“I form the light, and create darkness;
I make peace, and create evil;
I am the Lord,
Who has made all these things”
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– Isaiah, 45.5
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“Good and evil form a duality. Creating potential for good, by definition, creates the inverse potential for evil along with it…..God’s omnipotence or non-omnipotence is not the issue. It is rather a question of definition. By definition, good comes packaged with concomitant evil.”
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– David Birnbaum, “Summa Metaphysica I”,  page 95.
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“The Tao doesn’t take sides;
It gives birth to both good and evil”
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– Lao-tzu,  “Tao Te Ching” 5
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It is not as if there were a separate “god” for good and a separate “god” for evil battling it out as it were; just as there is not a separate “god” for the lions and another “god” for the zebras; and one “god” for winter cold and another for the heat of summer.
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What we learn from individuals who have thought deeply about these matters…and whose ideas stand up to both reason and intuition…is that there is but one God who created a universe of dualities with infinite possibilities and potentialities working themselves out in and through the laws of nature, the evolution of species, and the hearts and minds, ids egos and super egos of that part of God’s creation that was created in God’s image.
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As human beings living in groups we are very keenly aware that whatever the circumstances there are always….at least from our limited and at times biased perspectives…. both in relative and in absolute terms, winners and losers.
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And as human beings we are sometimes joyfully and sometimes painfully aware that we live in a world of constant flux and change. Potentiality may rest every once and a while and for short periods of time the status quo may seem immovable until it is not. The wheel of time does turn, and life, moves with its manifold complexity and seeming contradictions, moves with it.
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This fact of life was recognized by both Isaiah and Lao-tzu. And at the very center of the wheel… which Isaiah calls “God” and Lao-tzu calls “the Tao”…lies the duality of both Peace (stillness) and Potentiality (movement).
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Religion and spirituality, at its worst, becomes the “opium of the people” as well as rationalizations by the “winners” of society to flaunt their power over those they have defined as “losers”.
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At its best, religion and spirituality teaches us of the infinite complexity and potentiality of life. It teaches us that the world is in constant motion and that our task as human beings is to accept this reality, NOT with our potentiality for selfishness, envy, greed and stupidity; but with our potential for intelligence, compassion, acceptance, love, hard work, creativity and joy that is available to all of us created in the image of God.
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com
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