evil

That which is bad, yet is. Perhaps the most diffi cult problem in religion is the problem of evil. If GOD or ultimate reality is good, why is there evil? Evil is serious suffering in mind or body, especially when the pain is seen as unjust and undeserved. It is that which is not as we believe it was meant to be and should be: the innocent child upon whom cruel tortures are imposed, the horrors of war and plague, any being unable to fulfi ll the life for which it was born. Evil seems to be deeply ingrained in our world, yet because religion wants to look at things from a perspective above the world and from which to interpret all that transpires in it, it must say something about the reasons for evil. JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, and ISLAM basically see evil as the result of the disobedience to God of creatures having the free will to obey or not. In some traditional stories, it was fi rst ANGELS, who on rebelling against God, then became DEVILS AND DEMONS, although the notion of a devil is foreign in Judaism. Then humans, as in the story of ADAM and EVE in the Garden of Eden, succumbed to evil of their own will though they were also tempted by a devil. By bringing in devils and demons as well as humans, these stories seem to be saying that not all evil is directly due to human agency. In Christianity, there is also evil embedded in nature— fl oods, droughts, the cruelty of animals. Perhaps it goes back to a cosmic rebellion and "fall" before humans came onto the scene. GNOSTICISM, a religion of the ancient world related to Judaism and Christianity, thought that our entire world was made by a "demiurge" or lower and incompetent god with little good will toward humans, who botched the job of fashioning this particular abode of life. SALVATION is out of this world altogether, back to the Halls of Light from which we ultimately came, before we were trapped in the demiurge's mess of an evil world. ZOROASTRIANISM adopted a dualistic view, saying the world is a battleground between Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Light, and Ahriman, the source of evil; in one view, these two are eternal principles, though Ahura Mazda will eventually prevail in this world. That perspective has probably infl uenced the other Western religions, as when in Christianity the role of SATAN as Prince of Darkness and great adversary of God is emphasized, and this world is seen as provisionally his domain. In the East, evil is basically ascribed to KARMA, or cause and effect from our thoughts, words, and deeds, and from ignorance, not seeing things as they really are and so not rightly assessing the results of acts. There is not only individual karma, but also group karma, of communities, nations, the world as a whole, and one may be entangled in it as well. Religions have also said that some apparent evil is not really such, but has a purpose in evolution, in educating persons, or in teaching nonattachment, and so is experienced only by those of imperfect spiritual development. Yet the problem of evil must undoubtedly be regarded as not completely solved. Many people who reject religion altogether do so on the grounds of its seeming inability to deal with the problem of evil in a world created by a good God.