The A-Z of believing: E is for evil

Written and presented by Dr Ed Kessler MBE, founder director of the Cambridge-based Woolf Institute, this compelling guide to religious belief and scepticism is a must-read for believers and non-believers alike.

Founded in 1998 to explore the relationship between religion and society, the Woolf Institute uses research and education to foster understanding between people of all beliefs with the aim of reducing prejudice and intolerance.

Says Dr Kessler: “Latest surveys suggest that 85 per cent of the world’s population identify themselves as belonging to a specific religion, and in many parts of the world the most powerful actors in civil society are religious. Understanding religion and belief, the role they play and their impact on behaviour and decision-making is, therefore, vital.”

Dr Kessler – who was awarded an MBE for services to interfaith relations in 2011 – is an affiliated lecturer with the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, a principal of the Cambridge Theological Federation and additionally teaches at the Cambridge Muslim College.

He says: “This A-Z of Believing aims to show how the encounter between religions has influenced and been influenced by the evolution of civilisation and culture, both for good and for ill. I hope that a better understanding of believing will lead people to realise that while each religion is separate, they are also profoundly connected.”

E is for... Evil

If people have beheld evil, they may know that it was shown to them in order that they learn their own guilt and repent; for what is shown to them is also within them. Baal Shem Tov

According to the Rabbinic view the evil inclination trumps the good in important ways. How so? Without the driving force of the "evil inclination", life would still be good, but a colourless and insipid good. What makes life very good is to struggle against evil.

The reality of evil has been a persistent problem for religious people given their view of a benevolent, omnipotent God. For example, the all-powerful, all-compassionate and all-knowing God presumably had the power to prevent the Holocaust, but didn't. Does this mean either God does not care about the torture and suffering in the divinely created world, and therefore God is not omnibenevolent? Or didn’t God know what was happening, which means God is not omniscient? This is what philosophers call "the problem of evil", and what theologians have named theodicy.

Evil has been variously viewed as being permitted by God as a test of faith, or a divine warning, discipline or punishment. A systematic understanding remains elusive. One approach by Muslim thinkers, followed by many others, has sought to reconcile the problem with the afterlife. According to the medieval theologian Nursi, evils include the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its substitution with secularism, and are impossible to understand unless there is an afterlife.

Considering suffering as evil, religion has attributed to it redemptive value, particularly Christianity. For Christ suffered and died on behalf of all humanity, through which he triumphed over evil and death. The church fathers taught that humans had, originally, been incorruptible and immortal but as a result of the sinful action of Adam and Eve, they developed the doctrine of original sin, which could only be remedied by baptism – in Christ.

For its part, Judaism identified in each person an evil impulse (ysr hara’) and a good impulse (ysr hatov). The ysr hara’ is not per se evil; it is undifferentiated between good and evil but, if undisciplined, will inevitably lead to sin and hence to death. It requires a counterforce, the ysr hatov.

Judaism and Christianity also speak of evil in terms of Satan and the devil. The New Testament word "devil", coming from the Greek translation of Satan, is perhaps the most well-known designation in the Hebrew Bible for God’s adversary, he is a personal and superhuman evil force, most famously depicted in the Book of Job.

Christianity sometimes draws on apocalyptic visions of a final and great struggle between the forces of good and evil, the latter sometimes described as an antichrist, another hostile figure opposing the work of God. For centuries, Christians applied the term "antichrist" to Jews and Muslims (and, during the Reformation, by Martin Luther to the ‘papists’). Caricaturising Jews as the personification of evil, as the ‘people of Satan’, became a prominent feature of Christian anti-Judaism, and was employed in Nazi antisemitic propaganda. This prepared the seedbed for the Holocaust.

Abraham Joshua Heschel tells the story of a band of inexperienced mountain climbers. Without guides, they struck recklessly into the wilderness. And suddenly a rocky ledge gave way beneath their feet, and they were tumbled headlong into a dismal pit. In the darkness of the pit, they recovered from their shock, only to find themselves set upon by a swarm of angry snakes. Every crevice became alive with fanged, hissing things. And for each snake the desperate men slew, ten more seemed to lash out in its place. Strangely enough, one man seemed to stand aside from the fight. When the indignant voices of his struggling companions reproached him for not fighting, he called back: If we remain here, we shall be dead before the snakes. I am searching for a way of escape from the pit for all of us.

When I reflect on today’s violent world, it seems not unlike that pit of snakes. We have descended into it and the snakes have sent their venom into humanity, numbing our nerves, dulling our minds, darkening our vision. Good and evil, which were once apparent, have become blurred in the age of fake news. The conscience of the world is being destroyed and who is to say this not an outcome of evil?

During the horrors of 1933-45, during the Holocaust, a messenger came and conveyed the following message from the European Jews being slaughtered: ‘We, Jews, despise all those who live in safety and do nothing to save us.’ They - like those who perished since in the genocides in Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia and presently in Congo - died with disdain and scorn for what we call civilization.

From the religious perspective, God will return to us when we are willing to let God in. It is a moral imperative to attend to the problem of evil at a time in history when humanity has the capacity to destroy creation and humanity itself. The killing of snakes will save us for the moment, but not forever. There can be no neutrality.

Either we are ministers of the sacred or we are slaves of evil.

Next week: F is for Fundamentalism

Listen to each episode of An A-Z of Believing: from Atheism to Zealotry on the Woolf Institute podcast site or wherever you get your podcasts