GOOD AND EVIL

... The conflicts of human and spiritual life do not derive from a simple, two-sided war between good and evil. It was one of the great insights of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) to renew the ancient teaching of the "Golden Mean," of good as the middle way between opposing extremes. Lucifer is too warm, too flighty, too unstable; he inspires human fanaticism, false mysticism, hot-bloodedness, and the tendency to flee earthly reality for hallucinatory pleasures. Ahriman (the inspirer of amoral, atheistic, mechanistic materialism, and the kind of cleverness that goes with it... Ahriman opposes increased consciousness but promotes intelligence and science) is too cold, too hard, too rigid; he tries to make people dry, prosaic, philistine, materialistic in thought and in deed - and hardens what would be healthily mobile, supple thoughts, feelings, and even bodies...

Christ, as the Exemplar of the regular Gods, represents the middle way between the too-much and the too-little, holding the opposites in balance - and leading mankind to find the healthy middle way. Seen this way, Lucifer and Ahriman are not purely evil; they both bring to human and earthly evolution forces that are needed for good, healthy development and the fulfillment of the Gods' plans. Evil results only when events get out of balance and run to extremes. However, neither do Lucifer and Ahriman simply oppose each other; in a sense, they work together in opposition to the Gods' intent for evolution; they both work to prevent mankind and the earth from progressing together to the New Jupiter...

... this is not to imply that we would be justified in doing evil with the rationalization that good would result: "...it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" [Matthew 18: vii]

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