If it is true that God is only good and also omnipotent, why then do we have evil in the world? Why does evil exist in the world? I wrote the following to answer this question in a way that makes sense to me. Fresh out of university, I took a job in the outback of Australia. It was a difficult adjustment, and my eighteen months there raised more questions than answers. Two years ago, I returned for the first time, seeking answers. What follows is from my journal. It attempts to tackle the difficult question of why evil exists in the world. The picture at the end is of the place where I sat when these thoughts came to me.
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Sitting quietly by the river, among the tall red river gums, with the breeze sighing through the leaves, I was finally able to grasp the truth I had approached but shied away from forty years ago. The reality is that deep inside, I am capable of evil. Not that I have done evil, but I possess the potential for it in the depths of my reptilian brain. Savagery is my “original sin.”
A moment later, the balancing thought came that I also have a higher self. A spark of divine energy granted by a benevolent creator to me and all humans. To choose to follow one’s higher nature while retaining the freedom to act from the lower nature.
Perhaps this is the meaning of life. To consciously choose one’s higher self while moving away from the lower. Could it be that life is not more complicated than that? Sitting here on a riverbank in the outback, I finally see that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Inhabiting a body and brain with the potential for great good and great harm. Using free will to choose one or the other.
WHY DOES EVIL EXIST?
In the wake of this enlightening thought came the question, what is evil? Why does it exist? What can I do about it, if anything?
I am glad I was not one of those kids in school who said, “Why do we have to study science? I’ll never need it!” I was not down on the other side of the football field smoking the day we studied the human brain. I would not have heard that our brains have evolved over millions of years. That it is a work in progress. It is the newly developed neocortex and frontal lobes where we can think logically, make plans using our awareness of the time dimension, and envision how cause and effect are connected. We see the connection between what we do now and what happens later.
But beneath the new brain lies the very old “reptilian brain.” The same formation we share with reptiles. Science calls it the limbic system, and it is where primitive impulses reside. These survival instincts to kill or be killed. In humans, “evil” is the label we put on these primitive survival instincts. But in reptiles, it is nothing more than a reflex.
Crocodile hunter Steve Irwin was safe around crocodiles because their reflexes are 100% predictable. They cannot choose to do otherwise. It is not evil for a crocodile to be a crocodile, even if it kills someone. But for a human to behave like a crocodile is considered evil because, as humans, we can choose to do otherwise.
Society and religion are clear that giving free rein to our reptilian brain is evil. We must resist the temptation. But the impulse remains.
As I sat there in the heat, with the warm, dry wind stirring the leaves, I realized that I really shouldn’t make any judgments about being this way. It is simply how I am made, how my nervous system is wired. The same as everyone else. Having a reptilian brain does not make me evil. That is not the problem. The real problem is knowing better but still doing it.
I cannot wish that part of my nature away. I cannot shame myself into being different. It is futile to try. I cannot simply deny its existence either. Suppressing it, forcing it into the subconscious, creates future problems as the impulse re-emerges in another form.
No, I must use reason to avoid acting on the primitive impulses. This is the strong binary choice that lies at the heart and mind of every human being.
What is the purpose of evil? It exists to create a context and give meaning to goodness. To define the higher qualities of compassion, love, kindness, and self-sacrifice.
To know what goodness is, I must know what it is not. To become good, I must choose the ‘high road’ even when tempted by the low road.
