Evil?

Eileen and I were chatting the other night, then today the topic came up again - What is evil? Is there evil?
See, I don't believe in the devil - and I do not believe evil exists as an entity in and of itself. I can't quote the bible, some people can and do - I perceive the Bible as a book of history which is written from many perspectives long after many of the events took place - I believe much of the Bible's message is how God created man and then gave man free will. This is the thing, free will - the ability to choose. Everyday we make choices - based on where we are and what is happening we have to make choices; is there a "devil" sitting on one shoulder and an "angel" on the other, each whispering in our ear pushing us in one direction or another. That, well that just makes me kind of cringe - Throughout the course of my career I have worked with children, young children who were deeply disturbed - Most of these children had psychiatric disorders, and many of them committed horrendous acts of violence, evil. I have worked with families who actually had exorcisms performed on these children to drive out the devil. There was not one instance, where a child, having undergone an exorcism, became less disturbed. There were instances, many of them, where the outcome of the exorcism (have I spelled that word right yet?) damaged the child even more. There are multiple environmental factors which affect a child's emotional development. There are times, when the brain is wired incorrectly - I have known children as young as 7 or 8, who I refer to as children with "empty eyes." These children, sadly, are safest in locked facilities with medication and therapy - They will not be cured, but they will be safe and society will be safe. Does a 7 year old child kill his 2 month old sister because the devil made him. It is hard to reconcile the profession of an all powerful, forgiving, miracle producing God who would not intervene on the behalf of a 7 year old child or a 2 month old baby. Questions and more questions - faith brings about many questions and faith offers few concrete answers - I know faith does not pay the rent. Evil then, what is it? How do we explain it - this is my equation...evil is the result of selfishness. A person chooses an evil behavior because that evil behavior makes them feels good - the evil behavior fills a selfish need - not having the power to read minds we cannot fully comprehend what selfish behavior is satisfying for another human being. Let us go simple - At Target one day a toddler was sitting at the end of an isle with a bag of snickers bars opened, he was scarfing up those candy bars as fast as he could. No adult was in sight - Is this Snicker stealing child evil? Or does the selfish desire to eat a sweet treat enough to drive him to break the law? That is simplistic, I know - sometimes "great" philosophical questions are merely really simple questions - but for whatever reason we want that complexity - Why? Does it make us feel smarter? Not me, complexity is complex and I prefer simple - KISS! Good rule to follow. A friend of Aldona Mae's lost her 4 year old son to a long battle with cancer. That has to be the absoluter worst! This woman is of deep faith - She feels the devil killed her child because her God would not take a child. I cannot even begin to fathom the depth of this woman's pain - it is incomprehensible - She speaks of God as all knowing, capable of performing miracles, capable of raising the dead - so she knows it was the devil who took her son - And I'll tell you, if this provides her with comfort then I pray she finds that. Yet, why would her all powerful God allow the devil to take her child, and why did he not raise her son from the dead? Why were her prayers and the prayers of so many unanswered? The devil took her son - I understand this as a concept; it does not jive with an all powerful God who can perform miracles. Her son had a rare, fatal type of cancer - science had no cure, time may never heal her wound - Cancer took her child. Devil? A rapist is acting out rage, filling a selfish need or a selfish void - his behavior is evil and I say lock him/her up and throw away the key - the behavior is evil and the behavior fills a selfish need. Evil is selfish behavior. When we choose to forgive, we break the cycle of evil - evil stopped when I forgave the man who raped me - Is he still evil - this I don't know. I don't know if he ever raped anyone else. His act of rape was selfish behavior which filled a selfish void - he was in need of something and rape filled that need - there were two of us in that room - no red devil on his shoulder - Behavior is evil - I teach kids, and kids can come up with a dozen rationalizations for the behaviors they choose.  A lot of them make me laugh and laugh and laugh - many times I just shake my head in wonderment at the creative way they avoid responsibility - Are they "bad" kids? No, they made bad choices. Is that Snicker eater doomed to a life of crime? Come on that makes no sense. Right now I am having a need for something sweet. So I am going to eat raspberry Zingers, should not eat them. Don't need them, health and weight wise - not good for me - I just want them. My behavior is not evil, it harms me. We hear that term; "victimless crime." Is that an oxymoron? I don't think so - smoking pot, for some people is fun. Good for them. Though I can safely say most prostitutes grew up victims of abuse in some way or another - not all though - for some women, sex is sex they like it, and they can make a lot of money doing something they love. What's the expression? If you love what you do for a living, you will never have to work a day in your life. Cool, I do love teaching, but dang it is hard work! Shucks I don't know. I don't understand why children die, I don't understand why many times the driver of a car survives when all the passengers are killed - I don't understand 9/11 - Most of the time I don't understand people, myself included - behavior though, behavior is a science - it is observable, measurable, and can be changed - we fee how we feel but we choose how we behave. I don't know where any of this is taking me, more questoins - and that is good -get people talking and thinking and examining, these are good things - I keep going back to evil is the result of selfish behavior and I will end with this note - if you have ever taken behavior 101, or psychology 101, or sociologogy 101, one human condition is true - once identifying an anti-social or "evil" behavior, once you know what it is, and you can see it - if the behavior for the actor is more rewarding than any alternative behavior, you cannot change the original behavior - so if knocking people upside the head makes a person feel good, and no other behavior (eating a pint of Rocky Road) can give you the same satisfaction - changing the knocking head behavior is not going to change - therefore our response has to change - we must accept this - we must accept the truth - a person willing to die for their selfish belief will not stop because we think they should - they must be stopped. MUST BE! I don't know, let me know what you think.