Welcome to The Blog of the Kurgan

I don’t mean in the spiritual/existential sense, since I already addressed that fully in BELIEVE!

Unlike C.S. Lewis that in typically British fashion beats around the bush for a whole book without ever really dealing with the issue in a decisive manner. From a logical perspective, in that sense, the problem of evil is trivial to consider: it is the inevitable result of free will. If you consider the syllogism:

1. God is Love

2. Love cannot exist without Free Will

3. Free Will results in imperfect actions and evil actions

The fact that God can (sometimes in very mysterious ways, sometimes in miraculous ones and, presumably, sometimes, in ways we learn only after death) make good come out of even evil acts further shows that despite free will, He, ultimately, and without tipping the scale of Free Will, aims to the Good, always.

But what about how evil plays out in the here and now, in your immediate life or mine?

How to deal with that?

One answer for all situations doesn’t fit. Because there are as infinite a number of evils as responses to it.

My personal view of intractable evil, such as pedophiles, serial killers and psychological vampires that ruin lives is pretty much that a properly ordered society would burn them at the stake and scatter the remains in the local bog.

But most times in our lives, the evil we face is insidious, fog-like, and carried out by wholly human agents, with no need to assume demonic possession.

It’s the bureaucracy put in place by those minions of Satan, lawyers and politicians.

It’s the rampant wokeism and feminist zeitgeist.

It’s your own ego, spinning in the darkness of your petty heart, telling you, you are being hard done by and everyone else is to blame.

Biblically, whether we are persecuted in reality, by actual enemies, or have misfortune befall us, like Job, or whether we ourselves, through our own errors or bad judgement or greed or selfishness or whatever other sin, the answer to our misfortunes is always essentially the same.

We are told, in essence to:

1. Confess our sins – admit the truth of your own part in whatever the situation is.

2. Submit to God – This is the hard one, and most misunderstood, because slightly different depending on part 1 above. Let’s see the differences:

If you are the perpetrator of bad things, this means facing and accepting your own badness, evil, if you like, error, selfish, envious, lazy, etc etc as being a motive force in the shit you now find yourself in. That’s a hard thing for most. Impossible for many. Then, if you do manage it, you need to fully repent. What this means, internally, is a genuine sense of regret, wish to atone, make amends. Sometimes it will be too late to make amends or atone in the world and then we must just learn the lesson and never again repeat the error. That last part is the real key. And it forces needed change ON YOU. Not on the world, your wish for revenge, justice, etc

If you are the sufferer of unjust crimes or fates, the instruction, (see Job) is the same, to thank God for your troubles, and calmly ask for mercy and understanding, because in some way it has a purpose, or even if not, one will emerge, by the Grace of God. Of course, the instinctive reaction is that such thinking is tautological. No matter what happens, God is good and you are a flawed human, so suck it up. Doesn’t sit well with most people. The thing is, if you assume for a second that this really is the case, and act accordingly, you will have a qualitatively different experience than if you do not. One you can’t experience without actually doing it honestly.

3. Pray and wait as you walk – Prayer should be more of a connection to God, a meditation, not a supplication and begging. It can be, occasionally, but should not be the main aim of your prayer generally. And await the truth to descend on you in due course. The waiting is personally the hardest for me and feels like Hell. It is only slightly improved by submitting to God, but any improvement is totally worth it, so I try. And in that submitting, sometimes, you catch glimpses of something approaching that love-world reality I have mentioned before.

My aim is to try to live in that love-world reality. I don’t know if I will ever be able to do so, but one can’t achieve anything if one doesn’t try. I think in that love-world place, perhaps, one has a different and better way to approach the evil that is in the world and that befalls us daily. At least, this is my sense, and my only consolation when truly bad things happen.

It is, once again, astonishing to me, how if one merely understands and uses the Bible, the answers it provides are very practical and work on human problems we deal with daily.

UPDATE: Tony Lowe suggested the below, which is a very good addition to this post. Regardless of if any “Shadow Council” members are involved or not, as I always say, if the model works, and provides useful gains, use it.

On a personal note of this very important point, different personalities may fare better or worse with different approaches. My own combative nature can sometimes more easily be “dragged” into a “fight” of the will by said “shadow council” which usually has only temporary good results, and then returns to a rather dark place, sometimes more so than before. The prevailing trap here is anger which can lead to rage.

Prayer at such times is difficult for me, as it seems to me a weakness, a kind of whining or begging when things are not going our way.

One technique that has worked somewhat better and which, I think, if I can master, would become really very powerful, is to simply try to remain in God’s Grace, in silence. It’s a difficult thing to describe in words, as it’s a wordless internal activity for me. It is almost a drawing of your own magnetic field inside yourself, as if trying to pull it all in, into the centre of my heart or chest. And to try to remain still there, with no fear or sadness or anger, just a kind of… trust… a faith I suppose. A sense of knowing you’re in the right place and something to prove it will eventually come along.

It too doesn’t last too long, but it can make the hours pass better, and falling out of it is not as corrosive as the “fight of will”. The prevailing trap being a sense of loneliness, abandonment, or self-pity, which can lead to despair if allowed to persist. My tendencies to self-pity are far less likely than my tendencies to anger, so, for me at least it is more useful. Perhaps it is different for others, but personally I think not, I think this way is superior to the “will to fight”/

I think, in my humble opinion, it may be the beginning of actual, effective, real faith. At least that is my preliminary consideration.