Really enjoyed this piece. Yes, we are the destroyers…Takes me back to a time I was backpacking in Montana years ago. After traveling cross country for several days( killing and eating fish and grouse) I popped into an area being developed for mountain mcmansions. Clear cuts, rough gravel roads, gas and power lines cut in, creating a scorched earth feel. After climbing ridges and cool mountain streams the previous days this new view was quite a shock and as I rested in the shade if a fir tree I shed tears as I saw this aspect of myself. As you say we need to walk into it and feel the blood red heat on our hands…These days Im a carpenter working on mcmansions in the foothills of the Rockies, loving a good steak after a hard days work.
As a writer and artist I have had to face this issue myself, as writing is how I try and relate to my creator. I create heroes and villains, because what kind of compelling story has limp noodles at the center? We want to see conflict, we want to see good triumph over evil, and maybe evil needs to exist for there to even be good. I put my characters through hell, but when they succeed against adversity then its all the more rewarding. If God is the Author then maybe we can help make it an interesting story.
Augustine states, if I am not mistaken, that evil is the absence of good. It is nothing. God did not create evil (nothingness), but he did permit it for a greater good. (Perhaps we can say God permitted limitations, so that we might perceive, in an inchoate way, that which is without limitations.) Only God’s omnipotence can do this: we can not. In this is our trust.
Great article Sumo. Part of The Really Good News for man is that God will erase all evil, even, strangely, from history: For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.
Really enjoyed this piece. Yes, we are the destroyers…Takes me back to a time I was backpacking in Montana years ago. After traveling cross country for several days( killing and eating fish and grouse) I popped into an area being developed for mountain mcmansions. Clear cuts, rough gravel roads, gas and power lines cut in, creating a scorched earth feel. After climbing ridges and cool mountain streams the previous days this new view was quite a shock and as I rested in the shade if a fir tree I shed tears as I saw this aspect of myself. As you say we need to walk into it and feel the blood red heat on our hands…These days Im a carpenter working on mcmansions in the foothills of the Rockies, loving a good steak after a hard days work.
And God made this.
As a writer and artist I have had to face this issue myself, as writing is how I try and relate to my creator. I create heroes and villains, because what kind of compelling story has limp noodles at the center? We want to see conflict, we want to see good triumph over evil, and maybe evil needs to exist for there to even be good. I put my characters through hell, but when they succeed against adversity then its all the more rewarding. If God is the Author then maybe we can help make it an interesting story.
Augustine states, if I am not mistaken, that evil is the absence of good. It is nothing. God did not create evil (nothingness), but he did permit it for a greater good. (Perhaps we can say God permitted limitations, so that we might perceive, in an inchoate way, that which is without limitations.) Only God’s omnipotence can do this: we can not. In this is our trust.
Great article Sumo. Part of The Really Good News for man is that God will erase all evil, even, strangely, from history: For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.