The Formula for Evil

The early chap­ters of Gen­e­sis present the for­mula for evil, as it is intro­duced into the world in gen­eral and how it is re-introduced into your life. It has to do with the “spin” that opens the door to a par­tic­u­lar type of doubt. You are very clear on your per­cep­tions, and then some­one steps in to dis­tort it or to imply that there is some­thing wrong with your expe­ri­ence. Some­one decides to play God in your life by telling you that you do not know what you know or that your fun­da­men­tal per­cep­tions are off base. You are tempted to doubt yourself.

Aban­don­ing your own real­ity for one you are told to have is how we betray our­selves. People-pleasing is the ticket to spir­i­tual insan­ity. In order to keep a pseudo-temporary-peace, we cave into someone’s dis­tor­tion — so as not to rock the boat. High dom­i­nant per­son­al­i­ties, manip­u­la­tors, and control-freaks play this game to keep from fac­ing their own issues. Unable to deal with them­selves, they seek to run the lives of oth­ers. God com­plexes abound in any num­ber of pro­fes­sions, posi­tions, and insti­tu­tions. Watch out for peo­ple that try to “help” you. After all, the Ser­pent in the Gar­den of Eden story was only try­ing to “clar­ify” some infor­ma­tion for Eve. She stuck to her guns at first, but later caved in, as she fell for the super­fi­cial­i­ties of the sales pitch. The offer lead­ing to evil comes in the form of a quick suc­cess formula…“to be desired or smart or what­ever all you have to do is eat the for­bid­den fruit.”

I never cease to be amazed by the insights from the first sto­ries of the Bible. They are some of the best psy­cholo­gies ever writ­ten. The sto­ries are amaz­ingly rel­e­vant in any era and can be seen in numer­ous pat­terns of his­tory on a grand scale. The Fall in the Gar­den is the story repeated end­lessly by “snakes” pre­tend­ing to be help­ful. The basic for­mula remains the same: some­one takes it on them­selves to “help” you with your per­cep­tions at the cost of your integrity. Unable to do what you do, they pre­fer to be the critic. (Satan is the first crit­i­cal voice in the per­fect Garden.)

In coun­sel­ing with so many over the years, I have found that the core to their per­sonal addic­tions and self-destructive lifestyles is found in some voice of doubt — usu­ally induced by some­one close to them that is pre­tend­ing to be help­ful (but actu­ally pass­ing along a piece of their own unre­solved shame). It is not that is not a pow­er­ful approach. It has been used to manip­u­late peo­ple by the mil­lions. All it takes is a lit­tle arro­gance and the for­mula comes to life.

Call the shots about YOUR life as YOU see them. The sec­ond some­one steps out of their real­ity to run yours WATCH OUT! The for­mula is per­va­sive. It comes in many forms, but always with the same result: cave in and you will die a lit­tle bit over it.