Bobby Rappach
Mr. Klockner
Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil
I feel that the problem of evil isn’t evil itself but people and their applications of evil in the world. When thinking of evil the first thing that comes to mind is sin and the devil and it should be normal to do so. Satan was the first to sin and it became a legacy that every human tends to do and some more than others. Satan may have directly disobeyed God with the intention to disobey him but people now don’t sin to disobey God but because it’s not seen as a bad thing. Sin may come on different levels and put into 7 separate categories that all sins fall under but choosing to sin is still sinning. The common denominator in every sin is the person choosing to do it, so people are the problem with evil.
If you look at evil as a living thing or something that can manifest itself through different forms of human interactions than it becomes easier to understand. Its almost like a parasite that can only exist with humans help. People and evil create a symbiotic relationship and can not exist fully without the other. We could live without evil in a sense, but we wouldn’t be the people we are now, but we would no longer have free will because free will is the only way that lets us come in contact with evil. Evil on the other hand has very few ways to show itself if people didn’t have a free will therefore an access to evil because evil can’t manifest in an animal because they don’t know right from wrong, only instincts that help them survive. We, on the other hand deliberately know when something is right or wrong and start out with an enate sense of good and should continually be taught the difference so we benefit from it.
The few ways evil can show itself is through the form of demonic activity and nature. Demonic activity is shown through three ways: possession, obsession, and infestation. Since a demon’s main objective is to cause forms of evil on earth their main targets are humans which can be achieved by an obsession or an outward attack of a demon, or possession which is the taking over the mental and physical capabilities of a victim. When not directly targeting a human, it can be called an infestation which is activity directed towards places, objects, and animals. When an object is surrounded with demonic activity it can be called a medium for the demon to enter this world and release its presense and evil. In a lighter sense, humans can be called mediums for evil every time we commit a sin adding to the thought of evil needing humans to bring about as much evil as possible. Another way evil can show itself is through nature, this can be called physical or natural evil that is a state of journeying toward ultimate perfection in which God created the world. This can be witnessed by humans as natural disasters while Thomas Aquinas on the other hand referred to physical evil as pain and sickness.
Two major themes we learned this year that are pure examples of humans causing evil are violence and drug cartels. When looking specifically at the types of sins being commited with these activities you can identify all seven deadly sins. First lets look the drugs and human trafficking; pride can be seen through the arrogance of thinking they are above the law to commit evil actions for a profit which brings greed and gluttony into the picture without needing to go into detail. Human trafficking in specific is in my opinion one of the most if not the most lustful action that can be done by selling people on auctions like an item to be used and returned if people are not satisfied along with the sloth of being able to sell a person. Anyone who is capable of selling humans for profit in my opinion is greatly lacking in a spiritual life. When looking in violence in general you can easily see wrath and envy coming into play as the main reasons for acts of violence to occur. While rape aslo includes lusts with envy and wrath you can see they all intertwine through the common element being a human. In drug cartels we heard stories of fights over locations to sell drugs bringing out the worst of envy that lead to death of drug dealers as well as innocent bystanders in the middle. We can see from the data that large scale violence is slowly declining for now while minor sins are becoming more and more common. Why is this? Its because of social sin; a personal sin that comes in many shapes and sizes that are not viewed as something bad but as a norm for people. In todays age there are probably many venial sins that have become a social sin that probably couldn’t of been comprehended 50 or 60 years ago. This goes without entering great detail as to all the venial sins that are occurring and becoming less and less serious that future generations won’t think twice about doing something because soon everything will become a norm of society and people won’t be judged for their actions unless they are extremely serious such as murder or grand theft etc…
But overall this year I have learned that evil will never go away until humans go away or begin to come to the realization that they are letting evil run rampid throughout the world and are the only thing that can stop evil from entering this world. So the way I see it is humans are solely the problem of evil.