URANTIA WIKI

Evil

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From Urantia Wiki, the encyclopedia of The Urantia Book

Also: evil-doing.

Adjusters are the watchful workers who pilot the God-conscious human mind away from the shoals of evil while expertly guiding the evolving soul of man toward the divine harbors of perfection on far-distant and eternal shores. 110:1.2

Almost every human being has some one thing which is held on to as a pet evil, and which the entrance into the kingdom of heaven requires as a part of the price of admission. 163:2.7

While religion produces growth of meanings and enhancement of values, evil always results when purely personal evaluations are elevated to the levels of absolutes. 19:1.4 100:1.1

Cano assured Eve persons with good motives could do no evil 75:4.5

The Gods neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion. Potential evil is time-existent in a universe embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values. 54:0.2

Human likes and dislikes do not determine good and evil; moral values do not grow out of wish fulfillment or emotional frustration. 100:3.2

Human nature may tend toward evil, but it is not inherently sinful. 53:8.9 143:2.5 148:4.6 156:5.8 188:4.5

An isolated and purely selfish pleasure may connote a virtual devaluation of meanings, a meaningless enjoyment bordering on relative evil. 100:3.4

most destructive of personality status is betrayal and disloyalty to confiding friends 67:1.3

In the Urantia Book

Partial knowledge is potentially evil (2:7.4)

    Dealing with evil

    • three ways of resisting evil: 159:5.11-14
    • # To return evil for evil—the positive but unrighteous method.
    • # To suffer evil without complaint and without resistance—the purely negative method.
    • # To return good for evil, to assert the will so as to become master of the situation, to overcome evil with good—the positive and righteous method.
    • Those who avoid evil by seeing things as they are gain joy by thus embracing the truth. 131:3.3
    • do not fight evil with its own weapons 140:8.7
    • do not to others what you would not have done to you 131:1.7
    • fear not resistance of evil 191:4.4
    • fret not because of evildoers 131:1.9 131:2.8 141:7.11
    • friendship is an efficient insurance against evil 160:2.9
    • Jesus told his disciples they could not stand still; they must go forward in righteousness or retrogress into evil and sin. 156:2.6
    • we must hate the evil and love the good 126:4.3-4
    • the love of truth is necessary for victory over evil 179:4.5
    • By meditation on God, by union with him, there comes deliverance from the illusions of evil and ultimate salvation from all material fetters. 131:4.7
    • when Jesus said, “Resist not evil,” he later explained that he did not mean to condone sin or to counsel fraternity with iniquity. He intended the more to teach forgiveness, to “resist not evil treatment of one’s personality, evil injury to one’s feelings of personal dignity. ” 141:3.8 180:5.9
    • we must overcome then evil with good 130:2.4 131:1.7 131:3.6 133:7.12 140:6.9 156:5.5 159:5.10 194:3.11
    • on Uversa there are taught 48 reasons for permitting evil to run the full course of its own moral bankruptcy and spiritual extinction 54:5.14
    • prayer mobilizes soul to withstand evil 196:0.10
    • it is not a duty but rather our exalted privilege to cleanse ourselves from all evils of mind and body while we seek for perfection in the love of God. 143:2.6
    • As we view the world, we must remember that the black patches of evil which we see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. 195:5.12
    • Socrates and his successors, Plato and Aristotle, taught that virtue is knowledge; goodness, health of the soul; that it is better to suffer injustice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to return evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. 98:2.6
    • Evil is inherent in the natural order of this world. An spiritual rebirth is essential to deliverance from evil (148:4.6,8)
    • When there exists no open door for the reception of evil, there exists no opportunity for the entertainment of sin. 43:4.9

    Defined as

    • Evil is the immature choosing and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful of beauty, and disloyal to truth. Evil is only the misadaptation of immaturity or the disruptive and distorting influence of ignorance. Evil is the inevitable darkness which follows upon the heels of the unwise rejection of light. Evil is that which is dark and untrue, and which, when consciously embraced and willfully endorsed, becomes sin. 3:5.15 130:1.5
    • evil representes the wrong way to achieve righteous ends, because it departed from the right way, the divine plan. 75:4.6
    • Only sin is isolated and evil gravity resisting on the mental and spiritual levels. 56:10.14
    • It is the misuse, distortion, and perversion of the finite that gives origin to evil and sin. 111:6.3
    • Evil is likewise the measure of the imperfectness of obedience to the Father’s will. 130:4.11 148:4.3
    • evil is inevitable if creature is to be free 3:5.13 54:3.1 75:8.6-7 130:4.13-15 132:2.10
    • Undiluted evil, complete error, willful sin, and unmitigated iniquity are inherently and automatically suicidal. 2:3.5
    • evil originates in imperfection 105:6.4
    • Evil is a partial realization of, or maladjustment to, universe realities. 67:1.4 75:4.3
    • Evil is a partiality of creativity which tends toward disintegration and eventual destruction. 111:4.11
    • Man is slow to perceive that contrastive perfection and imperfection produce potential evil 54:0.1-2
    • potential evil is the remoteness from divinity. 3:6.2
    • It is evil to see sin where there is no sin; to see no sin where there is sin. 131:3.3
    • evil, real and potential, is an stimulative of the choosing between truth and error, good and evil, sin and righteousness. 55:3.10
    • Error suggests lack of intellectual keenness; evil, deficiency of wisdom; sin, abject spiritual poverty; but iniquity is indicative of vanishing personality control. 67:1.4-5
    • Evil is a transgression of law, not a violation of the rules of conduct pertaining to life, which is the law. 48:6.33

    Jesus

    • Jesus prayer says: deliver us from evil 144:5.18
    • Jesus warned the Jews against choosing to become children of evil 162:7.3
    • Jesus was a man of high ideals, and that he abhorred everything which partook of uncleanness or savored of evi 133:3.6
    • He refrained from placing emphasis on evil by forbidding it, while he exalted the good by commanding its performance. 127:4.2 140:8.21 195:5.13
    • Jesus had little to say about the social vices of his day; seldom did he make reference to moral delinquency. 140:8.21
    • Jesus’ death on the cross exemplifies a love which is sufficiently strong and divine to forgive sin and swallow up all evil-doing. 188:5.2
    • Jesus of Nazareth refused to compromise with evil, much less to consort with sin. 136:8.8
    • He would not serve evil that the worship of God might presumably be derived therefrom. 136:9.3

    Result of evil

    • The good effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man augments the tribulation of all men. 12:7.11
    • evil proceeds from heart defiles 153:3.5
    • A sense of proportion is also concerned in the exercise of virtue because evil may be perpetrated when the lesser is chosen in the place of the greater as a result of distortion or deception. 16:7.7
    • escaping duty, we go under control of evil 130:1.2
    • While it is all too true that good cannot come of evil to the one who contemplates and performs evil, it is equally true that all things, including evil, potential and manifest, work together for good to all beings who know God, love to do his will, and are ascending Paradiseward according to his eternal plan and divine purpose. 54:4.7
    • Pain and sorrow follow in the path of evil as the dust follows the wind. 131:3.3
    • Even the evildoer enjoys a season of grace before the time of the full ripening of his evil deeds, but inevitably there must come the full harvest of evil-doing. 2:3.5 54:4.5 131:3.5

    Bible parallels

    Passages that the paragraphs cited above parallel, quote or reinterpret, from Duane Faw’s Paramony cross-references. Hover a reference to read it.

    Where it appears

    Evil is linked in 7 paragraphs of the text.

    54:4.367:7.4131:3.5147:4.2159:3.9188:4.3188:5.1

    See also

    CrossErrorFraudFree willImperfectionIniquityInjusticeMisunderstandingsRebellion (spiritual)SacrificeSinVices
    Categories: Concepts and teachings · Paper 130 · Paper 132