Origin of Evil:
Exaggeration of Creation leads to Rejection of Providence

God cannot change, and God is good.  Since God alone is responsible for the creation, then it follows that the creation is good, and divine.  Creatures are not made out of matter only, but out of God.  Therefore, all appearance of evil in the world now is an illusion.  And in fact all individual things, all distinctions and "pairs of opposites" are illusory.  They are the 'maya' that prevent people from seeing the real unity behind the apparent diversity of objects and events in the world.  Evil exists only in its isolation and association with finitude, as in the karma of Hindu thought.  Evil is but the assertion of 'I' and 'Mine", of a finite center that is ignorant of its true identity in the Whole.  So evil will disappear as finitude is progressively swallowed up, when the many are absorbed into the One.  Deep down, persons have the divine within them.

This is the line of reasoning in much Eastern pantheistic thought.  Instead of seeing the 'fall' as sinful choices of individuals, the 'fall' in pantheism is the origin of individuals themselves, as separate from the unity and changelessness of the One. 

In this system, evil has always existed, "for it is rooted in reality.  This, therefore, reduces both the awareness of and the sensitivity to it, and lowers the ethical response of man to cope with it.  There is a deep sense, especially in Asian cultures, of resignation and even fatalism of spirit, as though evil were better ignored than resisted."

-- James Houston, I Believe in the Creator, p. 263.

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