Lesser Evil Is Never Good

9/16/2024

Let’s focus on this—a conscious, uncoerced choice for lesser evil reveals an awareness that one is indeed choosing evil; hence, the matter boils down to qualifying evil to avoid the choice perceived as greater evil.

In the end, one has still chosen evil rather than good.

I don’t believe God places anyone in circumstances that prevent alignment with good over evil.

Individual failure to recognize or discover a good choice does not absolve one of choosing lesser evil.

The responsibility for the choice remains. Part of that responsibility entails acknowledging the choice for lesser evil as an authentic choice for evil and repenting it.

Rationalizing a choice for lesser evil as good only exacerbates the evil inherent in the choice—to the point that it perhaps even exceeds the “greater evil” choice one shunned.

6 Comments

bruce g charlton

9/17/2024 09:53:36

It's a good point - especially wrt to "conscious, uncoerced choice for lesser evil ".

I regard the main thing about repentance as being the knowledge aspect, knowing that evil is evil even when unavoidable or the best among bad options.

As the main example, we all live in The System and therefore by whatever happen to be our choices we support The System. This is essentially unavoidable, and it is a bad thing to spend one's life wracked by guilt.

I think the proper answer is to recognize that one is always sinning, one way or another, and it is impossible not to sin. One can perhaps (if the right kind of personality in the right situation) avoid a few spectacular major sins, but never all of them.

The ridiculous idea that we can live without sin or get anywhere near that state is one of the most pernicious ways in which Christianity has often been corrupted and inverted.

But the candid awareness of this fact of endemic sin, and the commitment to follow Jesus, is the antidote - antidote not in this mortal life, but afterwards,

The big problem seems to be "Rationalizing a choice for lesser evil as good" - this is indeed very often corrupting.

It is, I find and observe, tempting to rationalize as a form of defence - especially if one is being harangued for one's innate imperfections by those who desire to control us for their own (and usually selfish) ends.

Nonetheless it should be resisted, and repented when resistance fails!

All this can sound terribly negative and indeed miserable! But it should not be - either in theory or practice; since the negations ought to flow from a positive and joyous commitment.

Francis Berger

9/17/2024 21:14:05

@ Bruce - Living in the sort of totalitarianism we live now entails perpetually contending with lesser evil.

Your post today about green values was right up my alley in this regard. My workplace prides itself on being green and institutes these values in everything it does. I can ignore most of it, but my job often involves supporting those values in an indirect way. A constant source of repentance.

For a while, I thought about getting another job altogether in an effort to find the good in some other line of work, but the system is totalitarian, meaning I would have to contend with the same elsewhere, or worse. It's sad, but there is not much good in workplaces these days.

Having said that, I have seen many actively choose lesser evil and wear it as a sort of badge of honor. Even worse are the ones who deny the lesser evil outright and relabel as good, which is a recipe for spiritual corruption.

Laeth

9/17/2024 10:39:55

i have the suspicion that the ones using this rhetoric of choosing the lesser evil, do not actually believe that evil exists at all, not what we mean by evil. or if they do, they certainly do not apply it to politics and society. they may believe both candidates or whatever are 'bad', but not 'evil'. hence they probably feel there is nothing to repent, in fact, quite the opposite, because presumably by identifying the less bad they are, at least, preventing the world from approaching the more bad. it's all strategy with no spiritual implications. how they believe this i don't know, it seems absurd to me.

Francis Berger

9/17/2024 21:17:12

@ Laeth - "how they believe this i don't know, it seems absurd to me."

One word - omnigod. The belief that omnigod has everything under control and that it's not as bad as it seems. And that omnigod places certain people in authority, etc. etc.

Laeth

9/17/2024 21:49:47

that's true. at the same time they ignore the implications of omnigodism for a hundred other things (and how could they not). so i would think the reality of supernatural evil would be one of those where the implications are ignored. i mean, even when i was an omnigodist it was very clear to me that evil and satan were real. and it only became more obvious with time, perhaps especially in politics.

there also seems to be something along the lines of politics for certain people being half entertainment (somewhere between soap opera and sports) and a surrogate for positive activity (as in: if i support the 'less bad side' at least i'm doing something).

Anthony Probst

9/18/2024 07:52:43

And there is the chronic electoral condition "the evil of two lessers."

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Lesser Evil Is Never Good

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