As a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in British Columbia, Canada, I knocked on the door of a man's house and offered him the chance to hear our message. He laughed at us, told us religion was a bunch of nonsense, and said that believing life is just Good and Evil is too simplistic. Too immature and primitive a way of thinking, then closed the door fairly rudely.
I've thought a lot about that over the past 20 years. He was correct in understanding that life is just about Good and Evil, and he was correct in thinking it is THAT simple. I think he was a little off in thinking that those ideas were too simple and primitive to be worthy of his time.
Life exists in this universe. What we can see and measure is Biological and Physical Life, the kind of life made of observable atoms. As far as we've observed, all life is connected by genetic materials like RNA and DNA.
How those genetic materials came to be is still being investigated. How they survived evolution as long as they have, and grown into the complexity they have, is hinted at in some part by what we find in the rocks and dirt around us, and also by all of Life's similarities and connections. We can trace it back to it's origins and we've been allowed to figure a great deal of it out. If there is life beyond matter, we don't have a great grasp on it because we don't have a reliable way of measuring it.
Millions and millions of people on this planet claim to have had experiences and interactions with a Supernatural or super-physical life of some kind. Given that humanity is still grasping to understand what our universe is actually made of at it's core, and how to measure things like changes in gravity and how stars colliding ridiculously far away affect our planet, we still have a long way to go to figure out what all is out there and beyond.
As life has become more complex, we've developed ideas and the language to share ideas with others. Something that comes up over and over again is the idea of Good and Evil. To many people in Western Society, these terms give us some discomfort. We tend to not like the black and white type of thinking it instills. We spend years of our lives worrying about whether we are Good or Evil, or whether the people we meet and interact with are Good or Evil and whether we should associate ourselves with them.
Some people happily latch onto others who they see as Evil, feeling like they are in good company. They are comfortable with them. They see something in them that they admire and they don't have to change much to feel included.
On the flip side, some of us try to congregate with people we see as Good hoping to belong and have their Goodness rub off on us, or share the Goodness we see inside ourselves with them.
The problem is that we don't all see things the same way. And we don't see people in the same way. I may focus on certain attributes of a person and think they are evil. They may have a friend or family member that sees other attributes and behaviors that they think are Good and decide that the person is Good.
Another problem is that we don't all agree on what behaviors are Good, or Evil. To some, spanking and disciplining a child is Good, and to others, it is Evil. In reality, context, intent, and the past behavior of the child must all be taken into account to decide if a discipline was Good or Evil. Even Giving to the Poor can be helpful or destructive if done improperly. And rarely do we have ALL the details we need to guarantee being correct, so we have to guess and fill in gaps with our own assumptions. We have to do this a LOT! And if we make the wrong guess, we might become Evil ourselves!
ALL of LIFE as we know it, all this Earth, exists in that gray boundary between Light and Dark. We are lost in it.
Generally, over time, we start to figure out that Goodness is what helps us see better, create more, enjoy more pleasure, have more freedom, and allows others to do the same and enjoy the same things. Wickedness is what destroys, limits, and causes lasting pain or long-term suffering. To complicate things, sometimes it's not the action that is good or evil but our INTENT that can be Good or Evil, or our Method of accomplishing something can be done in Good or Evil ways. Good helps life continue. Evil destroys it prematurely. And we're somewhere in between.
This world is basically a great big, moral fog of Gray. There certainly is a Black and White, a Light and Darkness. A God and a Devil, but relatively few of us can see far enough to figure out if we're closer to one or the other, or which direction we are even headed. Few of us have the perspective to see our way through it. If we could get above it, we could see more, but while we're lost in it, our visibility is limited and there are few if any boundaries to discern where Goodness starts and Evil stops. They are still there, we just can't see them.
Into this soupy mix of life, the God of Nature drops us. He doesn't just drop us all into the same place, and he doesn't give us all the same momentum in the same directions. Some of us start off closer to Goodness but in a downward direction. Some of us enter this world in the bottom-most sludges but somehow get started in the right direction.
And then, even with the momentum we begin life with, we run into obstacles, we encounter other people and ideas that cause our direction to change. Our genetic makeup, our family life, our initial momentum, and some small measure of "free choice" all take part to change our directions throughout life.
Some people will have a tendency to rise, no matter what gets in their way, and some people will sink, no matter how much help they have otherwise. Most of us just meander all around, however we feel, if we move at all. And with all the moving in all directions of everyone, as packed tight as we are, there's little reason to try to follow one crowd or head one direction over another except that it's the crowd we fell into somewhat naturally or where we fit into easiest.
As time progresses, eventually, the people of this Earth, the Children of God will be sorted. Like Oil and Water that's been mixed together in a stew. With enough stirring, shaking, and settling, those of God's children who want to be close to Him will rise to the top, while those who don't will settle to the bottom.
And not everyone will want to settle to the same degree or get as close to God as others. There will be degrees of Glory, based on how close a person actually wants to get to God. Like the stars differ in their glory, or how the Sun differs from the moon, we will inherit our own glory dictated by our natures and choices.
At some point, God will step in and show us that there are natural boundaries, like the orbits of rocky planets vs Gas-Giants or the orbitals of electrons within an atom. When the fog has lifted, we will see the natural levels that exist to life in the universe, and depending on where we end up, we will achieve different levels of maturity to Eternal Life.
Some of us will be stunted in our growth, eternally handicapped by our own choices. Damned for eternity. Stuck in Eternal Darkness and Cast Out.
Some of us will grow up to full adulthood, like God Himself, able to Create like He creates, given EVERYTHING He has.
If we could see everything that is out there with our own eyes, we would see that this Universe is not nearly as empty as it appears if all we can see if Visible Light. It is FULL of Energy. It is hardly a vacuum or void.
And with that Life he has given us, we will one day be able to do what ONLY HE can do: Create LIFE all on our own, together, for ALL Eternity. And help it to progress and grow up to be like us. Thus, fulfilling our Supernatural DNA that's inherent in us. The Spiritual Life we were born into.
Good luck to All of You. I'm praying and working to improve this world where I can and encourage you all to do the same.
All pictures and Images from Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons, or my own. As for the clumsy formatting, I didn't feel like wrestling with Blogger to get the picture's centered properly. It doesn't want to cooperate.
