Why Does Evil Seek Consent?

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We're all familiar with what used to be a common riff in story-telling: A man sells his soul to Satan in exchange for high Earthly status. A single man can't be very powerful compared to Satan. So, why doesn't Satan just take the soul? Why does Satan need to offer anything? Why is a single man's consent so important?

Christianity and Free Will 
One of the most common arguments atheists give against God: Innocent people suffer on Earth. God must be all-powerful and all-knowing to be defined as a god. So, if God is real, he wouldn't allow innocents to suffer so greatly. Because God chooses to allow great suffering of the innocent, if he exists, he is evil and should be rejected.

The argument reveals a profound misunderstanding of Christian beliefs. Humanity's role is centered around our free will. Our existence is a test in how we choose to deal with evil and suffering [*1]. We, as individual souls, must be allowed to independently choose or reject evil. If not, our existence would be no more than that of a boulder rolling down a hill. It's not our ability to choose a flavor of ice cream that makes us human, as mere animals could do that. It's, instead, our ability to choose between good and evil that defines us. Choice is the essence of our existence. Without it, we'd be objects in the kingdom of heaven instead of souls, like furniture in a living room instead of guests sitting upon it.

If people weren't allowed to choose evil, existence would be pointless, and heaven would exist on Earth by default. We'd be God's furniture instead of his children.

Christians recognize Satan rules the Earth (the god of this world), and part of living involves our struggle against him (evil), to be with God and enter the kingdom of heaven (the god above). We must choose God; otherwise we'd be his slaves.

This explains why evil is allowed to exist. But why are natural disasters and diseases allowed to cause suffering of the innocent? Would we still have free will if nature wasn't also allowed to run its course? 

Events like earthquakes, floods, and diseases are part of the natural order. We can control our environment to some degree. And our ability to act in the natural world is how we manifest our choices. So, if God controlled all of nature for us, would we truly have free will?

Atheism and Free Will
In pop culture, we're trained to think of evil as subjugation. But how long can control be maintained through terror and force?

For evil to rule, the ethics of the ruled must be made to align with those of the rulers [*2]. This way, the ruled help enforce the whims of their rulers through social ostracism. As the public begins to agree that their rulers are just, our friends and family begin to encompass that agreement. Dissidents become less likely to rebel, as rebelling becomes acting not merely against the rulers but against one's own friends and family. This is a pragmatic approach to rule, but its connection to evil runs much deeper.

Evil desires you to choose it, just as a man with a narcotic wants you to take a hit with him. Sharing the drug validates his choice, and, to the extent his identity is tied with drug use, it validates him. Satan isn't concerned with rule of Earth so much, since he already rules it. He's, instead, concerned with corrupting as many souls as possible, the aim being not so much toward companionship with the souls he takes as his satisfaction with taking souls from God.

Atheists can understand this aspect of evil rule by understanding human nature. Why does a woman desire a two-carat diamond on her finger when less-expensive alternatives can be as aesthetically pleasing? The expensive ring is a symbol of her status and the sacrifice her fiancé or husband made for her. The symbol shows her worth, which she can flaunt or use as a tool of social acceptance or dominance in her peer groups.

But what happens when she tries the same with a convincing fake? If everyone around her is convinced of the ring's authenticity and convey status to her, is this enough? She needs to know the ring is real. Evil seeks consent much in the same way. The consent doesn't need to be flamboyant fandom; it can be a subdued nod of respect. What matters is the honesty of the consent.

Evil rule is wicked rule [*3]. The wicked involves blending truth with lies in order to change or maintain behavior [*4]. Effective rule demands this to a certain degree, as pure lies are ultimately exposed to reason; whereas truth bolsters credibility and disguises lies. Credibility is what maintains rule, and rule maintained by too-obvious of lies can only last as long as bribery or terror can maintain it.

The more truth one can blend with lies, the more wicked rule becomes. It's ultimately individual consent, agreement as honest as possible, that fuels evil. Evil needs you to do its bidding with your fullest belief in it, just as both a woman's peers, not just the woman herself, must know the ring is real.

Resistance to the Wicked
In Christian ethics, original sin forces action. It's not enough to passively ignore evil. We must act to clean the stain of sin that begets our birth. It may sound cruel to imbibe newborns with sin, but it reminds us that our existence involves action. We are here to do, not merely to be.

A graphic illustration below helps discern our role in fighting evil. We first reject the ethical order of evil, as it attempts to convince us of its false goodness and to act in accordance with it by adopting its false virtues. When that fails, evil offers material pleasures and status in exchange for fealty. When that fails, evil switches to threats against our loved ones. Finally, evil may demand our mere silence and kill us if we continue to fight against it, to set an example for corruptible others to concede to its authority. If it must kill us, it destroys our bodies, but not our souls.

What value does a fleeting existence of false status and material pleasure have when the soul is corrupted? Whether you believe in God or not, isn't resistance to evil, even at the expense of great suffering, always the correct path?

American heavy metal band, Paladin 


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FOOTNOTES
[*1] A variant of Christianity, Calvinism, involves a belief that moral choices are known ahead of time by God. Whether this, in turn, means individuals have no more choice than a boulder rolling downhill, and, thus, I must limit my meaning to "non-Calvinism Christianity" is a petty distraction from my point. Regardless of whether God knows ahead of time what we choose or whether, as author Vox Day suggests, God is able to know but chooses not to know, man's individual actions involving his choices are ultimately what decides entry into the kingdom of heaven.
[*2] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/05/how-would-you-know-if-world-was-ruled.html
[*3] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/06/rule-of-wicked-kind-predation-of-empathy.html
[*4] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/02/what-is-wicked.html


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