If proof is wanted that Jesus’ Ministry was not the recipe for Law and Order, or for political harmony between Nations, the German Wars of the 20th century are as good a proof as one could want. When twice within thirty years a civilised, Christian, nation sets out to conquer the world, and manages in the process to destroy European civilisation, something is wrong. Jung was the first person to suggest that the 1914 War was not really about the lack of colonies or trade outlets; but was due to the Spirit of Wotan being brought to life again in the spirit of the Teutonic peoples. And this was achieved, though Jung did not say it, by Bismark in his three nice little wars, which created the German Empire, and which allowed Germans to think that War could solve all problems. Clausewitz had suggested that War was “political intercourse by other means”; Bismark practised War as the alternative to political intercourse, when it suited him to do so. What is the point of pacifism in this situation? It leads straight to capitulation. And it raises the question: who let Evil into the world anyway?
The only possible answer is that God created a world in which Evil was not only possible but necessary, because He chose to create Man through the Evolution of Nature, a process in which natural selection and survival of the fittest must have played a significant part. So killing and death were an inseparable part of life from the start; and when Man began to have some intimations of his relationship with his Creator, murder made its appearance as well. That lovely fairy-story of Adam and Eve recognised that God placed in Man’s way the insuperable temptation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and when Man inevitably fell, he was expelled from the garden. But to make sense of that story, we should bracket it with the story of the murder of Abel by Cain. They were not stories about the origin of Evil, which to the Jews was a mystery; they were stories to illustrate the great moral lesson: that if Man severs the bond with his Creator, murder follows. From ancient times men have recognised the nearness of the Creator. In the 30th Chapter of Deuteronomy, as Moses is described talking to the Children of Israel for the last time, he tells them that the word of God is not in some remote heaven, nor far away beyond the seas, but very close to them, in their lips and in their hearts. To their eternal credit, the Jews have for long recognised that God, if He exists at all, is very close to us indeed. The psalmist expressed it by saying, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. I cannot attain unto it”. In the modern world, which worships Success but is not disposed to worship anything else, even the symbolism of arm-waving, which I regard as ridiculous, in evangelical churches is surely an intimation in the soul that the spirit of God is in our beings, not something outside ourselves? In psychological language, if you disagree with your inmost self, you develop mental problems; if you split with your inmost self, you develop psychosis. The religious person would say, “What did you expect?”