Don't we all suffer, almost daily, temptations to do evil?
Whoever comes home, back from the supermarket, and finds a bottle of wine among his groceries that was not invoiced, he knows that the right thing to do is to return it.
And yet, how many people return it?
Similarly, the concept of God as a common good continues to unite members of all religions.
Physics also formulates the existence of a universal and invisible force that balances everything: matter and nothing; energy and matter; nothing and energy.
Against dishonesty
If you hang out with group of friends, and one of them proposes you to go out and beat up an innocent man, you must know that is evil at work.
Evil, that blood-thirsty handleless spear that, like an encaged lion, wants to hurt everyone around, even those who, as you, may serve it.
But mentioning a moral category as "evil" already involves an offense against our utilitarian ethics.
A European agnostic once told me:
"We never bothered to ponder whether or not God existed, simply because we were never taught it at home or at school."
His behavioral frame of reference was the charter of the rights of man, in which, as French historians have already shown -see my essay on atheism-, Christianity found its secular reformulation.
Surviving in Colombia, my homeland, is the equivalent of surviving the dangerous valleys of the USA in the 1870s.
In Colombia, many would steal when they realized that no one would discover them, that is, if they "give them papaya."
Little do they know that this mentality is the reason that Colombia has so few neat, ethical and loving rulers of their country, and it is such mentality that drives the organized underworld to establish themselves on the rights of others, the same ones that take advantage of the papaya.
It’s a vicious circle from which only honesty can redeem us, as I presented in THE CRIMES OF KENNEDY. It would be enough for a single neat Colombian to govern them for four years for them to change.
The law of compensation
Herodotus tells us the story of an Egyptian king who lived very happily, and who, worried that he was so happy, called the wisest man of his age, Solon the Greek, for advice on what he should do in life. Solon gave him some advice: "Get rid of what you consider most precious in your life and you will avoid an unhappy end."
The king then decided, after long reflections, to throw a gigantic diamond that he had into the sea. Months passed and the king lamented the loss of his spoiled precious stone, until one day a fisherman came to the palace with the stone, saying that he had found it in the belly of a fish that he caught, and since the king had made public his loss, he wanted to pay it back.
The king received her happily, contrary to Solon's precept. He later lost the throne and was crucified.
In the same way, those who live in fortune are constantly exposed to misfortune, those who adapt to the abrupt paths of life itself are blessed with peaceful lives, far from the torments of those who struggle to control their destiny and that of others.
“Without goods, but without lack of what is necessary”, is the motto of those who entrust their lives to the paths that life offers them.
There is no life experience in which we do not experience another piece of humanity, even IN the most bitter ones.
Let us meditate on the telling life of that pharaoh. He was crucified, but not before seeing his children dead, and he was fed to the vultures.
To what are these ups and downs of fortune due? It is a metaphysical question.
Just as water levels out when it is disturbed, so our lives seek leveling when we alter them to achieve some goal through wicked methods.
Perversity is purged with suffering, just as patience is rewarded with blessings.