Why is There Evil?

"Why is there evil?"  this is a question a client asked me recently, but is also I think one of the most common spiritual or theological questions throughout the ages.  (Right along side of why do we die?)  Various religions answer this differently - because of original sin, because of free choice, because of the devil, as a karmic punishment, because the nature of life is suffering, etc.  Some find one of those answers to be a satisfying answer; most of us I think do not.  For those of patchwork faith (those who construct their own theology as they seek truth where ever they find it) this question does engage a  lot of other questions - like what is the nature of God?  How powerful is God? Is there sin?  Do we have free choice or live predestined lives?  Is there Karma?  Do we reincarnate?

Part of the purpose of this blog is to ask you to engage deeply with all of those questions.  And I will try humbly to answer here the question as I understand it.

I do believe in free will.  If there was not free will we would live lives of fate and predestined outcomes.  So we are free to choose what we do, whether it is good or bad.  Most of us unless very psychologically damaged have consciences, so one psychological answer is: damage results in more damage.  Violence and oppression become passed on. Statistics are pretty clear that those who were sexually abused often become perpetrators; those who experienced domestic violence growing up are at higher risk to act out violently.  

But freewill certainly does not explain things like Enron or Hitler.  The example of Nazi Germany certainly gives us the example of ordinary people in mass numbers doing terrible things.  We see the impact of a whole culture of propaganda, education, youth groups, and societal pressure and punishments creating a cultural normal that did evil things.  A less intense but still powerful example of societal norms supporting evil is slavery in the US or I would argue environmental destruction in our current age.

But even these psychological or sociologic explanations do not account for why between two victims in a family where sexual abuse happens, one goes out and becomes abusive, and the other does not.  Nor does it account for how people in torture centers come up with the things they do.  It also does not address the disturbing answer to the other side of the coin - why do some people become the victims?  It cannot be as easily answered as "in the wrong place at the wrong time"  Yes sometimes, but why are children born with AIDS or drug addiction.   Then we might ask how does a just Creator allow such suffering?

I do not believe God can both grant free will and be all powerful.  So in granting us freewill this means God grants us the power to intentionally or unintentionally cause harm to other human beings, and the power to deny what God might want for us.  Some people are simply there at the wrong moment.  But I also do believe in reincarnation, so I believe we all choose the lives and circumstances we are born into to maximize the growth intentions of this life time.  Which is to say when we live many lifetimes, we do not and cannot learn all there is to learn in just one lifetime.  Just like the learning within one life, some of our early choices effect  or limit the choices available or logical to follow later. 

This is perhaps another way of talking about Karma.  I believe young souls learn elemental lessons about violence, love, trust, truth...which is why as a society we have a lot of struggles in those areas.  But from those lessons we choose more complicated situations, or sometimes opposite situations in order to learn the lessons we need to learn.  Thus two souls in similar circumstances may make quite different choices. So having perpetrated violence in one lifetime we may choose a life where we will be a victim of violence as a way of learning about all sides of violence.  Some people call that Karma.

So back to why would a child be born with AIDS or drug addiction?  I do not believe Karma is a punishment but simply a learning opportunity.  So if one needed to learn about dependency, about meaning based not on accomplishments, about addiction itself, about the overcoming of addiction, etc  all of these are reasons one could choose such a life.

It is still hard to understand why one might be born into famine and starvation: what learning could come of this, or to die in a death camp?  Several writers I have read suggest that in order for us to see Light that we must have the contrast of dark.  They suggest that God allows for our bad choices as contrast that leads to learning for good choices.  These same writers suggest that some souls choose lives of suffering or victimhood as a sacrifice and a contribution to the collective human consciousness and learning.  These writers suggest that the Holocaust and the several genocides since then in Africa and Bosnia are occasions that have laid bare to the world the horror of scapegoating a whole ethnic group, of doing enemy think on such a massive level, of the reign of terror of one group of people turned on another.  Given that the word Hitler is almost a synonym for evil in our culture, it does serve as a powerful symbol in our collective consciousness.  Yes much better that we would have learned the lesson on a permanent level, but there were still souls who did not learn that lesson by the conclusion of WWII or people whose lives were so wholly focused on other lessons during that time (or souls not on earth then) that there were still souls needing to learn that lesson in Darfur, etc. 

Does humanity make any progress or do we just go round in circles?  There is far less child abuse on the planet that 200 years ago, in many cultures it now so widely condemned that it must be hidden.   Studies show that there is less wars being fought right now than ever before in history proportionate to the population.  Slavery while not abolished is also far less prevalent and universally condemned as a "bad" thing.  So it does seem as Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "the arc of history is long and bends towards justice."  Our souls are linked not just in this lifetime to a web of Friends and family, but also through many lifetimes to a collective shared experience and a slow but steady learning curve.

This also suggests to me that how we respond to the suffering or evil that falls over our own life is incredibly important, both for ourselves and for the collective consciousness.   I once watched on tv the sentencing for the Green River Killer, a serial murderer in the State of WA.  Family members were all getting a chance to make a statement to him before his sentencing.  Some were full of anger, condemnation and hatred.  A very few offered him forgiveness.  Most tragic to me was a woman who blamed him for every wrong that had befallen her since the murder of a family member, including her husband getting Alzheimer’s!  What a convenient scapegoat he was for her, and yet she was full of bitterness and misery.  By contrast the man who testified to his faith and that God had given him the power to forgive as Jesus forgives us, had clearly much more peace and also happiness while still clearly loving and missing his deceased daughter.  If we are here to learn, than how we respond to evil either means we learn from the lesson handed us, or tragically we fail to learn, and may dance with that particular evil many more times while trying to learn its lessons.