Evil is the absence of good, according to the great St Augustine. I can see his point, but I’m not sure I agree with it entirely. While I accept that evil has no power of its own; it is not a force of itself; it gathers its force from the good. But that corruption can be turned into a mighty force. That is, the lie with just enough truth in it to ‘sell’ itself. The manipulation with just enough counterfeit concern to mask its egocentricity. We could debate this issue all day, as it has been debated for centuries. I’d rather go to the source; the origin of evil and see what is there.
It seems to me that freedom itself is the origin of evil. Freedom is, I believe, the greatest good we have. It seems reasonable that evil should worm its way into the world through the greatest good.
I believe that every time we make a choice; every time we exercise our freedom, we either enhance or tarnish our freedom, depending on the choice we make. This is most easily seen in drug and/or alcohol addiction. The ability to choose seeps away slowly. But the creep of evil that comes from unloving choices is present in every unloving choice we make from being rude and impolite to stealing what belongs to another. And at the core of every unloving choice is ego – or pride – or self-indulgence – call it what you will. It is putting our needs and wants ahead of all others. So many unloving choices equals so much evil in our world.
The ultimate betrayal of freedom comes inadvertently from mental health ‘experts’ who do not understand two fundamental truths: 1. surrendering ourselves to bad habits is a choice we make. It is not the fault of our DNA nor of our environmental heredity. 2. Freedom is an inviolable gift that remains with us – however tarnished – for our entire lives. It can always be retrieved.
The guardian angel of freedom is responsibility. It is possible to regain the freedom we have lost with unloving choices by simply engaging self-control to undo the damage done. When we accept responsibility, regain the self-control we have surrendered, we become stronger, truer to ourselves and ultimately free to do and be what we were created to do and to be. We DO NOT need ‘medication’ to regain who we were born to be.