God, Evil and Free Will
The problem of evil as philosophers refers to is the incompatibility of evil and God together. If human beings are capable of doing an evil that can clean the entire human population, what is God doing all this while? This thought is what caused some philosophers to assert, there is no God. Because the idea we have about God is of an ideal who is all pure and perfect, omnipotent and omniscient. How can God allow such evil to exist along with his people? Or what do we expect God to do if the evil is from its people. Does that mean people who turn to evil are not God’s people or as they move towards evil, they become less and less God’s people?
The philosopher who believes in the incompatibility of God and evil together assumes God and evil to be equals. They don’t believe that it is God that gave birth to evil as he did to good. They believe that evil exists on its own without God’s will. But I and the people who believe in the co-existence of God and evil opine that it is God who gave birth to evil. Now the purpose behind giving birth to evil is only known to all-knowing. We can only learn to coexist with it without letting it overpower us. The evil of the natural kind is not in our control. But God through Free Will gave us control over the evil existing in all of us. Through Free Will, we can choose to act and through our actions perpetuate results.
In almost all religions, human evil is the result of hanging out with Satan. If you stay in the company of Satan long enough, the difference between you and Satan would start to diminish. But unlike Satan, you still have the hope for redemption. You still are not an absolute evil. And the same Free Will that encourages humans to do good also allows them to do evil. If we see them symbolically, Satan and angels are the perfected versions of humans in two extremes. They are the symbol of what we would turn into if we continue to follow their plans. They are versions of ourselves in the distant future, a possibility of us. And Satan is nothing but a perfected version of evil.
The question then we must ponder over is, can a human be a Satan? I don’t think so, with Free Will give birth to no absolutes. Your Free Will decides your fate, but that fate can never be your absolute unless you lose your Free Fill. And God promises to never steal your Free Will until you are alive. He allows you the freedom to choose as long as you are alive. But unlike God, Satan doesn’t like your freedom. If you continue to have the freedom to choose, you have the possibility of turning to good. And from saving you from redeeming, Satan steals your freedom with every step you take towards it. As you continue to accept its commands and listen to its whispers with acceptance. You give Satan control over your Free Will.
But there comes the role of the soul of a human being which keeps on trying to bring the person back to normal. It keeps on trying to make him feel guilty and regretful for the person he has turned into. But the human soul fails to do its work when you consider your enemy as your friend, Satan. And Satan has its way of manipulating you and misleading you with its advice. Satan is a symbolic version of a person sitting inside you who never wants you to leave its company. And this continues until evil becomes an absolute evil and there is no way of redemption left for a person to turn to good. The only gateway is death which then kills the evil inside him. So when a person attempts suicide, he is trying to kill evil inside him but since he is on the extremes where the evil and himself merge to appear as though they are one. The only option he has is to live with the evil as though it is him and continue to defend it or kill it and kill himself with it too.
In life, a human being can never be absolute. He always has his hope for redemption and resurrection. But it is the human mind which limits himself from doing so. At times, when he should be showing courage to accept his mistakes, he chooses to defend. When the soul keeps whispering in his ears about where he is going wrong, he shuts the voice and listens to his enemy; Satan. I believe one should always know and be able to differentiate between the voices so that he can filter out the good from the evil. One should always be skeptical of himself such that the free will he uses pushes him towards his inherent goodness.
Originally published at http://sanarajarsite.wordpress.com on August 3, 2021.
