Evil I

Evil

Don: One of the questions that has arisen out of our discussion is that we see God primarily as being in the business of uniting, and the devil as being in the business of dividing. Is Matthew 25 referring not to individual judgment, but to a judgment of Evil itself, at the end of the age? Jesus is gathering the sheep into a unity (as in John 10), but what is excluded from that unity is not necessarily individual goats but Evil itself. In the passage, there is a reference in verse 34 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” that seems to imply this is more a metaphor about the end of Evil, so should we be looking back to Genesis and root of evil and the fall of man to get at the answer?

I have looked at a number of passages to try to understand it. In addition to the scapegoat passage, we see in several places in scripture that the goat is a symbol of evil. Genesis 3 contrasts the evil seed of the serpent with the good seed of the woman. The former results in Cain, the latter in Abel. So there may be something about the root cause of evil that is being discussed in the passage from Matthew.

The description of Evil in the passage can then be understood in the context of Good defined as community-making, doing good to others, looking after one another. Evil, then is isolationism, insensitivity, [individualism?—DE].

David: If that deeper meaning is the intent of the passage, why does it have to be put so obtusely? The key message of the passage – do good to others – sounds and feels like it comes from Jesus. It intuitively speaks to the conscience, to the inner light. The other stuff in the passage – the divisiveness, what happens if you don’t do good to others – sounds/feels like human embellishment. The question of the divide between pure good and utter, pure evil is certainly interesting but it does not seem to me to be addressed by or in this passage. Matthew is talking about relatively minor infractions – about not caring enough for one’s fellow wo/man – which may be unchristian but is not unforgivable, compared to pure essence of Evil.

Robin: Heaping our sins onto the scapegoat fits the Israelites’ sanctuary service and the Day of Atonement.

Don: It’s puzzling that everyone – goats and sheep alike – are surprised, perplexed, by the judgment in this passage. What would be the criteria of ultimate Evil? What would it look like, how would it manifest itself?

David: That’s like asking “What does God look like?” We cannot know. In a dream I once had, I could feel, but I could not see, the presence of an absolute, total malevolence, and it was after me. Why, I don’t know. The dream began with me just being in this presence. I was instantly aware that since this pure Evil existed, then pure Good must also exist, therefore I had no qualms in asking God to intervene and no doubt that he would respond, though I was shaking with fear even as I asked. I regained my faith. I don’t think any human being could ever aspire to the level of Evil I felt in this dream. There is always some residual good in people, but I am sure there was none in the entity I met in my dream.

Don: So ultimate evil involves the complete extinguishing of light, including the inner light?

David. I think so. There are lots of allusions in scripture to the inner light, but even without the scriptures, personal feeling tells me it is true – it is an observable phenomenon. There is no-one that Jesus cannot or will not forgive. So the sheep/goat division in Matthew doesn’t make sense. If you strip out all the divisive stuff, it would leave a very Christian, uplifting admonishment to be good to others, but that might might not be enough to capture and hold people’s attention; hence, the embellishment of “eternal punishment.”

Robin: People not written in Revelation’s Book of Life are headed for eternal fire. So it seems there are some people who will choose evil over good. A pastor once explained to me that you don’t have to go to heaven if you don’t want to. If you hate God, you will not be forced to live with him. Or is it the case that, on Judgment day, everyone—God haters too—will have an epiphany and realize they love God after all?

Don: If there were a choice of choosing between good and evil, would some choose one over the other, or would some choose more of one and less of the other but still leave a modicum of the other? Is what’s at stake here free will? John 3 says there is no judgment for those that have walked in the light:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

So it seems there is a choice.

Robin: Perhaps we must just admit that there is a light that is greater and more good and holy than we are. That’s all we have to do. I once met a pious man whose brother was the classic rebel and died, so the pious brother was worried [about his renegade brother’s immortal soul]. For any of us, we are never good enough. Jesus is there to make up for the good we inevitably lack as humans.

David: The corollary is that for those who choose Evil, the Devil will supply the element of evil they lack—an evil so bad humans cannot aspire to it. In my dream, the Evil was so horrible, so abhorrent, it is impossible for me to see anyone choosing it, especially given that they always retain a spark of light inside them.

Robin: As we discussed last week, we don’t know how Hitler and Saddam will choose when they face judgment.

David: Matthew is almost tempting us to be judgmental! He is giving us an easy set of criteria by which to judge and discriminate sheep from goats. That’s another reason to distrust this part of the passage. We are exhorted: “Judge not lest ye be judged,” while here Matthew makes it all to easy to judge others.

Don: Will no-one be lost in the judgment? Will everyone have eternal life? Alice proposed last week that the evil in people that has to be destroyed is the seed of the serpent, evil that has propagated since the beginning of time down to today, but is not commonly held among us who are of the seed of the woman rather than of the seed of the serpent. There is a distinct sense that something is going to be lost.

David: For God to prevail, he must prevail absolutely. Evil has to be eliminated; not just put into a lockup, a goat-pen, or an eternal flame. What then remains is pure Goodness. Process theology – God as both a Being and a Becoming — would seem to support this notion that as God “becomes,” the Evil diminishes. God does not throw people in jail then throw away the key. The idea that God will allow evil to continue to exist side by side with the Kingdom, but will just wall it off, or crush it, or throw it into a burning lake, is not the work of an omnipotent God, of a God who must want to eliminate Evil totally, so that not even the concept remains.

Robin: Will God cast out evil desire from the fallen angels?

David: I think God will eliminate the concept of evil, so no-one, wo/man or angel, can have it.

Robin: So Satan can become Lucifer again?

David: I think so.

Robin: I don’t know how God will judge, but I do know he will judge rightly; that he knows what needs to be done. I must surrender my self, my will, my thinking, even my need to find justification for other people.

David: We all need to have faith. It’s nice to have some rationale to back up our faith – such as (in my case) process theology, or Frank Tipler’s Omega Point theory – but at the end of the day, faith is necessary and faith is enough.

Don: Next week we will pursue this topic. Lucifer came as a creature of light. That is his origin. His DNA is of light. Man came out of dust; his DNA is of dirt. Yet Man has light inserted in him in some way. Does born-of-light Lucifer have the free will to fail, as opposed to born-of-dust mankind, who [through God’s grace] may not have that choice?

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