Perhaps Evil is a Phenomenon of Intent
By Rev. Valera “Doe Eyes” Childers
I was reading the other day and I came across this simple little sentence, “Perhaps evil is the phenomenon of intent”. I love little statements that really get me thinking. So I posed this statement to my husband and my roommate and it prompted a lot of discussion.
I personally don’t believe in evil, as in saying, “the devil made me do it”, or “that person is evil”. I believe that some people do things with the intent of causing harm and that can be construed as evil. But I do believe that evil is a man-made, Christian concept. I see things in the dark/light aspect. You can’t have one without the other because then you wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. There must be balance.
But is it the person that is evil or the act? I think that most people, by nature, are good people. Sure, some may be a little nicer and some may have what I call “crappy delivery”, but all in all, I believe people to be good. Of course, there are people who are just miserable and aren’t happy unless they’re making other people miserable. This, carried to an extreme, could be called evil.
But what about people who do things that we would all call evil, but they have no control over what they’re doing? Is that still evil? What if someone is, what my brother would call, “one sandwich short of a picnic”? What if those little voices inside their head are so loud that it compels them to carry out an evil act? Yes, in the end their intent is to cause harm, but was it their intent in the first place? Or do we say that these people are different and that they don’t fall into the equation?
What is evil anyway? There are some things that we would all consider evil; murder, war, genocide etc. Hollywood gives us enough examples of what evil is. Or, at least, what they believe evil to be. Evil is subjective, even for those that don’t really believe in it. If we say that evil is destruction then we are saying that all evil is destruction, aren’t we? When wildfires engulf parts of our Earth, we see that as a bad thing, but in nature it needs to happen so that the plants can reseed and have new growth. What about earthquakes? Are they evil? Sure, they destroy things, but it makes way for new birth, so is that evil? If you have an office building and someone blows it up, killing all of the tenants, yes, that could be evil. But what if the owners of the building decided to tear it down because it’s old and infested with termites and that they’re going to build a new one in its place? Is that evil? And there is the intent again.
I think that the concept of evil comes from people’s lack of tolerance. Look at all of the wars our beautiful planet has had to suffer. They’ve all come from people not being able to tolerate difference. It’s human nature to believe that our own personal beliefs are the correct ones. But why is it so difficult for some to accept that others don’t believe the same things that they do? Why should that be construed as evil? Why is it so hard for someone to say, “I understand what you believe, but I just don’t agree with you”, and leave it at that? I believe that lack of tolerance is part of why people do “evil” acts. They’re acting like spoiled brats. They’re basically saying that if we’re not going to play their way then they’re going to take their ball and go home. For Goddess sake, grow up.
Can you even think of how boring this world would be if we were all exactly the same? What in the world would we ever have to talk about? The exchange of ideas and thoughts are the beginnings of creativity and change. Things must change. Without change, we become stagnant. Look at the Earth, for example. She is always changing and we should take that as a sign of how we ought to be.
Valera is an owner and a Priestess of The Village Witch. To learn more about her click here.