Thoughts on Good and Evil
                                 An Essay                by G. H. Ritz

   The dichotomy which the title of this article contains is one that has 
vexed the faithful no end. The main difficulty is: If God created all things, 
did [He] create evil also? The possibility is unthinkable to religionists who 
see things in dazzling shades of black and white. But it's true nonetheless.
   God created (and still creates) Evil. This is not the blasphemy it appears 
to be, and appearance has a great deal to do with the subject, as it happens.
   The key to understanding this otherwise inflammatory observation is simply 
that Good and Evil are not the opposites they seem. They are compliments of 
one another, as shadow is the compliment of light. Artists paint with dark as 
well as light colors and assign values, the former being lower, and the light 
being of highr value: the lighter the higher. 
   God paints nature in the same way, but in the stunning three dimensions we 
call Reality. Reality is to Truth as Evil is to Good. One is Cause, the other 
Effect. The Effect which we call Reality and cite as Evil is not bad; God is 
Good, True, Beautiful, Peaceful, Orderly, and Harmonious, therefore cannot 
create anything less so, much less something bad.
   Yet there is suffering, poverty, and war in the world and these cannot be 
counted as good. They are certainly Evil, so it appears we are faced with a 
conundrum easily as perplexing as the Gordian Knot that Alexander the Great 
was confronted with. And, as the Macedonian cut the Knot with his sword so 
shall we cut through the toil of our present confusion with our own sword: 
the Sword of Truth.
   We must begin with our beginnngs as creatures of the wild; hunters and 
gatherers, predators and prey. Before our Lords came to this world Creation 
and Evolution were in Perfect balance; predators refined their skills as prey 
evolved greater speed, sharper sight and hearing, camouflage, and whatever 
other means of escaping sudden death; vegetation grew, was eaten by herbivor-
es, the slower adapting animals were devoured by carnivorous beasts, our own 
species among these, and the wastes expelled from both fertilized the soil to 
provide for future generations of flora and fauna, which themselves evolved 
into ever higher forms. Nothing was wasted.
   Man lived in Sin at this time, and that is not as dire a proposition as it 
may seem. The concept of Sin is unnatural, being invented only recently in 
our recorded history, and consists of a set of actions that are thought to be 
offensive to God. God is inacapable of being offended, however, and the cata-
logue of Sins is largely a subjective estimation in the minds of those who 
would rule the minds of others. By imposing a sense of guilt on mankind the 
Church, posturing from on high, holding forth in echoing marble halls, wear-
ing costly vestments of silk and tiaras of jewel bestudded gold, engaged in a 
commercial activity as real as any more conventional form: selling hardware, 
software, or sportswear. They transacted their business in a currency of 
their own design, Absolution, and set rigorous rules for the dispensation of 
this medium of exchange.
   Of course, the more sins that could be coined the greater would the sale 
of indulgences be, and these were often bought using real money. Thus the 
Church became wealthy while its members became poorer and more neurotic. Of 
course rape, murder, theft, arson, and other anti-social behaviors are not 
conducive of good order in polite society and, aside from being legitimately 
considered sins, are also classified as crimes.
   But the propensity for violence, cunning, and treachery in the heart of 
man antedates polite society by millions of years. In the setting of the 
primordial jungles and savannahs, these self-same behaviors, intolerable in
pollite society, were essential to survival. No man thought of a Father in
himself to "doeth the works." All attention was focused on man's surround-
ings, outward, where lay their sustinence and their deadly peril. Man was
certainly aware of powers greater than himself, and to these, we suppose, he 
assigned supernatural identities; gods of the Sun and moon, of the forests 
and rivers, of the fiery mountains, of winds, and storms, thunder and light-
ning - but that was the extent of religious thought among these.
   Then came the Lords who elevated segments of the native race to their own 
genetic profile, to refresh their (the Lords') genetic reservoir, and, as the 
Bible states, "man became a living soul." Under the tutelage of the Lords man 
was guided to the awareness of an Indwelling Spirit which these "sons of God" 
informed in them. But the progress was slow, the temptations many, and for a 
long time the heart of man was bent on wickedness - and many were destroyed 
as the result ofthis recalcitrance.
   But some learned, and these were the forebearers of the great civiliza-
tions that flourished on the African continent long before Sumeria developed 
a culture. The greater numbers of men remained unruly, every imagining of the 
thoughts of their hearts..."only evil continuously." Ingrained habits die 
hard, in other words.
   And these lower instincts are still with us. They define the lower tier of 
what we know as the Tragicomic Nature of man. They are original because they 
are ancient, persistent because they are so deeply ingrained, and tragic be-
cause they are no longer relevant to mankind's survival. As dogs who bury 
bones in the absence of competition, as house cats take cover in the absence 
of threat, so we act out our own ancient programming in equally unnecessary 
circumstances. Having become living souls by the grace of God and the Lords 
of the World who demonstrated our fullest potential to us by being as they 
are, and having once been as we are, we should know better. When one or an-
other of the Lords says, "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the 
end," that's exactly what they are telling us: that our goal (end) should be 
to become as Lords in our own right, of this and other worlds to come.
   We have to get right in this one first. And the War in Heaven yet rages on 
as mankind struggles to free itself from the toils of Evil and to grow toward 
the Good that shimmers before the eye of aspiring man but which is still not 
properly focused. Jesus knew the Truth when he said, "Resist not evil." Evil 
is Effect; only Good, or God (same word, different pronunciation), is Cause, 
and God is available to every soul in the form of the Indwelling Father who 
"doeth the works" and will, if we can just get out of the way and let Him.
   But Reality, the preoccupation with external appearances, blocks our path.
We call this penchant for delusion Satan, the Devil, the Prince of Darkness, 
and other such evasions by which we fail to look into our own hearts and see 
the Evil therein. Our purpose is to dethrone this false god, and to define 
Evil precisely that there be no misunderstanding our message, by calling to 
mind another of the terms by which it is known: the Great Deceiver.
   Reality is the Great Deceiver, thus Evil, in that all men have, by virtue 
of Free Will, the ability to perceive it according to the yearnings of their 
hearts. We identify as virtuous those whose Realities most closely approximate 
Truth; those whose Realities are wide of the Truth we call neurotic, physcho-
tic, or some other synonym for Insane.
   Evil, therefore, is not necessarily bad. Reality, like fire or water, is  
necessary to our existence on the material plane, but deadly when present in 
excess or out of control. It is the shading that gives our perceptions depth 
and form. As we would dread an existence in total darkness, without any light 
at all, so we would find a place of total light, without the hint of shadow, 
equally discomfitting.
   Reality at its best is the font of hope, at its worst the cesspool of des-
pair. The determination as to which it will be is up to the individual soul, 
through the agency of Free Will, who chooses his or her own perception. Most 
of the time it is either to one extreme or the other; Truth coming only after 
the experience of enough self-deception brings it sharply into focus, leaving 
no further room for denial. Then it's off to the courthouse to file for div-
orce or bankruptcy, or to the analyst's couch, when another lover's dream has 
become a nightmare, another "sure thing" has failed, another disappointment 
registered.
   Misfortune, appearing bad, is good in that it can lead to Wisdom, unless, 
appearing insurmountable, it leads to suicide. Wisdom in its most practical 
demonstration is the awareness of facts; that what seems too good to be true, 
is precisely that; that what is easily gained is more easily lost; that work 
gives value to accomplishment; that deception fools the deceiver most of all; 
and, that the faults perceived in others are the evasive projections of self.
   The mark of the fool is the inability to distiguish facts from ideas. War 
is the ultimate contention of ideas, not facts, for if the facts were clearly 
seen all wars would stop. Men caught up in the heat of passion will do in one 
set of circumstances what they would never think to do under different condi-
tions. For example; what motorist who experiences car trouble on the highway 
would blame the other cars on the road for is misfortune? Yet on the highway 
of life how often do we assign the cause of our troubles to our fellow trav-
elers?
   But Jesus knew the Truth; that Evil is only an appearance, and that what 
comes to pass comes - to pass. That Reality is transient, always changing, 
but that Truth is constant, and never changes. That Evil is Live spelled 
backwards and describes the conventional view of Creation from the material 
standpoint: that external conditions are Cause which impinge upon the soul, 
rather than the reverse, which is true. He told us to turn inward to the 
Father in us "who doeth the works" and whose "good pleasure" is to give us 
"the kingdom."
   Sin is defined as the separation from God. But since God is All Things, 
Everywhere, this separation is a physical impossibility. Rather, it is the 
preoccupation with the transient, illusory aspects of the ever-changing mat-
erial world instead of the constancy of the Father, who is the seat of all 
Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Peace, Order, and Harmony. Like wild animals wary of 
their surroundings, sinners are those who search the material realm for that 
which they already possess but of which they are unaware. Those who court ap-
proval risk disapproval; those who seek the acclaim of the masses secure only 
momentary attention and eventually pass into oblivion and are forgotten; and 
those who garner riches are always exposed to the possibilty of losing them. 
Sin is reviling the differences in others, Grace is celebrating the variety. 
Sin takes, Grace gives. Sin always seeks more, Grace has enough always. Sin 
dreads, Grace anticipates.
   Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven.