During the early thirteenth century, the Albigensians raised religious questions in the Western world. These questions are still relevant today. The Albigensians were a religious group, one who thought they had answered the theodicy question.
The theodicy is a concept that comes from people of the book. The question is, if there is one God, and he is all-powerful, and good, how is it there is evil in the world? The Albigensians answered this by saying God must not be all-powerful. There are two gods, a good god, and an evil god in a constant battle.
The Albigensians took this to mean the good god must be of heavenly nature, and the evil god must be of earthly nature. Thus all things of material nature are inherently evil, and all things of spiritual nature are inherently good. They were very extreme with this belief, going as far as to condemn pregnant women for bringing a child into this world. The child’s spirit will now spend years trapped in an evil material body.
There can be some truth found in the statement that material things are less-good than spiritual things. That is not to say children are bad, pregnant women are evil, flowers should be killed and no tree should be climbed. There is evil in the world, that is why the theodicy is a question raised so often in the first place. The good there is to be found in the world would never be discovered if not for the human soul and the thought process given to us by the gift of humanity.
The Albigensians spoke in black and white, that is why the world has evil in it, but this is not true, there is no white in the world, nor pure black. White is a paradise some call heaven and others call a dream. The world is made up of every shade of gray. To have too much of any one material thing is never good. To a true pessimist, a sunny day and a tree in the yard is a place where people could be hung and children could die falling from a branch. But there is so much good in something as simple as a tree. To orient oneself to something spiritual (God, self-enrichment, something nonmaterial) is how to find good in things that are material. One cannot be properly good without the other. Priorities the spiritual and the material will be good enough, that for you, life is worth it.
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