In the Likutei Etzot it is written that it is necessary to distance oneself strongly from the advice of ordinary people, since most of them are bad and very flawed advice [Timo Schmitz: La vedra i los yervos – Kual es el antidote para el koraje?. 2 October 2020]. It is clear that just because a majority says something, it does not mean that they are right as history has proven it clearly, but still, it is wrong to say that, for the most part, people give bad advice as this generalization is too simple [ibid.]. Of course everyone is flawed, but we have a basic goodness. However, because of bad experiences, people may do evil deeds and believe them to be good. The good disposition of man thus can be overshadowed, so that one no longer recognizes the good [ibid.]. In times, where even more and more people reject God and draw their hearts away from Him, the societies become quite vulnerable, because it leaves a big hole in their heart, and their longing for God is not satisfied, so they replace it with quasi-religious ideas:
“When people don’t believe in God, there is necessarily a great deal of mystery to existence. This feeling of mystery leaves people vulnerable to embracing any idea that seems to make sense of reality, however strange and outlandish the idea might be. This is the reason why cults are able to prosper — and many do within the new age spiritual movement — because uncertainty about our place in the grand scheme of things leaves people vulnerable to ideological manipulation.”
Steven Colborne: Debunking the Law of Attraction. 9 June 2019.
Or as Alan Watts once pointed out, people tend to believe “That in this universe there is one great energy, and we have no name for it. People have tried various names for it, like God, like Brahman, like Dao, but in the West, the word God has got so many funny associations attached to it that most of us are bored with it. […] And so we like to hear new words. […] And actually some of these words that the Buddhists use, or the basic energy of the world really don’t mean anything at all. […] But according to Buddhist philosophy, all this universe is one tathata, that means ten thousand functions or ten thousand things, one suchness. And we are all one suchness” [Alan Watts: Zen bones and Tales (audio lecture)]. But of course, there must be a difference between the Personal God in the Bible and an impersonal energy? In fact, God is personal, but He uses energy to unfold His creation, and so God necessarily must inherit a spiritual force. God is one, the Muslims speak of “tawhid” to call this oneness, in Buddhism we say the word “one suchness”, in Daoism it is called Dao just to give it a name at all – all in all, it is simply one, the first cause. And we are connected to Him, so we take part in this suchness. So when Watts says that we are all one suchness, I think, one has to make clear that this does not mean that we are divine, but that we have divine qualities in us, such as the soul, which is the window to God. We are connected to Him, so there is no strict separation, we are all interconnected!
Some people might say now how we can talk of a good God when He is one, because there is evil in this world and this leads to a lot of problems. And if God is the very one creator, then we must associate evil with Him as well. Honestly, it is not that easy at all. Nature itself knows no evil, but mankind does. The moment, one man turned a weapon against another was the very point when evil arose, so evil is nothing metaphysical, but human [cp. Timo Schmitz: Ist Gott nur für das Gute verantwortlich?. Trier & Vachendorf: Graf Berthold Verlag, 2022]. Thus, “we must equate God with the Good, for there can be objective good, but no objective evil. If there was an objective evil, it would fight or compete against the good, and then we would have more than one creator, which would mean that there would have to be a creator of good and one of evil” [Schmitz, 2 October 2020]. But there cannot be two first causes as otherwise there was another cause above it, as the first cause is ONE! But as evil is no metaphysical reality and nature is good as it is (ki-tov), God must be good as well, so only goodness is truth. “So blindly following a majority can create evil, especially when no one is questioning societal norms anymore. In other words, without God there is no good” [ibid.].
Timo Schmitz, 25 March 2023
Timo Schmitz 