The True Threshold Between Good and Evil- Handling the Emotion of Love

One point where I think Catholic Theology comes up tops is in it's analysis of evil, is in it's understanding of good and evil.

Catholic teaching points out that each one of the seven deadly sins, is in fact a perverted love. It is loving something in particular to the exclusion of the overall good. It is loving something in particular so much, that you forget the overall point of love.

Pride- Love of self.
Wrath- Love of getting you way.
Envy- Love of whatever it is the other man has and you don't.
Avarice- Love of the ability to acquire.
Gluttony- Love of food.
Lust- Love of sex.
Sloth- Love of indolence.

To sin, you have to be capable of love. To hate, you have to be capable of love.

Because all Hate-based systems are founded on love too.

The hatred shown by the Nazi creed is not rooted in nothing, it wasn't hate for hate's sake, it was loving something too much.
An ideal of what a perfect German should be.

And it occurs to me that the fine line between Good and Evil really is in ourselves.

It is in our ability to control our own drives.

You see, I've realised, Love in itself isn't the test. You can love and still take that road towards evil. And it is Love that will take you there.

It's whether you can win that battle within yourself.

And it is the battle most people fail in.

We say that those who cannot love have no soul. And I guess, for all practical purposes, it's true.
Because that set of emotions bound together with logic and reason that makes us what we are, immortal it may not be, but it's what makes us human.

So Loving simply makes you human.

The battle for your soul, the battle over whether you really can claim to be good, or will forever be tormented inside by evil, is the choices you make in HOW you love.

It's how you react towards the object you love, and in how you make pursue that love with regard to love generally.



In many cultures, it has at times, been regarded as th right of the husband of an adultress to either execute his errant wife, or at least demand her death. This is so in several Muslim countries, though I believe it's true that in Uraguay a husband coming upon his wife in flagrante and shooting her is classed as justifiable homicide.

And secretly there are some who applaud these notions. Adultery, after all, is a betrayal of love.

But isn't killing the one you're supposed to love a slightly bigger one?

A woman having sex with another man isn't an act of hate, killing is.

Ultimately, the real evil is committed by the aggrieved husband. The aggrieved husband who acts in blind rage, or worse, in cold blooded hate exorcises his thwarted rage by obliterating the one who causes it.

It is there, in that moment he loses the battle for his soul.

Whatever one thinks of adultery isn't the issue, betrayal it may be, but the only thing destroyed is his dignity and his feelings.

Not really worth a life being destroyed for.

But what REALLY is at the heart of this?

Conditional devotion.

The expectation of receiving something back for your devotion. And anger that you didn't. A feeling you've been cheated, and you want paying somehow.

Nietzche is often held up as ant Anti-Christ amongst philosophers, but it was Nietzche who perhaps summed up that important moral message, which, if you get your head round, really does explain to you the point of love.

'Love is a gift, it confers no rights.'

And if we observed that, then everything would be fine.

But we don't. We hawk it round the market place hoping that we'll find someone who values our love it what we think it's worth.

We decide to love someone on condition that they value our love for them at the price we think it is worth.

So much of the pain in human interaction is basically caused by people's inner inability to cope with the fact the object of their love doesn't value their love for them at the price they want the object of their love to value it at.

But you see, to them it might actually be totally valueless. It might be totally useless to them.

I think both positions are hard. It's hard to be loved by someone who's love is really not the love you want, or worse, is valueless, it's hard to be the subject of. The opposite position is in some ways easier in fact, or seems so, but in fact it's the most dangerous at all.
Because your soul truly is at stake.

I think I only really grasped this properly over the last year; it's that, that predicament which really is the dividing line which determines whether, in a metaphorical sense, you're damned or saved. I say metaphorical, because I do believe this life is all there is.

Because unconditional love accepts that even wanting them to love you back, is wrong.

I've been the subject of it. Someone who could not see that for them to love me at all, could only lead to my misery. From my perspective, their love and their hate were just as bad as the other; neither could do me any good, both could only make me miserable. From my perspective, their love was worth even less than valueless; like Phlogiston, it actually had negative weight.

And I'm sure that must be hard for someone to accept. That the Love you feel for the object of your Love is not only valueless to them, it actually causes them pain.



But it's how you handle it. Is it something you face, or something you persist in, trying to find a way it can be done, trying to influence them, trying to change their mind?

Because in those circumstances, you're already on the road to evil.

You're pushing the desires of YOUR heart against a true unconditional desire for the good of the object of your love.

And on a lesser scale sometimes people do try hard, they ardently pursue their suit to the degree that the other party thinks; 'Why not give them a try?'

But it is still wrong, and it will still lead to wrong further down the line. Because you might have won their heart in the short term, but you only have it online.

One day, that choice will still come back to you, having to accept that the other party does not value your love at the price you think it should be valued at.

Accepting that you give them all the love you have, and to them it really is useless.
It's not your love they need.

I think that's the difference between the road to Heaven and the road to Hell.

Giving your love and not expecting to be paid back in love. And refusing to accept payment back. Because if it was given, it would only be given out of charity.

Accepting that no matter how high a price you put on yourself and no matter how much you know this is The One, accepting as irrevocable the fact your love really is of no value or use to them whatsoever.

And wishing they can find love that is.

The battle for your soul is won the day you know you will always give them everything they ask for, or you know they need from you (as opposed to what you would like to THINK or HOPE they needed), and would refuse anything they offered you.

Surely that HAS to be the ideal?