Error and Evil
Greetings, brothers and sisters. This is Dr. James Perry continuing with our series where we seek
to explore the deeper meanings of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Over the years, the
heavenly Father has revealed many revelations of spiritual truth to me, and I want to share them
with you. This morning we seek to understand the meaning of error and evil. And now, sit back
and listen to today's message.
Error and Evil
Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Luke, Chapter 23, Verse
34.
Brothers and sisters, when the Jewish authorities rejected Jesus, this was error. When they
crucified him, this was evil. What are error and evil? Error is failure to discern truth, and evil is
deficiency of wisdom.
Error is everywhere. Today we are concerned with spiritual error, the error that might occur on
our part while relating with our heavenly Father. Being spiritual children, we cannot but help
making errors. We needs a tutor to instruct us in the correct relationship with the Father. And
there is a tutor available, designed to instruct us in the true relationship with our heavenly Father:
the Spirit of Truth.
Evil is also everywhere. It is the thoughtless, unthinking selfish response to our moral and
spiritual environments. It is a measure of immaturity; it measures the degree of control by our
animal natures, and is also the measure of our inability to be led by the divine spirit. It is an
unconscious violation of the divine will. No amount of force of will can deliver a person from
evil. It is simply our natural response.
Intellectual error involving factual information is unavoidable in our incomplete status. But not
so with evil. Evil has a relatively short reign in our lives. Evil can be overthrown by entering the
Kingdom of Heaven, which is done by an act of faith. By entering the Kingdom of Heaven, a
new reality begins to operate in our moral and spiritual lives. This new reality is the birth of the
soul, with capacity for super perception of divine truth, beauty, and goodness. These values now
become available in our souls and we are empowered to choose them when confronted with evil
in our moral and spiritual environment.
As we contemplate error and evil, we turn to our own experience for insight. Error and evil is
something that we are intimately familiar with. Through lack of reflection upon our experience,
we may not have come up with those precise terms of error and evil. But we have all made
mistakes and made decisions that with the passing of time through the agency of disappointment,
we recognized them as such. As experiencing beings we are constantly making decisions,
decisions based upon desires and knowledge.
Quite a few times in the past, our knowledge of a particular action that we wished to take was
deficient. We did not have all of the facts concerning a particular problem that we wanted to
solve, and sometimes we did not understand how those facts were related to each other. This
caused us to act without sufficient wisdom. That is we acted without correlating the past
experience with future projections of our actions. And sometimes even when we attempted to do
this, we still erred.
Being experiencing beings, there is simply no way that we can have all the facts, the insights, and
wisdom necessary to make decisions without some degree or measure of error at some point in
our development. Not until we attain supreme perfection can we function without error. Our
inability to make decisions without error bespeaks of our imperfection. Out of our incomplete
intellectual concepts and deficiency of wisdom do we make decisions that are labeled as
erroneous and evil. But as we grow, as our minds and souls mature, we are increasingly delivered
from the partial maladaptive realities of being imperfect. As we reflect upon the disappointments
occasioned by unwise and mistaken judgements, we gain wisdom as the experience allows us to
distinguish truth from error and good from evil.
But what is it that allows us to even be conscious that we have made a mistake or have acted in
an evil manner. What is it that makes us aware that "we can't get there from here."
Disappointment is a distasteful reaction to failure, but not all disappointments are the results of
evil and error. Some of them are inherent in a universe of time and space where delays and
handicaps are always present. We have a moral nature that endows us with the growing ability to
discern right from wrong, good from evil, and to choose good over evil and right from wrong.
When we choose good over evil, right over wrong we exhibit wisdom.
When it comes to spiritual truth, we have been given the Spirit of Truth which is perfectly able to
recognize spiritual truth. This spiritual gift is similar to a magnet, as it always points the way to
the truth. And the spirit of the Father always portrays the values of good. So concerning these
two aspects of divinity, we are empowered to proceed without error and evil once we enter the
Kingdom of Heaven and come under their direct influence.
And how is the overthrow of error and evil manifested in our lives? As we proceed through this
life, supremely dedicated to doing the Father's, it is our sincere desire that we proceed with truth
and goodness. As we understand it, we try to relate ourselves to our brothers and sisters in a
truthful way; that is, in a way that Jesus treats us. He is the demonstrated example of the Father's
love. And as we interact with our brothers and sisters, it is our desire that they experience the
supreme goodness that emanates from our love-saturated souls.
This concludes today's message on understanding the meaning of evil and error. We hope you
find something in this message to ponder and pray about as you go about your day.
Until next time, this is Dr. James Perry.
Inspirational Messages
By Dr. James Perry
Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done!
Error and Evil
