On Good and Evil

By Fr. Alexander Men

Before discussing good and evil, it’s important to note one interesting detail about the phenomenon of evil, the mystery of evil. When evil encounters a person, it produces completely different effects. We know people who, as a result of experiences, suffering, and crises, have fallen into complete spiritual despondency, atheism, and so on. Conversely, we know just as many, if not more, people who, after going through negative experiences, somehow deepened spiritually.

One day, the young Merezhkovsky, later a great writer, was brought to Dostoevsky by his father. Fyodor Mikhailovich read the boy’s poems and said angrily, “Bad, absolutely bad! One must suffer, suffer!” His father laughed and said, “No, it’s better if he doesn’t write, as long as he doesn’t suffer!” But Dostoevsky was right: people with absolutely serene lives—they lack any profound understanding of others—”the well-fed do not understand the hungry.”

But the experience of crises, the experience of suffering, makes us open to other people. Therefore, the topic of evil is vast, tragic, and painful. And you are mistaken in thinking that it is so well-developed in Christian thought that I will now read a complete outline, and all you have to do is absorb it. This is not a theory or a hypothesis, but it remains a problem for us all, and not so much a problem in the realm of philosophy or theory, but a problem of life.

In the Gospel, Christ never speaks of the origin of evil, its essence and meaning; He speaks only of how we should live in a world where evil reigns, dominates, and exists. This is the “rule of the game” of our world. He thereby demonstrated that the metaphysics of evil, that is, the theory of its origin, is secondary here, and that the most important thing is the person who resists it. One could say more: each of us would like for the highest Creative Love to eradicate and uproot evil from the world in an instant, as if by magic. But we are offered something entirely different, something that corresponds to human dignity. We are offered that we, as part of creation, in which evil exists, participate in the struggle against evil, that nature itself, creation itself, in our person, build a dam against evil.

“What is inherent in man?” you ask.

Everywhere, not only in man, but also in the structure of matter, in the structure of life, in the structure of spiritual, mysterious dimensions, lies goodness—or rather, what we call good. Creation is fundamentally harmonious, and evil is not some independent principle, but rather corruption, a caricature, a perversion.

If a machine malfunctions, is faulty somewhere, then this is a defect in that machine. So, evil in our souls, in society, in nature—it’s a flaw of creation, not some primordial given. Nevertheless, its cause is neither accidental nor superficial, but profound.

If we leave aside the flaws in nature for now, and focus only on what pertains to our lives, we can conclude that this flaw is inherent in our entire species, the entire human race. And it arose primordially, very early on. Modern scientists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts, based on completely different considerations, agree with this idea. Comparing the human and animal psyches, they have come to the conclusion that humans are, after all, abnormal creatures, that some balance is disrupted within them.

In animals, all bodily functions, all psychological reactions to the surrounding world, are normal. They express joy, their fear, they seek food, they flee from danger: everything is in its proper place in animals. An animal will never seek pain for some masochistic pleasure, will never experience joy from inflicting pain on another. Sadism is alien to animals. When you see a cat playing with a mouse, don’t think she’s a sadist—it’s something entirely different. For her, it’s like a steak for us, but she’s learning through this game. For her, it’s gymnastics, exercise. She brings the half-strangled mouse to her kitten, and it learns to catch this half-strangled mouse—it’s all part of the patterns of her life, her psyche; it’s all normal, organic.

Humans, however, develop a host of pathological connections, where they may torment not out of any expedient motivation, but simply because they’ve developed a mental anomaly and derive pleasure from another’s suffering. You all know this, each in your own microscopic or larger part.

Let’s say there are people who won’t calm down until they’ve brought a family member to tears. And then suddenly, peace sets in, they’re practically ready to kiss them. What’s going on? False connections are being made—misaligned relationships within the soul that produce this paradoxical, absurd effect. So, scientists have been trying to understand why the most intelligent creature we know on earth, or perhaps even in the universe—at least, as long as we know such a single intelligent creature—why does this creature behave more insanely than any cockroach or any horse? And the conclusion (this is a hypothesis) is this: in their animal stage, man was intimately connected with nature; they were an organic part of nature, just like any other living creature. And so, when the spiritual awakening, when their reason awakened, when their human qualities awakened, they tore them away from nature. He became nature’s stepchild, he became an ugly duckling, he became some kind of incomprehensible creature, alien to nature and yet unable to break away from it, yet connected to it with every fiber of his being. And this state of separation from the natural mother’s womb, according to psychoanalysts, creates such profound inner discomfort, disharmony, and chaos in the human soul. This is where what we call sin in theological terms arises.

There’s much truth to this hypothesis: people in urban civilization, deeply disconnected from nature, are often more harried, more perverted, more exhausted: the absence of nature and the ecological crisis take a very heavy toll on people. You know how strong the pull of people to the bosom of nature is now, and with what tenderness they sometimes write about mushrooms and herbs in various magazines. “Back to nature!” And this didn’t just emerge today…

Just think of all of Russian literature. Where is Aleko striving? He flees the city’s conventions for the wild life of the gypsies. He fails because he drags raging passions with him. Mtsyri also flees to the mountains, where instead of ringing bells, he fights a leopard. All of Tolstoy’s heroes are drawn to nature as a refuge. Recall Prince Andrei’s thoughts about the oak tree… Turgenev wrote a great deal about this. So this phenomenon is not new…

But in fact, this explanation is oversimplified and insufficient. The fact is that if we were talking only about separation from nature, the disturbances would be more related to our physical condition. Meanwhile, modern, civilized, urban man is physically no worse off than the “natural” man of the past. We must discard the old myth that in ancient times there were great heroes, that primitive people were, like in Vasnetsov’s paintings, powerful giants. And in the Middle Ages—look at their knightly armor in museums: it wouldn’t fit any modern young man!

Tall, strong men were an extraordinary rarity. People like Ramses II or Peter the Great were simply mutants. Man was paralyzed by numerous illnesses, aging very early. Do you remember old lady Larina? What kind of old woman was she? She was probably about thirty years old. People very quickly lost their sight, their teeth, and none of this could be restored. And so modern, urban man is quite physically well developed.

It all comes down to his spiritual state. And for us, the answer to ancient biblical wisdom is perfectly clear: man was cut off not only from nature, and not primarily from nature—he was cut off from the very Source of life, from the spiritual Source of life. Disease struck his spiritual being. This is what we call man’s original sin, or the Fall. Man (any of us) lives with this, just as he lives with the gifts of his heredity, just as he lives with his belonging to the human race.

And he fights this within himself, he fights it in the world around him, and he is called to overcome it. Alone, with help from above, but alone! This is the greatness of man, this is his position as the king of nature.

It is not evil that is inherent within us, but infinite potential. And modern man is, in fact, as far removed from God’s true plan for man as some Australopithecus, running across the savannah three million years ago, is from Goethe or Tolstoy. The evolution of man as a biological species has ended. And those of you who have had any contact with biology know this well.

Spiritual evolution has begun. It is painful and difficult, like all evolution. And the saints, the great heroes of the spirit, being spiritual mutants themselves, constitute the spiritual vanguard of humanity. They march ahead, and we follow their example, as if rushing through every opening that opens up on humanity’s path. This cannot happen quickly; it cannot happen through a change in external conditions.

A few words about external conditions. It was terribly tempting to think that the spiritual principle within humanity would be freed from the passions and madness that oppressed it if it were returned to its natural environment. The famous French writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who exerted a tremendous influence on Europe, on Indian philosophy, on all of humanity—a man of greater influence than many even realize—believed that it was necessary to return to the original, primordial state, back to nature. And thousands of his followers have spoken of this, and they continue to do so today.

But history shows that changing conditions, even the most favorable ones, do not change a person at all. We find saints and true people in all civilizations, in all countries, in all centuries. And we cannot say that a savage is better than a civilized person. Savages also have their criminals, their scoundrels, and civilized people have their scoundrels and their wonderful representatives of the human race.

This means that spiritual evolution is underway, and all evolution is a struggle—a struggle for existence, but for spiritual existence. And we carry it out within ourselves; we are obliged to carry it out. That is the most important thing. We fight for ourselves. And this is the answer to the question of the interaction of good and evil in the world. Good (we use this term loosely here), good is that which is beautiful, that which creates, that which moves forward, that which fulfills. This is life. Do you understand? And evil is death, that which hinders development, that which distorts, that which leads astray, that which dehumanizes a person, that which makes him no longer human. Evil is sin, it is grotesque.

It is completely impossible to calculate the quantitative ratio of good and evil. There are no such statistics. Because it is not something that can be counted. It is such a living, dynamic whole that no one, even just themselves, can say within themselves, “I am 30 percent good and 70 percent evil.” Even if they did say so, it would be inaccurate and incorrect. And finally, it is completely wrong to think that evil is animalism, and goodness is the rational principle in man. This, of course, is oversimplifying. Of course, reason is truly human. But when we want a drink—that’s the animal speaking within us! So what’s wrong with wanting to eat or sleep? That’s the animal speaking, and there’s nothing evil in that. That is to say, what is organic, biological within us can be sacred, beautiful: beautiful as a tool serving a higher purpose.

Is a motor evil or good? It’s neither! If this engine powers an ambulance, can it be good? If it powers a tank that crushes people, does it become evil? The same applies to our animal nature. It can be used for good or evil. And, of course, the most important thing here is to understand the hierarchy of these concepts.

For every structure to stand firm, there must be a support point, an axis. Every community must have a center. Within a person, there must be a King, a Lord, a Master. This is our Spirit, our Reason.

Concerning the creation of man, the Bible says that God created man to have dominion over the reptiles, over the fish, over all creatures. And Saint Basil the Great poetically comments on these words: within our body, within our nature, all of nature already exists. All the reptiles, all the fish, live within us. Indeed, it’s even a biological fact: look at the evolution of the embryo, and you’ll see that we had tails, gills, and so on. But let man reign, let him reign!

Sometimes churchgoers and believers attack reason. This stems from a misunderstanding. Reason is God’s greatest gift. All the sins and crimes of humanity were committed when reason was asleep, when reason was suppressed. Goya has an etching, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” and this is entirely true. Take any horrific situation from world history or from your own life. When something vile, shameful has happened to us, when something vile has occurred in society—can we say that reason triumphed at that time? Absolutely not! Madness triumphs, the irrational, the blind, the evil triumphs…

If you’ve seen the film “Ordinary Fascism,” isn’t it clear that reason was asleep at that time, and its sleep gave birth to monsters? There are plenty of such examples, and I won’t cite them all. They are happening even now, all over the world. Madness! That’s the enemy, not reason. So, it’s not an animal, but sin, sin as an evil will, misdirected, a will permeated with evil. That’s how we need to divide things up.

Will—where is it directed? It should be directed toward human perfection, directed toward what we are programmed for—after all, each of us carries a desire for the absolute, for absolute love, deep down inside. But in reality, it doesn’t exist. We settle for crumbs simply because it doesn’t exist. Absolute beauty doesn’t exist. We fish for it everywhere, but we don’t see it. Absolute goodness, absolute truth, doesn’t exist. We want the absolute for everything. And when we don’t get it, we become deeply disappointed and skeptical. But we must seek it and continually climb toward it, never becoming disillusioned, never stopping. Because it is the ladder leading to Heaven. Because the absolute exists. Only here it’s scattered in tiny grains, like grains of gold in sand. Because love and beauty, the truth in the world around us, are planetary light reflected from the Sun. And when a person spiritually penetrates to the core and comprehends the mystery of God, they suddenly see that they have found this very center, the epicenter of this explosion, from which rays emanate, generating these sparks of goodness, beauty, love, and, moreover, generating in us this amazing and strange yearning for Heaven.

This is one of the extraordinary testaments to the presence of God’s power among us: man’s striving for this absolute. After all, everything in nature is arranged quite purposefully: a giraffe, deprived of a voice, has no desire to sing, nor a hippopotamus to fly. Everything stands in its place. But for some reason, only humans possess this desire, which cannot be fully realized in this world. But since it is embedded within us, it is not there by chance. This means that within our invisible yet profound core lies the potential to rise to extraordinary heights. And we know this from the history of mystics, from the spiritual wealth of those who, during their lifetimes, for a moment, or sometimes for a longer period, were able to soar on the wings of the spirit and touch this heavenly Robe.

Therefore, every believer, every Christian, is Antaeus in reverse. Remember the myth of Antaeus? He was always in touch with Mother Earth and gained new strength; when he was lifted from the earth, he weakened. But we must live the opposite: we must constantly touch Heaven. If we don’t touch, we fall. We weaken.

And one more comment: animal manifestation—is it good or bad? Alas, my friends, it is not given to man to return to the animal state. Not given! Man always becomes worse than an animal. It is impossible to become a peaceful beast. A backward movement in evolution, in God’s plan, is not foreseen. And when it appears, it is always a downward movement, and only downward.

Repeated attempts have been made to create some kind of image of a person who stands outside the spiritual, who experiences pleasure simply from nature, the fresh air, the warm sand. Some writers have been captivated by this idea. But it is still a perversion, it is still an ugly fall. And the writer who celebrated such an existence was a rather sad example of moral collapse.

Now the next point. In what forms does evil exist in the world? I would say, perhaps, three or four. The first, elemental form is chaos, all decay, mortification, disintegration. Everything that hinders the perfection of the world, the perfection of life. This is death. In Scripture, death is called the greatest enemy. So it is on the level of nature.

The second evil is on the human level. This is moral evil.

And finally, on the purely spiritual level: what we call demonic evil. Here, a person comes into contact with those mysterious dimensions of existence in which some kind of malfunction, some kind of defect, also occurs. A person immerses themselves in these dimensions and becomes their bearer, infected by them. This is the source of the demonic possession of people—bearers of evil, people for whom evil is their second nature, people poisoned by evil.

Does it exist in human form? Here’s the answer: when people are thoroughly imbued with evil, they truly embody it.

Is it necessary to fight evil all your life? You see, it’s very important dilemma. Creation is happening now. God is at work among us now. God is at work in nature every second, and His creative power constantly opposes the forces of destruction. And we are His allies. Nature, which creates, is also His ally. Life resists death every minute, resists destruction, resists disintegration. Think how it tries to deceive death, how life is cunning: when an organism dies, it still manages to pass the baton through its hereditary code, through its genes, to the next generations, so that the tree of life does not die.

So an organism, be it an amoeba or an antelope, appears, eats, drinks, settles in, and now can no longer struggle. No, it is constantly in a state of overcoming, a constant conflict. And the best proof and testimony is our body. Every heartbeat is a resistance to death. We are constantly resisting. Finally, every effort of the will, moral, is a resistance to spiritual death, that is, to sin. I believe that if we deprive a person of this confrontation, their participation in creation will end. Humans are called to be active. Everyone at their own level, according to their capabilities and abilities, but internally, they must be active.

Let’s imagine a person anywhere, but where their most beautiful human qualities are revealed. A nurse crawling under fire to save a wounded man—she overcomes the fear of death, pity for her loved ones, whom she could orphan, and much more. She must make a colossal inner effort to move forward. A scientist developing something essential for people—he doesn’t sit back and wait for manna to fall. He must constantly strive to overcome his ignorance. This means that struggle isn’t something one-time; it is our breath, our existence, our life.

In Georges Bernanos’s remarkable book, “Notes of a Country Curate” <…> one of the characters, a French priest, tells of his altar server, who suffered from a mania for cleanliness. She scrubbed the church every time until it shone. Men would come and dirty everything; when they left, she scrubbed again. She, poor thing, died because she was constantly washing the floor and became infected by the dampness. She wanted to clean it once and for all. She thought it was possible.

The priest gave this example in connection with a conversation about whether it’s possible to one day win, one day rest on your laurels and never move again. No, constant cleaning, constant work, constant movement. Like the beating of a heart, like the rotation of the planets.

And finally, one last thing. I said nothing about the origin of evil. There are many theories, theological and philosophical, many attempts to understand how it arose in the dark depths, in the depths of the universe unknown to us, how it arose that one of the wills, some wills, some forces—rational, semi-rational, conscious, semi-conscious—directed their flow in opposition to the flow directed by the will of the Creator.

In order to understand this blind, dark will, we must somehow comprehend it. But this is nonsense—it cannot be comprehended. This is where all theories suffer from inadequacy, and therefore they are all rejected in the Bible. There is the Book of Job, which we have already mentioned. There was a man who tried to sue God, demanding that He explain to him why he was suffering. Three friends came to him, and each of them expounded some theological and philosophical theories about the existence of evil. But Job refused to accept this. And God did not answer him, but He appeared to him Himself. And Job understood everything, but understood it on some other level, which he could not express.

Our theories are incapable of encompassing all this. Moreover, if we knew everything clearly, we would be like infallible gamblers. We would be people with guarantees in everything; we would not be required to dare to face the unknown. Imagine a man setting out on a dangerous journey, and some idle but rather perceptive fortune teller tells him precisely where, what, and how will happen, and that everything will end well. Will this man be courageous, will his fortitude manifest on this journey? Of course not! He’ll walk along whistling, because his entire fate is written in his pocket. Meanwhile, the Lord calls us to embrace the Unknown, to embrace it, and to plunge into it, as a man plunges into the sea, and swim.

Only then will we be truly human. That’s why Christianity has such a negative attitude toward fortune-telling; not because it’s impossible to leap over time and see something—there is such a possibility, and experience has proven it. But fortune-telling evokes a lack of trust in God, and if there’s distrust, our entire life goes down the drain.

Imagine that you’ve met someone who calls and invites you somewhere, telling you that they will show you this and that. You love this person, you trust them. But, using the common mantra of “trust, but verify,” you simultaneously inquire about them. Naturally, trust is destroyed, and the relationship is distorted.

In the realm of faith, such double-entry bookkeeping is impossible, just as it is impossible in the realm of truly profound human relationships; that’s why faith demands trust.

The biblical word “faith” comes from the word for “firmness,” “steadfastness,” “faithfulness.” You’ve probably all heard the word “amen.” “Amen” means “exactly so,” “surely.” The biblical word for “faith”—”emuna”—comes from precisely this root. A person trusts God and knows that He will never fail them in the end. And then a powerful feedback loop emerges that nothing can destroy, because compared to this force, all the forces of the world are nothing.

Source: Home Conversation from a conversation with parishioners in Novaya Derevnya (date undetermined), https://damian.center/men/