World without Evil

Imagine a world without evil.

Goodness everywhere. People are as good as angels or better. Roses have no thorns and tigers don’t eat deer. No bugs and worms. No virus and bacteria to infect us with deadly diseases. No slander and plunder. No ruler and the ruled. Plain goodness, happiness, beauty…

Impossible? Why? Nicholas, the neighbourhood saint, chastises me for uttering blasphemy. “How can there be good without bad, light without darkness, joy without sorrow?”

“Do you believe in heaven?” I ask Nicholas.

“Of course.”

“Is there good without bad, light without darkness and joy without sorrow there?” I repeat his words trying my best to conceal my scorn.

“That’s heaven!” He is scandalised. “We’re on earth.”

“My question is why we can’t have heaven on earth if there is a God who created it all and has the power to create the kind of world He wants.”

“You can’t question God,” he stamps his foot impatiently.

“Why not?”

“Because He is God. And you’re…”

“… the crown of His creation,” I complete it for Nicholas who most probably wanted to say “just scum” or something of the sort. Every non-believer is ‘scum’ for Nicholas.

Nicholas believes that God is omnipotent but He won’t give us a better world. He can, but He won’t.

“Why not?” I question. “He must be a sadist to let so much evil exist when He has the potential to do whatever He wants.”

“He gave man free will and evil is a by-product of that,” Nicholas says rather sheepishly.

“Is the tiger that eats the deer a by-product of man’s free will?” I wonder. If I ask whether the coronavirus a by-product of man’s free will, I’ll be trapped. “Yes,” Nicholas will clap his hands and assert gleefully. “It is an outcome of what we have done to the planet.”

But the snake’s venom is not man’s creation. Nor are the claws of the beasts. If the same God who made the tiger also made the gazelle, then He must be a sadist, what else? If God can have his heaven without any evil but insists that His creatures on a planet called the earth must have all possible evils, He must be worse than…

“Than what?” Nicholas the Saint snarled at me.

“Than you.” I said.

Evil is a mystery. That’s the most fantastic explanation I have ever heard. It is uttered from every pulpit of every religious preacher on earth. Whatever you can’t understand is mystery. Why not admit that you don’t have an answer?

I have an answer, Nicholas. Evil is an integral part of the cosmos. The cosmos is amoral. It doesn’t care two hoots about good and evil, joy and sorrow. It has its own laws like gravitation. And black holes. And entropy.

Utter disorder, sheer evil, is the ultimate truth, dear Saint. Science calls it the second law of thermodynamics. In simple words, it means that everything in the cosmos tends towards more and more chaos. Leave your garden untended for a week and see what happens. Leave your house for a week to itself and see how many spiders and cockroaches and other unwanted creatures will invade.

You know what I’ll ask for if your God appears before me with the blessing of a boon? I ask Nicholas.

Nicholas stares at me like a wounded serpent. He knows that I am going to utter blasphemy. Every Saint knows when blasphemy is going to make an apparition to him/her. My experience tells me that saints go looking for blasphemies. They regard it the very purpose of their incarnation to purify the earth of all blasphemers like me. Otherwise Nicholas would have abandoned me long ago. He can’t abandon me, you see. He is the barnacle and I am his rock.

Nicholas doesn’t answer. He keeps staring.

I’ll ask your God to remove all evil from this earth. If He doesn’t know how to do it, I can teach him. It’s not difficult. Freedom of choice does not necessarily mean choice of evil, hai ki nahi?

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 329: Suppose you're given the boon by god to change one thing in this human world. What will you change? #UltimateChange