GOOD AND EVIL IN MAN AND SOCIETY

Nature of Evil

Evil, whether posing as a social or personal threat, is neither universal nor real. However widespread, diabolical, or insidious it may appear, it is temporary and exists just so long as it is not corrected and replaced by virtue. Evil is error, ignorant or malicious. Error is found in high places and low, within church and state; yet it can be permanently overcome only through the establishment and maintenance of good in its place. Good, remaining undefined, may have the appearance of evil or error, simply because of the latter's seeming innocuousness. Likewise, a vacuum of harmlessness, unproductive of good, easily becomes prey to manifest iniquity.

Thus in order for good to retain the essence of goodness, it must be alive in consecrated, positive action and, when necessary, militantly defended. The character of right belief, then, is right action. As the gap between pure motives and noble deeds, ideals, and their pragmatic counterparts is narrowed, the unity and continuity of good will unmask the infamous impostor whose lies always bear the earmarks of separatism and unproductivity. It follows that the practical effects of united world faith in God ought to express as a giant teamwork wherein the world's religious leaders pledge their common faith to eradicate the causes and results of centuries of vain competition and divisionary labors.

Admonition

Oh, that men might let go of the crutches of fear and doubt which bind them as invalids to the invalid oppressions of disunity couched in intellectual schisms and social inequities! Oh, that men might accept the inherent power of the Christ light of world good will to penetrate the density of human reason and resolve their many refractive ideas into one grand and more powerful concept, even as the sun focused through the lens of universal truth is resplendent with more intense effectivity!