alted the good by com­mand­ing its per­for­mance. Prayer time in this house­hold was the oc­ca­sion for dis­cussing any­thing and ev­ery­thing re­lat­ing to the wel­fare of the fam­ily.

• result of evil › escaping duty, we go under control of e.

130:1.2One day af­ter the evening meal Je­sus and the young Phil­is­tine strolled down by the sea, and Ga­diah, not know­ing that this “scribe of Da­mas­cus” was so well versed in the He­brew tra­di­tions, pointed out to Je­sus the ship land­ing from which it was re­puted that Jonah had em­barked on his ill-fated voy­age to Tarshish. And when he had con­cluded his re­marks, he asked Je­sus this ques­tion: “But do you sup­pose the big fish re­ally did swal­low Jonah?” Je­sus per­ceived that this young man’s life had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by this tra­di­tion, and that its con­tem­pla­tion had im­pressed upon him the folly of try­ing to run away from duty; Je­sus there­fore said noth­ing that would sud­denly de­stroy the foun­da­tions of Ga­diah’s pres­ent mo­ti­va­tion for prac­ti­cal liv­ing. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My friend, we are all Jon­ahs with lives to live in ac­cor­dance with the will of God, and at all times when we seek to es­cape the pres­ent duty of liv­ing by run­ning away to far-off en­tice­ments, we thereby put our­selves in the im­me­di­ate con­trol of those in­flu­ences which are not di­rected by the pow­ers of truth and the forces of righ­teous­ness. The flight from duty is the sac­ri­fice of truth. The es­cape from the ser­vice of light and life can only re­sult in those dis­tress­ing con­flicts with the dif­fi­cult whales of self­ish­ness which lead even­tu­ally to dark­ness and death un­less such God-for­sak­ing Jon­ahs shall turn their hearts, even when in the very depths of de­spair, to seek af­ter God and his good­ness. And when such dis­heart­ened souls sin­cerely seek for God—hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—there is noth­ing that can hold them in fur­ther cap­tiv­ity. No mat­ter into what great depths they may have fallen, when they seek the light with a whole heart, the spirit of the Lord God of heaven will de­liver them from their cap­tiv­ity; the evil cir­cum­stances of life will spew them out upon the dry land of fresh op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­newed ser­vice and wiser liv­ing.”

• evil
• defined as › darkness which follows rejection of light
• defined as › immature choosing which, when willfully endorsed, becomes sin

130:1.5Je­sus’ last visit with Ga­diah had to do with a dis­cus­sion of good and evil. This young Phil­is­tine was much trou­bled by a feel­ing of in­jus­tice be­cause of the pres­ence of evil in the world along­side the good. He said: “How can God, if he is in­finitely good, per­mit us to suf­fer the sor­rows of evil; af­ter all, who cre­ates evil?” It was still be­lieved by many in those days that God cre­ates both good and evil, but Je­sus never taught such er­ror. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My brother, God is love; there­fore he must be good, and his good­ness is so great and real that it can­not con­tain the small and un­real things of evil. God is so pos­i­tively good that there is ab­so­lutely no place in him for neg­a­tive evil. Evil is the im­ma­ture choos­ing and the un­think­ing mis­step of those who are re­sis­tant to good­ness, re­ject­ful of beauty, and dis­loyal to truth. Evil is only the mis­adap­ta­tion of im­ma­tu­rity or the dis­rup­tive and dis­tort­ing in­flu­ence of ig­no­rance. Evil is the in­ev­i­ta­ble dark­ness which fol­lows upon the heels of the un­wise re­jec­tion of light. Evil is that which is dark and un­true, and which, when con­sciously em­braced and will­fully en­dorsed, be­comes sin.

130:1.6“Your Fa­ther in heaven, by en­dow­ing you with the power to choose be­tween truth and er­ror, cre­ated the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive of the pos­i­tive way of light and life; but such er­rors of evil are re­ally nonex­is­tent un­til such a time as an in­tel­li­gent crea­ture wills their ex­is­tence by mischoos­ing the way of life. And then are such evils later ex­alted into sin by the know­ing and de­lib­er­ate choice of such a will­ful and re­bel­lious crea­ture. This is why our Fa­ther in heaven per­mits the good and the evil to go along to­gether un­til the end of life, just as na­ture al­lows the wheat and the tares to grow side by side un­til the har­vest.” Ga­diah was fully sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ an­swer to his ques­tion af­ter their sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion had made clear to his mind the real mean­ing of these mo­men­tous state­ments.

• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

130:2.4One of the young men who worked with Je­sus one day on the steer­ing pad­dle be­came much in­ter­ested in the words which he dropped from hour to hour as they toiled in the ship­yard. When Je­sus in­ti­mated that the Fa­ther in heaven was in­ter­ested in the wel­fare of his chil­dren on earth, this young Greek, Anaxand, said: “If the Gods are in­ter­ested in me, then why do they not re­move the cruel and un­just fore­man of this work­shop?” He was star­tled when Je­sus replied, “Since you know the ways of kind­ness and value jus­tice, per­haps the Gods have brought this erring man near that you may lead him into this bet­ter way. Maybe you are the salt which is to make this brother more agree­able to all other men; that is, if you have not lost your sa­vor. As it is, this man is your mas­ter in that his evil ways un­fa­vor­ably in­flu­ence you. Why not as­sert your mas­tery of evil by virtue of the power of good­ness and thus be­come the mas­ter of all re­la­tions be­tween the two of you? I pre­dict that the good in you could over­come the evil in him if you gave it a fair and liv­ing chance. There is no ad­ven­ture in the course of mor­tal ex­is­tence more en­thralling than to en­joy the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of be­com­ing the ma­te­rial life part­ner with spir­i­tual en­ergy and di­vine truth in one of their tri­umphant strug­gles with er­ror and evil. It is a mar­velous and trans­form­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to be­come the liv­ing chan­nel of spir­i­tual light to the mor­tal who sits in spir­i­tual dark­ness. If you are more blessed with truth than is this man, his need should chal­lenge you. Surely you are not the cow­ard who could stand by on the seashore and watch a fel­low man who could not swim per­ish! How much more of value is this man’s soul floun­der­ing in dark­ness com­pared to his body drown­ing in wa­ter!”

• defined as › imperfect obedience to Father’s will

130:4.11Er­ror (evil) is the penalty of im­per­fec­tion. The qual­i­ties of im­per­fec­tion or facts of mis­adap­ta­tion are dis­closed on the ma­te­rial level by crit­i­cal ob­ser­va­tion and by sci­en­tific anal­y­sis; on the moral level, by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The pres­ence of evil con­sti­tutes proof of the in­ac­cu­ra­cies of mind and the im­ma­tu­rity of the evolv­ing self. Evil is, there­fore, also a mea­sure of im­per­fec­tion in uni­verse in­ter­pre­ta­tion. The pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing mis­takes is in­her­ent in the ac­qui­si­tion of wis­dom, the scheme of pro­gress­ing from the par­tial and tem­po­ral to the com­plete and eter­nal, from the rel­a­tive and im­per­fect to the fi­nal and per­fected. Er­ror is the shadow of rel­a­tive in­com­plete­ness which must of ne­ces­sity fall across man’s as­cend­ing uni­verse path to Par­a­dise per­fec­tion. Er­ror (evil) is not an ac­tual uni­verse qual­ity; it is sim­ply the ob­ser­va­tion of a rel­a­tiv­ity in the re­lat­ed­ness of the im­per­fec­tion of the in­com­plete fi­nite to the as­cend­ing lev­els of the Su­preme and Ul­ti­mate.

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

130:4.13Evil is a rel­a­tiv­ity con­cept. It arises out of the ob­ser­va­tion of the im­per­fec­tions which ap­pear in the shadow cast by a fi­nite uni­verse of things and be­ings as such a cos­mos ob­scures the liv­ing light of the uni­ver­sal ex­pres­sion of the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite One.

130:4.14Po­ten­tial evil is in­her­ent in the nec­es­sary in­com­plete­ness of the rev­e­la­tion of God as a time-space-lim­ited ex­pres­sion of in­fin­ity and eter­nity. The fact of the par­tial in the pres­ence of the com­plete con­sti­tutes rel­a­tiv­ity of re­al­ity, cre­ates ne­ces­sity for in­tel­lec­tual choos­ing, and es­tab­lishes value lev­els of spirit rec­og­ni­tion and re­sponse. The in­com­plete and fi­nite con­cept of the In­fi­nite which is held by the tem­po­ral and lim­ited crea­ture mind is, in and of it­self, po­ten­tial evil. But the aug­ment­ing er­ror of un­jus­ti­fied de­fi­ciency in rea­son­able spir­i­tual rec­ti­fi­ca­tion of these orig­i­nally in­her­ent in­tel­lec­tual dishar­monies and spir­i­tual in­suf­fi­cien­cies, is equiv­a­lent to the re­al­iza­tion of ac­tual evil.

130:4.15All static, dead, con­cepts are po­ten­tially evil. The fi­nite shadow of rel­a­tive and liv­ing truth is con­tin­u­ally mov­ing. Static con­cepts in­vari­ably re­tard sci­ence, pol­i­tics, so­ci­ety, and re­li­gion. Static con­cepts may rep­re­sent a cer­tain knowl­edge, but they are de­fi­cient in wis­dom and de­void of truth. But do not per­mit the con­cept of rel­a­tiv­ity so to mis­lead you that you fail to rec­og­nize the co-or­di­na­tion of the uni­verse un­der the guid­ance of the cos­mic mind, and its sta­bi­lized con­trol by the en­ergy and spirit of the Su­preme.

• dealing with evil › do not to others what you would not have done to you
• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

131:1.7“In your lives over­throw er­ror and over­come evil by the love of the liv­ing truth. In all your re­la­tions with men do good for evil. The Lord God is mer­ci­ful and lov­ing; he is for­giv­ing. Let us love God, for he first loved us. By God’s love and through his mercy we shall be saved. Poor men and rich men are broth­ers. God is their Fa­ther. The evil you would not have done you, do not to oth­ers.

• dealing with evil › fret not because of evildoers

131:1.9“If the faith of the Most High has en­tered your heart, then shall you abide free from fear through­out all the days of your life. Fret not your­self be­cause of the pros­per­ity of the un­godly; fear not those who plot evil; let the soul turn away from sin and put your whole trust in the God of sal­va­tion. The weary soul of the wan­der­ing mor­tal finds eter­nal rest in the arms of the Most High; the wise man hungers for the di­vine em­brace; the earth child longs for the se­cu­rity of the arms of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The no­ble man seeks for that high es­tate wherein the soul of the mor­tal blends with the spirit of the Su­preme. God is just: What fruit we re­ceive not from our plant­ings in this world we shall re­ceive in the next.”

• dealing with evil › fret not because of evildoers

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

• dealing with evil › avoid e. by seeing things as they are
• defined as › seeing sin where there is no sin, or no sin where there is sin
• result of evil › pain and sorrow follow in path of e.

131:3.3“Un­righ­teous­ness is con­temptible; sin is de­spi­ca­ble. Evil is de­grad­ing, whether held in thought or wrought out in deeds. Pain and sor­row fol­low in the path of evil as the dust fol­lows the wind. Hap­pi­ness and peace of mind fol­low pure think­ing and vir­tu­ous liv­ing as the shadow fol­lows the sub­stance of ma­te­rial things. Evil is the fruit of wrongly di­rected think­ing. It is evil to see sin where there is no sin; to see no sin where there is sin. Evil is the path of false doc­trines. Those who avoid evil by see­ing things as they are gain joy by thus em­brac­ing the truth. Make an end of your mis­ery by loathing sin. When you look up to the No­ble One, turn away from sin with a whole heart. Make no apol­ogy for evil; make no ex­cuse for sin. By your ef­forts to make amends for past sins you ac­quire strength to re­sist fu­ture ten­den­cies thereto. Re­straint is born of re­pen­tance. Leave no fault un­con­fessed to the No­ble One.

• result of evil › time lag of mercy before fruition of e.

131:3.5“No re­li­gion­ist may hope to at­tain the en­light­en­ment of im­mor­tal wis­dom who per­sists in be­ing sloth­ful, in­do­lent, fee­ble, idle, shame­less, and self­ish. But whoso is thought­ful, pru­dent, re­flec­tive, fer­vent, and earnest—even while he yet lives on earth—may at­tain the su­preme en­light­en­ment of the peace and lib­erty of di­vine wis­dom. Re­mem­ber, ev­ery act shall re­ceive its re­ward. Evil re­sults in sor­row and sin ends in pain. Joy and hap­pi­ness are the out­come of a good life. Even the evil­doer en­joys a sea­son of grace be­fore the time of the full ripen­ing of his evil deeds, but in­evitably there must come the full har­vest of evil-do­ing. Let no man think lightly of sin, say­ing in his heart: ‘The penalty of wrong­do­ing shall not come near me.’ What you do shall be done to you, in the judg­ment of wis­dom. In­jus­tice done to your fel­lows shall come back upon you. The crea­ture can­not es­cape the des­tiny of his deeds.

• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

131:3.6“The fool has said in his heart, ‘Evil shall not over­take me’; but safety is found only when the soul craves re­proof and the mind seeks wis­dom. The wise man is a no­ble soul who is friendly in the midst of his en­e­mies, tran­quil among the tur­bu­lent, and gen­er­ous among the grasp­ing. Love of self is like weeds in a goodly field. Self­ish­ness leads to grief; per­pet­ual care kills. The tamed mind yields hap­pi­ness. He is the great­est of war­riors who over­comes and sub­dues him­self. Re­straint in all things is good. He alone is a su­pe­rior per­son who es­teems virtue and is ob­ser­vant of his duty. Let not anger and hate mas­ter you. Speak harshly of no one. Con­tent­ment is the great­est wealth. What is given wisely is well saved. Do not to oth­ers those things you would not wish done to you. Pay good for evil; over­come evil with the good.

• dealing with evil › meditation brings deliverance from e.

131:4.7“God is our Fa­ther, the earth our mother, and the uni­verse our birth­place. With­out God the soul is a pris­oner; to know God re­leases the soul. By med­i­ta­tion on God, by union with him, there comes de­liv­er­ance from the il­lu­sions of evil and ul­ti­mate sal­va­tion from all ma­te­rial fet­ters. When man shall roll up space as a piece of leather, then will come the end of evil be­cause man has found God. O God, save us from the three­fold ruin of hell—lust, wrath, and avarice! O soul, gird your­self for the spirit strug­gle of im­mor­tal­ity! When the end of mor­tal life comes, hes­i­tate not to for­sake this body for a more fit and beau­ti­ful form and to awake in the realms of the Su­preme and Im­mor­tal, where there is no fear, sor­row, hunger, thirst, or death. To know God is to cut the cords of death. The God-know­ing soul rises in the uni­verse like the cream ap­pears on top of the milk. We wor­ship God, the all-worker, the Great Soul, who is ever seated in the heart of his crea­tures. And they who know that God is en­throned in the hu­man heart are des­tined to be­come like him—im­mor­tal. Evil must be left be­hind in this world, but virtue fol­lows the soul to heaven.

132:2.1Mar­dus was the ac­knowl­edged leader of the Cyn­ics of Rome, and he be­came a great friend of the scribe of Da­mas­cus. Day af­ter day he con­versed with Je­sus, and night upon night he lis­tened to his su­per­nal teach­ing. Among the more im­por­tant dis­cus­sions with Mar­dus was the one de­signed to an­swer this sin­cere Cynic’s ques­tion about good and evil. In sub­stance, and in twen­ti­eth-cen­tury phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus said:

132:2.2My brother, good and evil are merely words sym­bol­iz­ing rel­a­tive lev­els of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion of the ob­serv­able uni­verse. If you are eth­i­cally lazy and so­cially in­dif­fer­ent, you can take as your stan­dard of good the cur­rent so­cial us­ages. If you are spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent and morally un­pro­gres­sive, you may take as your stan­dards of good the re­li­gious prac­tices and tra­di­tions of your con­tem­po­raries. But the soul that sur­vives time and emerges into eter­nity must make a liv­ing and per­sonal choice be­tween good and evil as they are de­ter­mined by the true val­ues of the spir­i­tual stan­dards es­tab­lished by the di­vine spirit which the Fa­ther in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of man. This in­dwelling spirit is the stan­dard of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

132:2.3Good­ness, like truth, is al­ways rel­a­tive and un­fail­ingly evil-con­trasted. It is the per­cep­tion of these qual­i­ties of good­ness and truth that en­ables the evolv­ing souls of men to make those per­sonal de­ci­sions of choice which are es­sen­tial to eter­nal sur­vival.

132:2.4The spir­i­tu­ally blind in­di­vid­ual who log­i­cally fol­lows sci­en­tific dic­ta­tion, so­cial us­age, and re­li­gious dogma stands in grave dan­ger of sac­ri­fic­ing his moral free­dom and los­ing his spir­i­tual lib­erty. Such a soul is des­tined to be­come an in­tel­lec­tual par­rot, a so­cial au­toma­ton, and a slave to re­li­gious au­thor­ity.

132:2.5Good­ness is al­ways grow­ing to­ward new lev­els of the in­creas­ing lib­erty of moral self-re­al­iza­tion and spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment—the dis­cov­ery of, and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with, the in­dwelling Ad­juster. An ex­pe­ri­ence is good when it height­ens the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty, aug­ments the moral will, en­hances the dis­cern­ment of truth, en­larges the ca­pac­ity to love and serve one’s fel­lows, ex­alts the spir­i­tual ide­als, and uni­fies the su­preme hu­man mo­tives of time with the eter­nal plans of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, all of which lead di­rectly to an in­creased de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will, thereby fos­ter­ing the di­vine pas­sion to find God and to be more like him.

132:2.6As you as­cend the uni­verse scale of crea­ture de­vel­op­ment, you will find in­creas­ing good­ness and di­min­ish­ing evil in per­fect ac­cor­dance with your ca­pac­ity for good­ness-ex­pe­ri­ence and truth-dis­cern­ment. The abil­ity to en­ter­tain er­ror or ex­pe­ri­ence evil will not be fully lost un­til the as­cend­ing hu­man soul achieves fi­nal spirit lev­els.

132:2.7Good­ness is liv­ing, rel­a­tive, al­ways pro­gress­ing, in­vari­ably a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, and ev­er­last­ingly cor­re­lated with the dis­cern­ment of truth and beauty. Good­ness is found in the rec­og­ni­tion of the pos­i­tive truth-val­ues of the spir­i­tual level, which must, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, be con­trasted with the neg­a­tive coun­ter­part—the shad­ows of po­ten­tial evil.

132:2.8Un­til you at­tain Par­a­dise lev­els, good­ness will al­ways be more of a quest than a pos­ses­sion, more of a goal than an ex­pe­ri­ence of at­tain­ment. But even as you hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, you ex­pe­ri­ence in­creas­ing sat­is­fac­tion in the par­tial at­tain­ment of good­ness. The pres­ence of good­ness and evil in the world is in it­self pos­i­tive proof of the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of man’s moral will, the per­son­al­ity, which thus iden­ti­fies these val­ues and is also able to choose be­tween them.

132:2.9By the time of the at­tain­ment of Par­a­dise the as­cend­ing mor­tal’s ca­pac­ity for iden­ti­fy­ing the self with true spirit val­ues has be­come so en­larged as to re­sult in the at­tain­ment of the per­fec­tion of the pos­ses­sion of the light of life. Such a per­fected spirit per­son­al­ity be­comes so wholly, di­vinely, and spir­i­tu­ally uni­fied with the pos­i­tive and su­preme qual­i­ties of good­ness, beauty, and truth that there re­mains no pos­si­bil­ity that such a righ­teous spirit would cast any neg­a­tive shadow of po­ten­tial evil when ex­posed to the search­ing lu­mi­nos­ity of the di­vine light of the in­fi­nite Rulers of Par­a­dise. In all such spirit per­son­al­i­ties, good­ness is no longer par­tial, con­trastive, and com­par­a­tive; it has be­come di­vinely com­plete and spir­i­tu­ally re­plete; it ap­proaches the pu­rity and per­fec­tion of the Su­preme.

• defined as › inevitable if creature is to be free

132:2.10The pos­si­bil­ity of evil is nec­es­sary to moral choos­ing, but not the ac­tu­al­ity thereof. A shadow is only rel­a­tively real. Ac­tual evil is not nec­es­sary as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. Po­ten­tial evil acts equally well as a de­ci­sion stim­u­lus in the realms of moral prog­ress on the lower lev­els of spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. Evil be­comes a re­al­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence only when a moral mind makes evil its choice.

• Jesus › abhorred everything which savored of e.

133:3.6When in Rome, Ga­nid ob­served that Je­sus re­fused to ac­com­pany them to the pub­lic baths. Sev­eral times af­ter­ward the young man sought to in­duce Je­sus fur­ther to ex­press him­self in re­gard to the re­la­tions of the sexes. Though he would an­swer the lad’s ques­tions, he never seemed dis­posed to dis­cuss these sub­jects at great length. One evening as they strolled about Corinth out near where the wall of the citadel ran down to the sea, they were ac­costed by two pub­lic women. Ga­nid had im­bibed the idea, and rightly, that Je­sus was a man of high ide­als, and that he ab­horred ev­ery­thing which par­took of un­clean­ness or sa­vored of evil; ac­cord­ingly he spoke sharply to these women and rudely mo­tioned them away. When Je­sus saw this, he said to Ga­nid: “You mean well, but you should not pre­sume thus to speak to the chil­dren of God, even though they chance to be his erring chil­dren. Who are we that we should sit in judg­ment on these women? Do you hap­pen to know all of the cir­cum­stances which led them to re­sort to such meth­ods of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood? Stop here with me while we talk about these mat­ters.” The cour­te­sans were as­ton­ished at what he said even more than was Ga­nid.

• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

133:7.12The hu­man mind does not well stand the con­flict of dou­ble al­le­giance. It is a se­vere strain on the soul to un­dergo the ex­pe­ri­ence of an ef­fort to serve both good and evil. The su­premely happy and ef­fi­ciently uni­fied mind is the one wholly ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Un­re­solved con­flicts de­stroy unity and may ter­mi­nate in mind dis­rup­tion. But the sur­vival char­ac­ter of a soul is not fos­tered by at­tempt­ing to se­cure peace of mind at any price, by the sur­ren­der of no­ble as­pi­ra­tions, and by the com­pro­mise of spir­i­tual ide­als; rather is such peace at­tained by the stal­wart as­ser­tion of the tri­umph of that which is true, and this vic­tory is achieved in the over­com­ing of evil with the po­tent force of good.

• Jesus › refused to compromise with e.

136:8.8Je­sus por­trayed to all the worlds of his vast uni­verse the folly of cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tions for the pur­pose of ex­hibit­ing ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity or of in­dulging ex­cep­tional power for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing moral val­ues or ac­cel­er­at­ing spir­i­tual prog­ress. Je­sus de­cided that he would not lend his mis­sion on earth to a rep­e­ti­tion of the dis­ap­point­ment of the reign of the Mac­cabees. He re­fused to pros­ti­tute his di­vine at­tri­butes for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing un­earned pop­u­lar­ity or for gain­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. He would not coun­te­nance the trans­mu­ta­tion of di­vine and cre­ative en­ergy into na­tional power or in­ter­na­tional pres­tige. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth re­fused to com­pro­mise with evil, much less to con­sort with sin. The Mas­ter tri­umphantly put loy­alty to his Fa­ther’s will above ev­ery other earthly and tem­po­ral con­sid­er­a­tion.

• Jesus › would not serve e. that worship of God might result

136:9.3You can hardly imag­ine what would have hap­pened on Uran­tia had this God-man, now in po­ten­tial pos­ses­sion of all power in heaven and on earth, once de­cided to un­furl the ban­ner of sov­er­eignty, to mar­shal his won­der-work­ing bat­tal­ions in mil­i­tant ar­ray! But he would not com­pro­mise. He would not serve evil that the wor­ship of God might pre­sum­ably be de­rived there­from. He would abide by the Fa­ther’s will. He would pro­claim to an on­look­ing uni­verse, “You shall wor­ship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

140:6.9Then asked Na­than­iel: “Mas­ter, shall we give no place to jus­tice? The law of Moses says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ What shall we say?” And Je­sus an­swered: “You shall re­turn good for evil. My mes­sen­gers must not strive with men, but be gen­tle to­ward all. Mea­sure for mea­sure shall not be your rule. The rulers of men may have such laws, but not so in the king­dom; mercy al­ways shall de­ter­mine your judg­ments and love your con­duct. And if these are hard say­ings, you can even now turn back. If you find the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship too hard, you may re­turn to the less rig­or­ous path­way of dis­ci­ple­ship.”

• dealing with evil › do not fight e. with its own weapons

140:8.7The fu­til­ity of evil: A wrong is not righted by vengeance. Do not make the mis­take of fight­ing evil with its own weapons.

• Jesus › did not advertise e. by forbidding it
• Jesus › had little to say about vices

140:8.21Je­sus had lit­tle to say about the so­cial vices of his day; sel­dom did he make ref­er­ence to moral delin­quency. He was a pos­i­tive teacher of true virtue. He stu­diously avoided the neg­a­tive method of im­part­ing in­struc­tion; he re­fused to ad­ver­tise evil. He was not even a moral re­former. He well knew, and so taught his apos­tles, that the sen­sual urges of man­kind are not sup­pressed by ei­ther re­li­gious re­buke or le­gal pro­hi­bi­tions. His few de­nun­ci­a­tions were largely di­rected against pride, cru­elty, op­pres­sion, and hypocrisy.

• dealing with evil › nonresistance to e.

141:3.8Je­sus por­trayed con­quest by sac­ri­fice, the sac­ri­fice of pride and self­ish­ness. By show­ing mercy, he meant to por­tray spir­i­tual de­liv­er­ance from all grudges, grievances, anger, and the lust for self­ish power and re­venge. And when he said, “Re­sist not evil,” he later ex­plained that he did not mean to con­done sin or to coun­sel fra­ter­nity with in­iq­uity. He in­tended the more to teach for­give­ness, to “re­sist not evil treat­ment of one’s per­son­al­ity, evil in­jury to one’s feel­ings of per­sonal dig­nity.”

• dealing with evil › fret not because of evildoers

141:7.11It was on this oc­ca­sion that Je­sus in­ti­mated to Pe­ter, James, and John that his work on earth was in some re­spects to be lim­ited by the com­mis­sion of his “as­so­ciate on high,” re­fer­ring to the pre­be­stowal in­struc­tions of his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel. He told them that he had come to do his Fa­ther’s will and only his Fa­ther’s will. Be­ing thus mo­ti­vated by a whole­hearted sin­gle­ness of pur­pose, he was not anx­iously both­ered by the evil in the world.

• human nature tends toward e.

143:2.5“Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the in­flu­ence of the evil one when in re­al­ity you have but been led astray by your own nat­u­ral ten­den­cies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and some­times even des­per­ately wicked? How easy for you to be­come self-de­ceived and thereby fall into fool­ish fears, divers lusts, en­slav­ing plea­sures, mal­ice, envy, and even venge­ful ha­tred!

• dealing with evil › privilege to cleanse ourselves from all e.

143:2.6“Sal­va­tion is by the re­gen­er­a­tion of the spirit and not by the self-righ­teous deeds of the flesh. You are jus­ti­fied by faith and fel­low­shipped by grace, not by fear and the self-de­nial of the flesh, al­beit the Fa­ther’s chil­dren who have been born of the spirit are ever and al­ways mas­ters of the self and all that per­tains to the de­sires of the flesh. When you know that you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who fol­low in the way of this heav­enly peace are des­tined to be sanc­ti­fied to the eter­nal ser­vice of the ever-ad­vanc­ing sons of the eter­nal God. Hence­forth, it is not a duty but rather your ex­alted priv­i­lege to cleanse your­selves from all evils of mind and body while you seek for per­fec­tion in the love of God.

• defined as › imperfect obedience to Father’s will

148:4.3“Evil is the un­con­scious or un­in­tended trans­gres­sion of the di­vine law, the Fa­ther’s will. Evil is like­wise the mea­sure of the im­per­fect­ness of obe­di­ence to the Fa­ther’s will.

• dealing with evil › spiritual rebirth essential to deliverance from e.
• human nature tends toward e.

148:4.6“By na­ture, be­fore the re­birth of the spirit, mor­tal man is sub­ject to in­her­ent evil ten­den­cies, but such nat­u­ral im­per­fec­tions of be­hav­ior are nei­ther sin nor in­iq­uity. Mor­tal man is just be­gin­ning his long as­cent to the per­fec­tion of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. To be im­per­fect or par­tial in nat­u­ral en­dow­ment is not sin­ful. Man is in­deed sub­ject to evil, but he is in no sense the child of the evil one un­less he has know­ingly and de­lib­er­ately cho­sen the paths of sin and the life of in­iq­uity. Evil is in­her­ent in the nat­u­ral or­der of this world, but sin is an at­ti­tude of con­scious re­bel­lion which was brought to this world by those who fell from spir­i­tual light into gross dark­ness.

• dealing with evil › spiritual rebirth essential to deliverance from e.

148:4.8“Men are, in­deed, by na­ture evil, but not nec­es­sar­ily sin­ful. The new birth—the bap­tism of the spirit—is es­sen­tial to de­liv­er­ance from evil and nec­es­sary for en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, but none of this de­tracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Nei­ther does this in­her­ent pres­ence of po­ten­tial evil mean that man is in some mys­te­ri­ous way es­tranged from the Fa­ther in heaven so that, as an alien, for­eigner, or stepchild, he must in some man­ner seek for le­gal adop­tion by the Fa­ther. All such no­tions are born, first, of your mis­un­der­stand­ing of the Fa­ther and, sec­ond, of your ig­no­rance of the ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny of man.

• result of evil › e. proceeding from heart defiles

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

• dealing with evil › go forward in righteousness or retrogress into e.

156:2.6The theme of Je­sus’ in­struc­tions dur­ing the so­journ at Sidon was spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion. He told them they could not stand still; they must go for­ward in righ­teous­ness or ret­rogress into evil and sin. He ad­mon­ished them to “for­get those things which are in the past while you push for­ward to em­brace the greater re­al­i­ties of the king­dom.” He be­sought them not to be con­tent with their child­hood in the gospel but to strive for the at­tain­ment of the full stature of di­vine son­ship in the com­mu­nion of the spirit and in the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers.

• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

156:5.5“But let me warn you against the folly of un­der­tak­ing to sur­mount temp­ta­tion by the ef­fort of sup­plant­ing one de­sire by an­other and sup­pos­edly su­pe­rior de­sire through the mere force of the hu­man will. If you would be truly tri­umphant over the temp­ta­tions of the lesser and lower na­ture, you must come to that place of spir­i­tual ad­van­tage where you have re­ally and truly de­vel­oped an ac­tual in­ter­est in, and love for, those higher and more ide­al­is­tic forms of con­duct which your mind is de­sirous of sub­sti­tut­ing for these lower and less ide­al­is­tic habits of be­hav­ior that you rec­og­nize as temp­ta­tion. You will in this way be de­liv­ered through spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion rather than be in­creas­ingly over­bur­dened with the de­cep­tive sup­pres­sion of mor­tal de­sires. The old and the in­fe­rior will be for­got­ten in the love for the new and the su­pe­rior. Beauty is al­ways tri­umphant over ug­li­ness in the hearts of all who are il­lu­mi­nated by the love of truth. There is mighty power in the ex­pul­sive en­ergy of a new and sin­cere spir­i­tual af­fec­tion. And again I say to you, be not over­come by evil but rather over­come evil with good.”

• human nature tends toward e.

156:5.8Do not be­come dis­cour­aged by the dis­cov­ery that you are hu­man. Hu­man na­ture may tend to­ward evil, but it is not in­her­ently sin­ful. Be not down­cast by your fail­ure wholly to for­get some of your re­gret­table ex­pe­ri­ences. The mis­takes which you fail to for­get in time will be for­got­ten in eter­nity. Lighten your bur­dens of soul by speed­ily ac­quir­ing a long-dis­tance view of your des­tiny, a uni­verse ex­pan­sion of your ca­reer.

• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

159:5.10Je­sus did not ad­vo­cate the prac­tice of neg­a­tive sub­mis­sion to the in­dig­ni­ties of those who might pur­posely seek to im­pose upon the prac­ti­tion­ers of non­re­sis­tance to evil, but rather that his fol­low­ers should be wise and alert in the quick and pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of good to evil to the end that they might ef­fec­tively over­come evil with good. For­get not, the truly good is in­vari­ably more pow­er­ful than the most ma­lig­nant evil. The Mas­ter taught a pos­i­tive stan­dard of righ­teous­ness: “Whoso­ever wishes to be my dis­ci­ple, let him dis­re­gard him­self and take up the full mea­sure of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily to fol­low me.” And he so lived him­self in that “he went about do­ing good.” And this as­pect of the gospel was well il­lus­trated by many para­bles which he later spoke to his fol­low­ers. He never ex­horted his fol­low­ers pa­tiently to bear their obli­ga­tions but rather with en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to live up to the full mea­sure of their hu­man re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­vine priv­i­leges in the king­dom of God.

• dealing with evil › 3 ways of resisting e.

159:5.11When Je­sus in­structed his apos­tles that they should, when one un­justly took away the coat, of­fer the other gar­ment, he re­ferred not so much to a lit­eral sec­ond coat as to the idea of do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive to save the wrong­doer in the place of the olden ad­vice to re­tal­i­ate—“an eye for an eye” and so on. Je­sus ab­horred the idea ei­ther of re­tal­i­a­tion or of be­com­ing just a pas­sive suf­ferer or vic­tim of in­jus­tice. On this oc­ca­sion he taught them the three ways of con­tend­ing with, and re­sist­ing, evil:

159:5.121. To re­turn evil for evil—the pos­i­tive but un­righ­teous method.

159:5.132. To suf­fer evil with­out com­plaint and with­out re­sis­tance—the purely neg­a­tive method.

159:5.143. To re­turn good for evil, to as­sert the will so as to be­come mas­ter of the sit­u­a­tion, to over­come evil with good—the pos­i­tive and righ­teous method.

• dealing with evil › friendship is insurance against e.

160:2.94. The en­hanced de­fense against all evil. Per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion and mu­tual af­fec­tion is an ef­fi­cient in­sur­ance against evil. Dif­fi­cul­ties, sor­row, dis­ap­point­ment, and de­feat are more painful and dis­heart­en­ing when borne alone. As­so­ci­a­tion does not trans­mute evil into righ­teous­ness, but it does aid in greatly less­en­ing the sting. Said your Mas­ter, “Happy are they who mourn”—if a friend is at hand to com­fort. There is pos­i­tive strength in the knowl­edge that you live for the wel­fare of oth­ers, and that these oth­ers like­wise live for your wel­fare and ad­vance­ment. Man lan­guishes in iso­la­tion. Hu­man be­ings un­fail­ingly be­come dis­cour­aged when they view only the tran­si­tory trans­ac­tions of time. The pres­ent, when di­vorced from the past and the fu­ture, be­comes ex­as­per­at­ingly triv­ial. Only a glimpse of the cir­cle of eter­nity can in­spire man to do his best and can chal­lenge the best in him to do its ut­most. And when man is thus at his best, he lives most un­selfishly for the good of oth­ers, his fel­low so­journ­ers in time and eter­nity.

• choosing to become children of e.

162:7.3“I know that you are Abra­ham’s seed, yet your lead­ers seek to kill me be­cause my word has not been al­lowed to have its trans­form­ing in­flu­ence in their hearts. Their souls are sealed by prej­u­dice and blinded by the pride of re­venge. I de­clare to you the truth which the eter­nal Fa­ther shows me, while these de­luded teach­ers seek to do the things which they have learned only from their tem­po­ral fa­thers. And when you re­ply that Abra­ham is your fa­ther, then do I tell you that, if you were the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you would do the works of Abra­ham. Some of you be­lieve my teach­ing, but oth­ers seek to de­stroy me be­cause I have told you the truth which I re­ceived from God. But Abra­ham did not so treat the truth of God. I per­ceive that some among you are de­ter­mined to do the works of the evil one. If God were your Fa­ther, you would know me and love the truth which I re­veal. Will you not see that I come forth from the Fa­ther, that I am sent by God, that I am not do­ing this work of my­self? Why do you not un­der­stand my words? Is it be­cause you have cho­sen to be­come the chil­dren of evil? If you are the chil­dren of dark­ness, you will hardly walk in the light of the truth which I re­veal. The chil­dren of evil fol­low only in the ways of their fa­ther, who was a de­ceiver and stood not for the truth be­cause there came to be no truth in him. But now comes the Son of Man speak­ing and liv­ing the truth, and many of you refuse to be­lieve.

• almost every human being has a pet e.

163:2.7Al­most ev­ery hu­man be­ing has some one thing which is held on to as a pet evil, and which the en­trance into the king­dom of heaven re­quires as a part of the price of ad­mis­sion. If Mata­dor­mus had parted with his wealth, it prob­a­bly would have been put right back into his hands for ad­min­is­tra­tion as trea­surer of the sev­enty. For later on, af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he did obey the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion, al­though it was then too late to en­joy mem­ber­ship in the sev­enty, and he be­came the trea­surer of the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother in the flesh was the head.

• dealing with evil › love of truth necessary for victory over e.

179:4.5Je­sus brought their whis­per­ings to an end by say­ing: “I sor­row that this evil should have come to pass and hoped even up to this hour that the power of truth might tri­umph over the de­cep­tions of evil, but such vic­to­ries are not won with­out the faith of the sin­cere love of truth. I would not have told you these things at this, our last sup­per, but I de­sire to warn you of these sor­rows and so pre­pare you for what is now upon us. I have told you of this be­cause I de­sire that you should re­call, af­ter I have gone, that I knew about all these evil plot­tings, and that I fore­warned you of my be­trayal. And I do all this only that you may be strength­ened for the temp­ta­tions and tri­als which are just ahead.”

• dealing with evil › nonresistance to e.

180:5.9This same phi­los­o­phy of the liv­ing flex­i­bil­ity and cos­mic adapt­abil­ity of di­vine truth to the in­di­vid­ual re­quire­ments and ca­pac­ity of ev­ery son of God, must be per­ceived be­fore you can hope ad­e­quately to un­der­stand the Mas­ter’s teach­ing and prac­tice of non­re­sis­tance to evil. The Mas­ter’s teach­ing is ba­si­cally a spir­i­tual pro­nounce­ment. Even the ma­te­rial im­pli­ca­tions of his phi­los­o­phy can­not be help­fully con­sid­ered apart from their spir­i­tual cor­re­la­tions. The spirit of the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion con­sists in the non­re­sis­tance of all self­ish re­ac­tion to the uni­verse, cou­pled with the ag­gres­sive and pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of righ­teous lev­els of true spirit val­ues: di­vine beauty, in­fi­nite good­ness, and eter­nal truth—to know God and to be­come in­creas­ingly like him.

• human nature tends toward e.

188:4.5The an­i­mal na­ture—the ten­dency to­ward evil-do­ing—may be hered­i­tary, but sin is not trans­mit­ted from par­ent to child. Sin is the act of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the Fa­ther’s will and the Sons’ laws by an in­di­vid­ual will crea­ture.

• Jesus › love of Jesus swallows up all e.

188:5.2The cross for­ever shows that the at­ti­tude of Je­sus to­ward sin­ners was nei­ther con­dem­na­tion nor con­do­na­tion, but rather eter­nal and lov­ing sal­va­tion. Je­sus is truly a sav­ior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to good­ness and righ­teous sur­vival. Je­sus loves men so much that his love awak­ens the re­sponse of love in the hu­man heart. Love is truly con­ta­gious and eter­nally cre­ative. Je­sus’ death on the cross ex­em­pli­fies a love which is suf­fi­ciently strong and di­vine to for­give sin and swal­low up all evil-do­ing. Je­sus dis­closed to this world a higher qual­ity of righ­teous­ness than jus­tice—mere tech­ni­cal right and wrong. Di­vine love does not merely for­give wrongs; it ab­sorbs and ac­tu­ally de­stroys them. The for­give­ness of love ut­terly tran­scends the for­give­ness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-do­ing to one side; but love de­stroys for­ever the sin and all weak­ness re­sult­ing there­from. Je­sus brought a new method of liv­ing to Uran­tia. He taught us not to re­sist evil but to find through him a good­ness which ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroys evil. The for­give­ness of Je­sus is not con­do­na­tion; it is sal­va­tion from con­dem­na­tion. Sal­va­tion does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not com­pro­mise nor con­done hate; it de­stroys it. The love of Je­sus is never sat­is­fied with mere for­give­ness. The Mas­ter’s love im­plies re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, eter­nal sur­vival. It is al­to­gether proper to speak of sal­va­tion as re­demp­tion if you mean this eter­nal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

• dealing with evil › fear not resistance of e.

191:4.4“Go, then, into all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men to all na­tions and races and ever be wise in your choice of meth­ods for pre­sent­ing the good news to the dif­fer­ent races and tribes of man­kind. Freely you have re­ceived this gospel of the king­dom, and you will freely give the good news to all na­tions. Fear not the re­sis­tance of evil, for I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages. And my peace I leave with you.”

• dealing with evil › overcome e. with good

194:3.11Pen­te­cost, with its spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, was de­signed for­ever to loose the re­li­gion of the Mas­ter from all de­pen­dence upon phys­i­cal force; the teach­ers of this new re­li­gion are now equipped with spir­i­tual weapons. They are to go out to con­quer the world with un­fail­ing for­give­ness, match­less good will, and abound­ing love. They are equipped to over­come evil with good, to van­quish hate by love, to de­stroy fear with a coura­geous and liv­ing faith in truth. Je­sus had al­ready taught his fol­low­ers that his re­li­gion was never pas­sive; al­ways were his dis­ci­ples to be ac­tive and pos­i­tive in their min­istry of mercy and in their man­i­fes­ta­tions of love. No longer did these be­liev­ers look upon Yah­weh as “the Lord of Hosts.” They now re­garded the eter­nal De­ity as the “God and Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ.” They made that prog­ress, at least, even if they did in some mea­sure fail fully to grasp the truth that God is also the spir­i­tual Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual.

• dealing with evil › see e. against background of ultimate good

195:5.12As you view the world, re­mem­ber that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white back­ground of ul­ti­mate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up mis­er­ably against a black back­ground of evil.

• Jesus › did not advertise e. by forbidding it

195:5.13When there is so much good truth to pub­lish and pro­claim, why should men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just be­cause it ap­pears to be a fact? The beau­ties of the spir­i­tual val­ues of truth are more plea­sur­able and up­lift­ing than is the phe­nom­e­non of evil.

• dealing with evil › prayer mobilizes soul to withstand e.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.