A Touch of Evil

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
-Albert Einstein

Anyone who watches the news knows that there are some truly evil people in this world. There are also a very few, not so much on the news, who are completely righteous and good. Most of us are a kind of mix made of up of a fair amount of good together with a little bit of bad. That little bit of bad is part of what makes us human; it’s part of what we’re here to transform. And we want to be good; we want a world that’s good. But all of that gives rise to a question: if the vast majority of the world’s people are decent, and want a world that’s good, how is it that in so many places, evil continues to prevail?

It all boils down to one word: confusion. If not for the confusion of decent people, evil, in all its myriad forms, could never stand. If good people saw evil for what it truly was, they would never tolerate it; much less lend it their well-meaning support.

Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, all the world was pure and good. There was only one exception – the snake. Kabbalah explains that within the snake was the unactualized potential for all evil that would ever occur. But at that point the evil was contained. It was still a potential, not a reality. Evil was still separate from the world of man. But once Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, all of that changed. First, that potential evil became actualized – and then integrated into the human psyche. Second, the ego – with its subjective and agenda-driven perspective -was born. And finally, good and evil became confused and inter-entwined, until there was no good in the world without at least a tiny bit of evil, and no evil without at least a tiny bit of good.

And that’s why, for us, it’s sometimes so hard to know what’s right. That’s why two fundamentally decent people can have such a terribly hard time getting along. That’s why it’s possible for people to want the same worthy goals and yet have such radically conflicting ideas about how to make those goals real. Confusion can make us see the victim as the abuser and the abuser as the victim. It can make us see the exploiter as the savior and the savior as the exploiter. It can make us see the light as the darkness and the darkness as light. This happens all the time. Our confusion allows us to be deceived. It eats away at our power to change our world.

The antidote to confusion is truth. Truth can bring clarity to our minds and hearts. It gives us the power to make choices and take actions that work the way we want them to. With the clarity of truth we can bring peace and intimacy to our relationships and we reclaim our lost power to change our world for the good. But there’s one problem. Ever since the Fall, we lost our ability to see things in the light of truth, to see things exactly as they are. So where truth to be found?

The answer is, in one place only – in the Torah, the Blueprint for Creation. Torah is the Divine perspective, the Creator’s perspective, and therefore by definition it’s the only perspective that’s absolutely true.

Some people say that “G-d is love”. In fact, that expression is kind of popular at this time. It’s true that G-d is loving, in far vaster and greater ways than any human being can be. But G-d is not limited to love, and love in and of itself is not always holy or good. G-d is G-d, beyond any description and limitation. The one word that comes closest to describing the Creator is truth, because truth is not limited to any one way of being. Sometimes truth compels us to act lovingly, with generosity, with compassion and understanding, even when we feel threatened or aggrieved. And sometimes truth demands of us to be strong or harsh when it comes to resisting evil, standing up for what’s right, even if kindness and compromise look like the easier road.

In these challenging, confusing and turbulent times, there is more danger and more potential than ever before. As the Blueprint for Creation, the Torah predicts these times and their challenges. And only the Torah tells us what choices we need to make, what actions we need to take, in order to overcome them all. Don’t wait for the world, don’t wait for your leaders; it all starts with you. It all starts with that one person who seeks the truth and who stands for the truth, because one person connected to Divine Truth can really change the world. On the spiritual plane we are connected, all links in the same chain, and if you pull one link with enough force, the entire chain will follow.

So where in your life is confusion keeping you from taking a stand –whether in your own relationships, family, community – or in the world at large? If you had two things: clarity (the truth), and the knowledge that your actions truly do have the power to make an extraordinary difference, what would change about what you do?

Do it, and you may change the world for good.
(c) Shifra Hendrie, The Divine Puzzle, www.kabbalahoftransformation.com