For the purpose of this blog, evil is defined as the exploitation of others—purposely choosing to act in ways that cause harm to another for some benefit to self. It is the opposite of altruistic love, which actively seeks to uplift, bless, and help another, often through self-sacrifice.

Both Christians and non-Christians, such as Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychoanalyst, recognize two antagonistic principles, motives, or drives that lead to human behavior: altruistic love versus selfishness.

The Christian principle is to love God and others—the golden rule, which says to treat others as you would like to be treated. But this principle wars against the inherent fear-driven, me-first selfishness known in science as the survival-of-the-fittest drive. Freud would call these selfish drives the id, which has motives of sex and aggression, with sex referring to all carnal pleasures of the senses, including gluttony, addictions, etc. This same theme is presented in the “two wolves” legend commonly attributed to the Cherokee or other native American tribes.

Within the schools of psychoanalytic thought, there has been a long debate between classic Freudian analysts and Object Relations analysts, who focus on the drive for relationship and attachment, as to which drive is primary—the selfish drive of the id, or the desire for attachment, relationship, and love.

My view is that God designed human beings to love, with only altruistic motives for relationship, connection, and mutually uplifting beneficence. He designed us to promote the welfare of others without the knowledge or experience of fear and selfish concern. But Adam and Eve’s choice to believe lies about God broke their bonds of love and trust and caused them to become motivated by fear and selfishness, the survival-of-the-fittest drives. These self-centered drives are what the Bible calls the carnal nature, the spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7), and the law of sin and death, which infects God’s design, obstructs love and trust, and is the root cause of all exploitation, pain, suffering, and death.

The biblical solution is for us to experience a love/trust relationship with Jesus Christ, one that is real enough that we surrender our lives, safety, security, selves into His hands and “die” to the old way of living, the me-first way, the way of exploiting others to protect self. In other words, we die to the spirit of fear, the life motivated by fear, and are reborn with a new life of love, one that seeks to honor God and bless other human beings in our community.

Specifically, this is the dissecting from our souls (psyche in Greek, which is our individuality, self) the spirit of fear, and attaching/establishing our souls to Jesus by trust and receiving His Spirit of love and trust through the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Bible describes this reality in many places:

“The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live” (Deuteronomy 30:6 NIV84).

“A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code” (Romans 2:28–29 NIV84).

The Result of a Fear-based Life

Those who do not experience this fundamental change in motivation, from the fear-driven survival drive to love and trust in God and love for others, will eventually find themselves in situations that tempt them to do something that will harm others for their own benefit (i.e., exploitation). Because they have a conscience, or what Freud called a superego, if they act selfishly, then they will experience guilt, shame, and conviction against their own self for such actions, and if they do not repent and receive a new heart, then in order to avoid their own internal self-condemnation, they will construct a rationale, a justification, and belief system as to why their evil act is actually good.

The Bible warns against this type of thinking:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (Isaiah 5:20 NIV84).

One of the core principles of all sinful systems, governments of this world, is the idea of self-defense. It is right to kill another person to protect self. But Jesus said:

But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:39–45 NIV84).

The idea of self-defense says that it is right and good, in certain situations, to hurt another—and, thus, with this belief in mind, good people can be manipulated into doing evil that they would never otherwise do. How? By leading them to believe that the evil action of harming another is necessary to protect self or others.

Christians would argue that the most unjust action ever taken in human history is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, as He is the only truly completely and totally sin-free, innocent human. And the ultimate justification used by those religious leaders to justify their rejection and murder of Jesus was:

Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish (John 11:49–50 NIV84).

In other words, the high priest was saying that it is right and good to kill an innocent in order to protect the nation.

Please don’t confuse this act with an individual voluntarily choosing to run into a burning building, or into traffic, or into gunfire to save others, even if they might tell a friend as they do so that it is better for one to die than the many. Such a voluntary self-sacrifice to protect others as Jesus did is the exact opposite of acting to harm people to protect self or what self values.

Fear leads to selfishness, selfishness leads to the desire to protect self, and that causes one to take actions that make one feel safe, secure, and to reduce fear. So, people can be led to collude with evil and act to harm others when they are led to believe a significant enough threat exists that justifies harming a few for the benefit of the many (and, of course, they themselves are included in the many that are being benefited by harming the few). This is how the Nazi leadership seduced the German people to go along with their evil actions—they convinced the masses that a minority was a threat and needed to be eliminated for the benefit of the many.

Real-World Consequences

We saw this play out to a lesser degree during the COVID crisis, where the populations of most countries were propagandized by their leaders to believe that there was an imminent existential threat that they themselves could not see, touch, taste, smell, or feel, but it was creeping around every corner and, if action weren’t taken, it would kill them, their family, and destroy their country. Therefore, they said, it is better to take away freedom, force mandates, shut down schools, restrict travel, prohibit religious assemblies, obstruct visitations to elderly family members, and force experimental medication into people’s bodies—for it was better that a few be harmed than we all die.

Please note, I am not suggesting COVID isn’t a real virus. I am not suggesting that people did not die from the virus. I am suggesting that the fear caused people to be willing to violate the principles of altruistic love and use coercion on others to protect themselves—including violating sacred and inalienable rights.

We see the same dynamic at play regarding climate change. The world is being propagandized to believe the climate is changing in such a way that if we don’t act, we will all die—an existential threat that people cannot see, touch, smell, feel, or taste, so they have to rely on authorities to tell them that the threat is there. And once this threat is believed, it causes good-hearted people to be willing to do evil things to their neighbors, to violate the inalienable rights of free speech, to life, to the pursuit of healthy living, and to use external power to coerce and control to restrict freedoms, all for the so-called greater good.

The only true path of health for the individual and for society is the path of truth, altruistic love, in an atmosphere of freedom. Whenever we allow our fears to lead us to violate these principles in how we treat others, we damage our own minds, sear our consciences, corrupt our characters, and become ever more willing to do evil under the guise of doing good.

How to Resist Evil

We are in a spiritual war, a war for your soul (individuality/self). We are born animated, motivated, by the spirit of fear, which causes selfishness, and the solution is trust in Jesus, opening the heart and being reborn with the Spirit of love and trust based upon truth. God’s method of achieving this is through the truth that destroys lies and leads us to trust. Thus, the Bible states beautifully,

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12 NIV84, emphasis mine).

God’s Word, both written and living, is the word of truth, and truth is to be internalized into our hearts and minds, where it will separate our self, our identity, our souls from the spirit of fear, leading us to trust in Jesus, who is the wielder of the sword of truth. When we have experienced enough truth that we are won to trust Jesus, we open our hearts to Him and He enters our hearts, for He has been standing there our entire lives knocking on our hearts with truth and love (Revelation 3:20), and when we open it, He comes in and begins His divine heart surgery, cutting away from our selves all our fears, insecurities, and maladaptive comfort measures we have been using to protect ourselves and establishing our souls in saving union with Him. We are reborn; we receive His life, as Paul wrote,

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20 NIV84).

We have died to our old life of fear and selfishness and been reborn to a life of love and trust in Jesus, and, therefore, we will stand with those who are ready for translation when Jesus returns, described in these words:

They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death (Revelation 12:11 NIV84).

They overcome by trusting Jesus, dying to their life of fear and selfishness, and being reborn (receiving a new life, “the life is in the blood,” Leviticus 17:11), and the testimony of their life is pure, holy, godly, self-sacrificial love—they would not allow fear to lead them to harm others in order to protect themselves.

I encourage you to go to Jesus, ask Him to finish the work He has begun in you, to fully free your soul from the spirit of fear we have all inherited from Adam, so that when the enemy brings you into situations that inflame fear, that would cause you to hurt another to protect yourself, that you will cling to Jesus in trust and live fully in His truth and love.

Finally, godly love always seeks to save and heal—including our enemies. This blog is not suggesting we let evil people run rampant without restraint. When we love people who are doing evil, we want to intervene in ways that restrain them and give them time to heal, repent, and be saved. So God and godly people will intervene with healthy boundaries, restraints, and consequences, but not focused on saving self or exploiting others or retaliating; rather, it is focused on saving the one doing harm. For more on this, see my blogs Is a “Just War” Possible?, How Law Perpetuates Evil, and The Death Penalty in Old Testament Times.