Joe

Juan Writes:

Evil is a part of the human being…I think, though, that the only thing the devil does is tempts you to use the evil that is inside you.

I thought what Juan wrote was very interesting. Even though I liked what St. Augustine wrote about how there is no such thing as evil and it is only the absence of good, I think Juan makes a very interesting point. I always thought of the devil as being one to just make you do bad things, but I like the way he considered the devil to be one to tempt you to use the evil already inside you.

As for my opinion of evil, I agree with what St. Augustine wrote in “Confessions”, which I read on pg. 69 of the article “Do we need Satan?”. He said that evil “”has no being of it’s own” but exists only as the absence or perversion of the good created by God. I thought that was very interesting–that there really is no such thing as “pure evil”, it is only the absence of good. I never really gave “evil” much thought, but that idea seemed very reasonable to me.

I think that only living things can be evil. In that case I guess only humans can be evil–I can’t think of any evil plants or animals. Just like in St. Augustine’s definition of evil, evil people are people who just are’t good. They are the people who are unkind to others, inflict pain on others, etc, etc. People who have been evil in the past are the same as those who are evil today. they were the people who werent nice, the ones who were unkind others.