Evil

This came up today in meeting, and I have been thinking around it since - it never quite solidified into anything within the time.

I come from a tradition that tends to personify evil - the Devil or the Demonic. One of the problems with this is that it tends to lead to a combatative idea - which turns into an "Us and Them" mentality: good vs evil. Of course, the Christians are on the side of Good.

I have moved from that position. In fairness, I get why it can be helpful to personify the evil, and the good, to be able to identify these as differing sides to people. But I think we need to understand that there is no "us and them", there is only us. That there is no devil and angel on our shoulders, there are just our own desires and intentions, and we need to balance these to make the right decisions. It is our own responsibility to choose what to do and to take responsibility for those actions.

This came partially from the conviction of Sarah Everards murderer. It is easy to assign this to "an evil person" and so to "other" these types of people, that is, to make them fundamentally not like us, and so deny that there are evil intentions in all of us, that most people manage to control. That is, to deny their humanity, because it is challenging to accept that they share anything with us.

But near the end of meeting, something else happened. I look out over a tree in the park opposite, and it has been interesting to watch it over the year as it changes. Now, of course, the leaves are starting to turn brown as Autumn sets in, and at this moment, the sun shone through it making it glow golden. The reality is that this golden picture is only possible because of the dying of the leaves - it will, in a few weeks, be bare, I am sure. The death of leaves, and the regrowth is part of the life of the tree. Without this death and regrowth, the tree will not grow

And it made me think that the reality of ourselves is that the dark side of ourselves - the parts we might not want to acknowledge - might the parts that make us grow. That make us shine golden. That make us the well rounded people we are. They are part of us and accepting that is how we grow.