WHAT SEPARATES GOD AND PEOPLE WHAT SEPARATES GOD AND PEOPLEIn every love relationship there are things that conjoin the two, that bind them together, and that help them to become more and more intimate in the communication of thought and love.
There are also things that can separate the two, and drive them apart, until they are enemies. Here we come to two religious terms that have been around for many ages: evil and sin.
Let us first define. Evil is every act that separates human beings from God, or one human being from another. The Lord never wants to separate Himself from any human being. He never loves Himself more than others. He never does anything that is evil. In this He never fails and is always victorious.
Human beings are in a different position. They are in freedom to either
love the Lord and the neighbor as themselves, or to love themselves and
material things above everything else. If human beings love themselves
more than others, their selfish actions separate them from others. These
separating actions are evils. So all evil is from human beings, none is
from God. We all commit evil. We are born with a tendency to commit evil.
But sometimes we commit evil and we do not see it as evil. When someone
brings it to our attention, we are surprised. We find it hard to believe
and it takes us time to see the light. Such actions are evils, but they
are not sins. We commit a sin if we commit an evil, and we know it is an
evil. We know we should not do it, but we do it anyway. Evils that we do
not recognize as evils may harm the love relationships we have with God
and others, but they do not destroy them. But sins separate us from God
and other people, and destroy the love relationships we have with them.
The Lord PERMITS evils and sins, because He loves our freedom. He does
not love these evils and sins. He hates them. But He never punishes anyone
for evils or sins. He only attracts us to heaven. If we are not in heaven,
it is because we did not want to be there. More about permissions later.
