Message #17953

[mccoy]

Christianity and Hinduism share the same explanation for the primary source of evil: Lucipher, or Satan, on one side, Maya, on the other. Individual intelligences whose only purpose is to perpetuate God's creation by keeping people stuck to it. The degeneration of such behaviour is evident in the news today and especially in some situations like war and so on. Sometimes we hear about incredibly evil and cruel acts.

Christianity and Hinduism like Steve says diverge dramatically as to the individual causes of evil. Specifically, on the side fo teh receiving party. In Christianity it is not clear why people receive evil. Randomly, as an opportunity to grow spiritually, as an opportunity to go to the heavens, you name it.
In hinduism peopoe receive evil simply because they attracted it. So evil received=evil caused in the past.
Hinduism resolves a huge dilemma of Christianity. We reap evil simply because we sew it in the past. No $h1t. This is a completely logical explanation which to me marks the absolute superiority of hindu philosophy over the Christian model.

We are left with the problem of why God let evil exist in the first instance. Yogananda explains that. God did not foresee the rebellion of Lucipher and his legions. when he saw his original plans goign to the pot, he dissolved the creation. but then he thought it back. He went: I gave free will to my lieutenants, so I cannot take it back, even though they abused of such free will.
He recreated the cosmos with teh same conditions at the moment of rebellion, and let the dark angels be and act.

So God is absolutely to be blamed for evil. On the other side, had he not allowed evil, there would be no free will. We would be almost puppets or robots. No evil, no sickness, no problems, a state of heavens on earth, no contrasts, at some lenght it would have probably become such a dullsville that God would have dissolved all creation pretty soon.

So, evil is a mistake of God which keeps the creation going.

Now, I believe it's very interesting to hear what Christians say about evil. Something about it in the next post