Is there an authority that has power over evil?
First, in the beginning, before the development of language, there was no counting of time. So, there was no day and no night. There were no seasons, no future, and no past.
Because there was no today, there was no yesterday and no tomorrow. There was only the present moment, which later was named eternity.
When language developed, the label for the day was made to contrast with the label for the night, but eternity did not end. Eternity was simply divided into different units, like years and months and hours.
The continuity of time did not end. All that happened is that through the developing of language, now someone can count time in minutes or milliseconds and so on, which is called the measuring of time. We can make labels like the Paleolithic time period or the low tide time period or the ice age or the iron age or the information revolution or the industrial revolution.
These labels for distinct periods of time do not cancel that eternity is eternal. The labels simply specify distinct segments of eternity. We can quantify different fractions of time. We can count the various portions of eternity.
In a popular children’s story that many people do not know is just a children’s story, it is told that a particular identity spoke and divided the day from the night. That was the development of language and the invention of the label day and the label night.
For a fetus in a womb, there is no language and there is also no visual experience of the bright light of the sun to mark the day time from the night time. Language created contrasting categories.
Perhaps you are familiar with phrasings in language that assert that an identity called God creates all things, including language. Then, using this fundamental creation called language, God labels all of the other creations of God: the fish, the birds, and so on.
In the children’s story, the linguistic identity of God, through the linguistic activity of speaking, also created the category of light and the category of darkness. God is named as the author of different periods of time, like the time of the creation of the earth and the time of the creation of sea life and the time of the creation of humanity. Later this identify called God, who is the author or creator of language itself, invented contrasting labels for a time to plant seeds in to a field and a time to harvest the fields. Besides creating all of those distinctions like between light and darkness, many other contrasting categories were also created, like the heavens and the earth, plus big or small, cold or hot, more or less, tall or short, loud or quiet, good or bad, right or wrong, positive or negative, perfect or imperfect, war or peace, love or hate, and so on.
Note that there is no substance to a label like silence. Silence is just a label for the relative absence of sound. Silence cannot cancel sound. If someone wants to cover another sound, then a very loud sound can be generated to overpower a small sound.
There is no substance to darkness either. Darkness cannot cancel light. To hide a small light, the best way to do that is with a very bright light. That is how the bright sun at noon hides thousands of stars.
What about evil? Does it have any physical substance? Can you take two liquids, one which is evil and one which is good, and then pour them together to neutralize them?
There are many religions that worship the idea of evil and identify it as having tremendous power. We could call these the religions of paranoia (and delusion). It is like pretending that darkness can block light or that silence can block sound, then being terrified of avoiding silence and darkness. That ongoing state of stress or anxiety can be labeled paranoia or hell or shame or even mental illness or evil.
The label evil is just a label. If an infant does not know the English language, but then is asked to identify which time period is the most evil, then the little human who does not understand English cannot respond because evil is just a word in the English language. Without language, the question is just a bunch of meaningless sounds, similar to a barking dog or the sound of a strong wind blowing through the leaves of a tree.
However, an adult could identify the night as the time that is the most evil. During night, if there is no sunlight, then it can be very hard to see. It can be dangerous to move around if someone cannot see. Other creatures that can see better at night may be able to surprise us, right? I may want to create a barrier between myself and those creatures: like a tent or a hut or a brick wall. I might want to create a fire or a lamp or other source of light to keep me safe during the time of the unknown, the night.
Evil can be used to refer to anything that is unknown or dangerous. The newer English word “evil” is related to the more ancient word “adbal” in Old Irish, which means excessive. When expressing disapproval, dislike or disparagement, a word like evil could be used.
“Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use [the adjectives] bad, cruel, unskillful, defective, or [the nouns] harm, crime, misfortune, disease.” – http://dictionary.reference.com/cite.html?qh=evil&ia=etymon
Only around the 18th century did the English word evil come to be used to reference any human action far outside the bounds of socially-approved activity, as in something intensely repulsive, disruptive, disgusting, or sickening. So, if we read a King James Version of the Christian Bible and do not understand how the definitions of words evolve over time (or the challenges of translation and interpretation), people can grow more confused the more that they read, rather than benefited.
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
http://biblehub.com/isaiah/45-7.htm
So, there are religious traditions that worship an identity that has power over evil. In contrast, other traditions program people to worship a character that is frightened of evil, that agonizes over carefully identifying it and protesting against it, that attempts to defeat it or destroy it, and that forbids people from exploring evil because then people would discover the source of that identity’s power.
Is that identity paranoid and deluded and in constant distress and agony, or calm and clear and confident and cool? If the one obsessed with avoiding evil is sincere, which may be just a pretense, then we could call that perfectionism or even shame, as distinct from perfection.
Now, if the Almighty is the creative source that creates all creatures, than which of the Almighty’s creations would the Almighty fear the most? Which branch of a tree is the biggest threat to the existence of the tree? Which leaf upon a vine is the most frightening enemy of the vine itself? Which sound is terrified of silence? Which light agonizes over being destroyed by darkness? Which unit of time will end eternity?
God creates all things. Then, God labels them all: the fish, the birds, and so on. God eventually invents characters like angels or even fallen angels and then, using these characters, creates stories and legends and myths and even the histories that children are programmed to focus on, to worship, to memorize and to repeat back to authority figures in schools of indoctrination. Through mass media propaganda, a specific cultural bias is promoted or publicized or popularized or cultivated or spread.
One famous idea is the idea that “life is imperfect, not already perfect. In fact, life is inherently flawed because of original sin, which includes the unavoidable shame that God did not create us with clothing, but naked. Therefore, everyone should spend their entire lives distracting themselves from their own unavoidable shame of being fundamentally how they should not be. We must identify how we should be as well as how we should not be, then hide how we should not be (or repress those behaviors and thoughts) while we vigorously strive to display or present only what we should be. We identify in minute detail how we should be and then practice that intensely. Of course, if different cultural norms of how people should be ever contrast in any way, then we must engage in that heroic battle between cultures in order to show our sincerity and patriotism and confidence and loyalty and of course publicly demonstrate the vast superiority of our form of agonizing perfectionism over all other forms of agonizing perfectionism.”
Who made up that story? If there is no other author but one, then that author would be God.
However, if we accept the idea that God is more like the publisher who chooses which authors and books to publish, then perhaps God created a devil and trained that devil to make up a story of fundamental damnation. Then, God published the devil’s story for humans to worship. Publishing that story would create a contrast between the practice of paranoia or agonizing and practices like repentance and the withdrawing of condemnation and antagonism, even the discontinuing of agonizing and of the foundation of self-rejection which naturally leads to the seemingly eternal distress of a life of agonizing panic (to avoid hell and earn entry in to an eternal paradise that has not started yet.)
Do I presume to arrogantly condemn my creator as imperfect (and thus to condemn myself as imperfect, as I blaspheme against the Holy Spirit in an idolatry of worshiping a devil terrified of evil)? Or, do I accept that perfection may be a word for a relaxed accepting of things exactly as they already are… without any terrified insistence that life stays any particular way or avoids any particular future form?
Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
You however are to be complete in goodness, as your Heavenly Father is complete.
http://biblehub.com/parallel/matthew/5-48.htm
And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. – Leviticus 20:26
For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy. – Leviticus 11:44
Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy. – http://biblehub.com/parallel/leviticus/19-2.htm
Was the Prophet Moses using the phrase “Children of Israel” to scold or rebuke his entire audience, or is he addressing just an exclusive portion of the people there (like adult men but no one else)? When he said to them “I have severed you from other people,” does he mean that he is singling them out (addressing each of them as an individual responsible for their own life), or is Moses just programming the Levites to be willing to engage in a genocidal holy war against the Moabites , or perhaps both? (Note that the slaughter of the Moabites in particular is recorded in the next book of the Bible, but the prior book, Exodus 32:26-28 records the high priests of the Hebrew, the Levites, slaughtering three thousand of their brothers, friends, and neighbors at the command of Moses.)
So, what does the word Israel mean? It may be interesting that so many people repeat the word as if they know what it meant to the author of Leviticus, yet they have never studied the issue for even a moment.
See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/israel
Hebrew: yisra’el “he that striveth with God” (Gen. xxxii.28), symbolic proper name conferred on Jacob and extended to his descendants, from the word sara “he fought, contended” + El “God.” [One who opposes God, God’s opponent.]
Notice in the ancient Hebrew story of Leviticus that when the Old Testament prophet calls a group of people “the Children of Israel,” that may be the same meaning as below. Here are words attributed to a later Prophet:
Aramaic Bible in Plain English
“You are from your father The Devil, and the desire of your father you are willing to do; from the beginning he has been murdering men and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him; whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from what is his, because he is of falsehood and is also its father.”
http://biblehub.com/john/8-44.htm
On the subject of the creating of pretenses in language and the revealing of those pretenses as pretenses, here is a very famous section of the ancient Hebrew oral tradition which was later recorded in to written scripture, then translated in to other languages such as English:
1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
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power of language blog: partnering with reality by JR Fibonacci 