Finding Balance
October 26, 2012
5:12 p.m. CST
Growing up, there was never much balance in my life. I never even gave it thought. You live your life, you make your choices, you live with the consequences, and you try to live in such a way as to have as few negative consequences as possible. That was all. Things were lopsided, but was there a choice?
As I grew older, I started noticing the effect of less-than-stellar balance. My diet has always been unbalanced. My exercise...even worse. Psychologically? You have to be kidding! Religiously? Bah Humbug! The effects showed up in my health and in many other ways.
I was introduced to the concept of balance a couple years ago when I started finding a new circle of friends who were interested in the paranormal field. Most of them have their religious beliefs, ranging from Christian to Buddhist, Pagan to New Age, Atheist to Native American and all points in-between and often a hodge-podge of mixtures of multiple beliefs. I can remember in church services when I was young, a minister made a comment during a sermon that in all things you must find balance, but I don't recall what balance he was talking about. There was nothing balanced about our religious beliefs.
When I say that I was introduced to the concept of balance among my circle of friends in the paranormal field, I am referring to a belief that there must be a balance between bad and good.
In church, when we read from the book of Job, there was a verse where Job made a comment that he did not blame God for the bad things that happened to him because you have to accept the evil from God as well as the good that God gives. This verse always did raise my hackles. Accept "evil" from God? Evil? Really? God bestows "evil"? On purpose? I read so many other verses where God was described as loving and kind. I read that He was merciful. I read that he loved his children. I could not grasp the idea that God could give "evil". It took some mental acrobatics to wrap my head around accepting that God would "allow" bad things to happen. But nothing could get my head around the idea that he would bestow "evil". Evil, to me anyway, is more than just something bad that simply happens, where nobody is to blame. Evil, to me, implies deliberate forethought, purposeful intention to harm. "Evil" involves hate, or at the very least, apathy, and a willingness to see somebody destroyed.
When I left the church in which I was raised, I started following people I met on the internet who were all had similar interests. I found them on Twitter, Facebook, and chat rooms. They introduced me to their friends and we bonded into a regular community and learned from each other. Being interested in the paranormal, and most of us having some interest in religion, and religious beliefs being founded in paranormal as well (think about it...God is invisible, made of spirit.....just like ghosts, and performs miracles, things that can't be proven, quantified or qualified through scientific means...as of yet) we take opportunity to compare notes on our religious beliefs. Some believe that angels and or demons exist, some don't. Some believe ghosts exist, some don't. Some believe that spirits exist without having been created by a God, others believe that in order for any spirits to exist, they have to have been created by a God. But the one thing that is practically universal is that most believe there must be a sense of balance.
I've had some interesting conversations with my friends about balance. It's given me food for thought. I still, however, cannot reconcile the idea that God gives "evil".
One acquaintance tried telling me that God created demons because of the need for balance. The implication was that demons were deliberately created to be evil. I know many people who believe this.
Another concept that was thrown at me was that even though God did not deliberately create demons to be evil, inasmuch as the demons chose to be evil, God allows demons free reign over humans in order to provide the good/evil balance.
Among my friends in the paranormal, they usually don't refer to it as the good/evil balance, but rather as the positive/negative balance. It's usually the die-hard Christians that insist on using the terms "good/evil".
I've been giving this a lot of thought. I can understand why God would allow us to make our own decisions, even when they are not good, and even when they are absolutely evil. He doesn't want automatons. He doesn't want robots. He doesn't want those who obey because they have no choice. He wants his children, all of whom he loves, to make the good decisions and choices because they love that which is good, because they love him and because they love all creation and all people. I can understand why he allows evil to happen to us. Living through tough times and building tenacity builds inner strength and character. That can come in many forms.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend, actually several conversations over a span of a couple years so far, where he claimed that while most demons can be put in the ground, there were three that could not, because they are a "necessary evil". I've spent a lot of time thinking about why any "evil" would be necessary. He thought it was because it was necessary for "balance".
I disagree.
After much consideration, I have a theory...on both the topic of balance and the topic of necessary evil... the demons. He thinks they are the same thing. I don't. Yes. I believe balance is necessary, but what balance? Is all negativity "evil"? Can you find balance without being "evil"? Can you find balance without experiencing "evil"? What "evil" would be necessary? And why would that "evil" be necessary?
DEFINING NEGATIVITY
There is a lot of talk going around concerning negativity. I have a friend, Michka, who is a spiritualist. He talks about negativity all the time. When he speaks of negativity, he speaks of it in terms of ego and the heart....speaking/thinking from the mind and feeling from the heart. You can think negatively or positively and you can feel negatively or positively. At the same time he recognizes that behavior can also be positive or negative. There is a general consensus that the energy you exude affects those around you. In other words, if you're angry, sad, discontent, upset, anxious, etc., the people around you will pick up on what you're feeling and exhibit the same attitudes even without realizing that. Negativity and positivity both are forms of energy. Everyone exudes energy. This includes the spirit realm. Even though they teach that energy, both negative and positive, can be picked up and copied by those nearby, people can consciously choose to deflect negativity if they choose. It's like putting up a wall. Among those in the paranormal, this is called shielding. It's a mental thing....simply blocking out what you choose not to participate in. It's a version of something that was being taught in psychology classes beginning in the 1970's. You are not responsible for how someone else feels. You are only responsible for what "you" feel. I believe that is only partially true, because negativity spreads. If you are exuding negativity, and the people around you are not actively conscious of blocking out your negativity, they will feel it too, and they will act on it. Plus, if a person is being tormented or tortured by someone who is deliberately trying to destroy them, such as for example bullying, or stalking, no amount of blocking or shielding will improve their disposition. A crazy person makes everyone around them...crazy! I mean, after all, if a stalker kills your children, would you even be normal if you could just go along all "la-di-dah" all happy? There is an appropriate time for anger, for sadness, for discontent, for being upset, for being anxious, etc. When it's not appropriate, then it's appropriate to block or shield. That is how I define balance. But does this have to include being intentionally, deliberately harmful? And if we are taught that it's wrong to lie, cheat, steal, rape, defraud, etc., then how would it ever be OK for a spirit to do or be those things?
If God wanted us to learn to be good and righteous, and spent thousands of years inspiring apostles, prophets and scribes to write their own testaments to help inspire God's followers to learn that righteousness, the law of love above all else, then it speaks to a schizophrenic God if he causes, and sometimes even pushes, the demons to be evil and cause harm. Why would he do that?
IS ALL NEGATIVITY EVIL, AND IS ALL EVIL NEGATIVITY?
This question is much like the question about defining all dogs as one type. Yes, all poodles are dogs. No, not all dogs are poodles. All evil is negative. Negativity is not always evil. There are many types of evil. There are many types of negativity.
Negativity = hate, sadness, shame, empathy, sympathy, anger, anxiety, and the list goes on and on.
Evil = hate of people, destruction of anything good, murder, rape, fraud, larceny, and the list goes on and on.
I see it as acceptable to cry when something truly sad happens. If my house burns down, I'll cry. If I lose a loved one, I'll cry. If I'm pricked by a needle, I'll wince. If I bleed too much, I may react much stronger than wincing. If someone I love is murdered, I'll be angry. If I wasn't angry over that, there would be something seriously wrong with me. It's OK to react to evil. It's OK to react to negativity. What's not OK is never dealing with it and never healing from the pain. One of the points of living is to deal with the negativity in appropriate manners and heal, and get stronger, and shine the light of love in the face of negativity and in the face of evil. That includes dealing with evil.
If I go to a place where I work, and someone is in a bad mood, I can consciously choose, if I notice that this person is in a bad mood, not to let myself also be in that mood. I can consciously choose to block out the negativity.
I can't always block evil. I can put a restraining order out on someone who's stalking me, but that doesn't mean they'll obey the order. I can lock my doors, but that doesn't stop all stalkers either. I can change my phone number and make it unlisted, but stalkers have ways of talking phone companies into giving out the number anyway. I can't stop anyone from killing me. I can try, and I may have some success, but sometimes, the unimaginable happens. This is both negativity and evil. It's also much harder to maintain any sense of happiness.
IS EVIL ACTUALLY NECESSARY?
I've struggled with this question for most of my life. It was one thing to try to wrap my head around the concept that God allows evil. It was hard enough trying to grasp the idea that God would push the devil into causing the deaths of all of Job's children. My head reeled when I read the account of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt when it recounted the number of times God "hardened the pharaoh's heart" and caused him first to deny the demands of Moses, and then to pursue the Israelites into the desert to kill them. I couldn't understand why God would harden the pharaoh's heart and cause him to make it more difficult to leave. I couldn't understand why God would harden the pharaoh's heart and cause him to give chase after he had finally given his consent. It would have been so much easier to only play one side of the fence! Alas, that is MY logic.
Then there is the matter of the devils and demons, three demons of which that can't be bound, at least, not yet at this time. It took me a long time, many years, to realize that there is a difference between "allowing something to happen" and "wanting something to happen". It was a huge struggle for me because I was a rape victim 4 times.
I was in a church that taught that nothing happens that God doesn't expressly permit. When I finally told certain individuals in my church that I had been raped, the response I got was that God "wanted you to be raped."
Even in today's political climate, during the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and the upcoming elections for various offices within the individual states, there has been a surge of Christian influence within the Republican Party and the Tea Party pushing the idea that government has to be reflective of only the Christian values those candidates espouse. It has been reported that some candidates are pushing the ideas that rape is an act of God, that women who become pregnant from rape weren't "really raped", that if a woman is raped then her body somehow magically rejects the rapist's sperm, and that God gives some women who have been raped the gift of giving life to a piece of her rapist so that she may see the face of her rapist for the rest of her life and for nine months, living knowing that she's growing the rapist's DNA! Some gift!!!!
The God they claim to worship is just jonesing to deepen the woman's trauma! As if it's not bad enough that she'll see his face in her nightmares for years to come! As if it's not bad enough that she'll wake up puking from her nightmares already and indefinitely! For the sake of my sanity, I had to find the division between a God that does not micromanage every action that happens and a God that wants things to be as horrible as he can make it be. I had to find the line between allowing evil and causing evil. I also had to find the line between evil and mere negativity. But there was still the matter of the concept of necessary evil.
One may wonder why I would continue the line of logic for this and not just say it's all bunk. It's because of the voices I heard for 18 years after those 4 rapes. I heard voices that spoke to me from my pillow at night when I tried to sleep, from the screeching of train wheels on the tracks when I'd travel by train, and sometimes, just from thin air just whenever. These voices told me to do the most horrible things...to my daughter, to my family, to my friends, to total strangers, and to myself. I wish I could say that only trauma victims have this problem, but that's not true. It happens to many people, with or without trauma.
Yes, I needed to get away from the fundamentalism that insists on overly simplistic pat answers for every thing that happens on earth. I also needed an answer. It would have been so simple to say that there is no God. But I can't say that. I have seen things that, while they can't be proven scientifically, I cannot shuffle off with such a simplistic answer. I've seen things. I know there is a God. I'm not going to try to defend that with anyone who is not open to believing it. I ......needed....... to understand why evil would be necessary.
For a long time I wondered, why me? But that last question haunted me only because the fundamentalist church I was raised in taught us that God loved only the members of our church, and no one else. It raised the specter of the question what did I do to make God hate me as much as everyone else who's not in our church. This is common in fundamentalist churches. They teach God only loves them, or only loves Christians. Then, when a member is victimized or traumatized, whether it was truly evil or merely an accident, the result is everybody they go to church with blames the victim. I had to shift the definition of who God loves. Seeing God's ability to love is extremely difficult to fathom when you're faced with the concept of God causing evil. So I repeat, I ......needed....... to understand why evil would be necessary.
There's a song that comes to mind, "A Boy Named Sue". This song was performed by Johnny Cash many years ago. The lyrics:
"A Boy Named Sue"
My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."
Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke
And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk,
It seems I had to fight my whole life through.
Some gal would giggle and I'd get red
And some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head,
I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named "Sue."
Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars
That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars
And kill that man who gave me that awful name.
Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
And I just hit town and my throat was dry,
I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon on a street of mud,
There at a table, dealing stud,
Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue."
Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old,
And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do!
Now your gonna die!!"
Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And he went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.
I tell ya, I've fought tougher men
But I really can't remember when,
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,
He stood there lookin' at me and I saw him smile.
And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."
He said: "Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you "Sue."
I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,
And I came away with a different point of view.
And I think about him, now and then,
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him
Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!
It occurred to me, sometimes there's a goal. Goals can be hard to understand when it's another person's goal, and it's not explained.
I'm not God. I could say what my theories are on what those goals may be, but I'm just guessing.
No matter what I think the goals are, to someone who has been victimized, there's no goal ever that could exist that would make their victimization acceptable. It does help though, knowing that those goals exist, because it helps you put into perspective that it didn't happen just because God hates you, or wants anyone to be victimized. I've come to understand that he doesn't.
There is a place in the bible where it says that no man knows when the Lord will return. The puzzle piece, for me, was realizing that there is a time table. We just don't know what that time table is. Perhaps that time table isn't even set for an exact date just yet.
I know there are many religious and some spiritual people who say that God is working on us spiritually. I'm sure that's true. Is it the only factor? I don't know. For me, there's a possibility that all the times when demons were allowed to do whatever they were doing, God was allowing this to achieve a goal.... the goal of pacing that time table, keeping things stirred up at a set speed. Things have to get bad before they can get better. It's like...you don't perform a skin graft on someone who's never been burned. You can't teach someone the value of honesty if they have don't see the results of dishonesty. Left on their own, without the influence of extreme pure evil, I'm not sure mankind on its own would sink to the depths they have been able to reach. Would Hitler, along with so many others' help in Germany and throughout Europe, have killed 6 million Jews, the mentally ill, the mentally challenged, the gypsies, the disabled and all the others they felt were a hindrance to society on their own? Would the Inquisition have happened without the influence of pure evil?
Of course, pure evil does not limit itself to just colossal events. They can happen in every day life as evidenced by the parade of the accused who go through the justice system. A young college student who took several guns and other weapons into a movie theater and just started killing for no apparent reason comes to mind.
If humankind doesn't sink to the worst depths of depravity, why would they think God is needed? What would inspire people to truly hate what's wrong? Why would people refuse what's wrong if they think they really can't sink all that low? If we can view the events of the Holocaust and see how low people sank then, and they still can't find it in their hearts to accept people who are different or believe differently, and can't find sympathy for victims, and want to blame God for other people's victimization, or worse, want to blame the victim for that victimization, and they still can't see how low they have already sank, why would they ever change their minds? Why would they ever change their attitude? Why would they ever want to find a way out of ALL evil, no matter how seemingly insignificant?
I'm not saying that every person needs to sink that low to come to that mindset. Everyone has a different threshold. Some people can see others doing drugs and say "I'm never going to do that!" Others have to lose everyone they love, everything they like, lose their homes, live on the streets, and sleep in dumpsters before they've had enough of it to be able to hate drugs enough to find the will to stop or try to get help. Some are willing to die rather than stop doing drugs. But we are being given the chance to see the full range of just how bad things can get. We are being given the chance to see the "need" to refuse evil, at all costs, and the "need" to insist on love, sympathy, and following the source of all good things.
But that still leaves us with the question,
IS TRUE EVIL ACTUALLY NECESSARY FOR BALANCE?
I don't believe so. I believe life is so much better without it. I don't believe we are unbalanced without true evil. I don't think balance is caused by having demonic evil influence in the world. I believe balance has more to do with the ability to feel negativity and be able to handle that negativity with understanding and compassion. It has to do with finding a way to forgive when you've been hurt by someone regardless of whether it was accidental or not. It has to do with finding purpose for your life and purpose in experiencing bad events and making those bad events work for you, like making lemonade out of lemons, or penicillin out of mold. I picture in my mind that while evil should not be at all, it can help us learn why we should refuse to indulge it. We can take lessons from it. While having evil along with good does not create balance, it can help teach us how to find balance, if we allow ourselves to learn.
Unfortunately, it can also create imbalance. For someone who has been severely victimized, it opens brand new wounds that need to be healed. Forcing someone to live through the aftermath of victimization without some form of relief deepens the trauma. Finding your balance after traumatization is a long, difficult process that often takes many, many years. Don't expect a victim, or anyone else for that matter, to learn such heart and gut wrenching lessons overnight!
