Wrestling Archangels

Some have suggested that if bees in a hive were taught ethics then the bees would all die. The theory of this is that a lack of selfish interest caused by ethical compassion would result in a failure of the bees to compete. Likewise, it has been proposed that the bees could not live without a central sense of ethics, or, at least, something very much like it. The theory in this case is that a natural ethical harmony of nature supports, in some manner, the bee’s internal nature. Abandonment of this nature would mean a failure to act in concert and a consequent failure to compete successfully for life.

Are ethics and nature at odds or are they one and the same? No one really knows for sure. Some guess that we are born to kill and some guess that we are born not to kill. Who really knows?

From a selfish and personal point of view, it seems that we would all want to be healthy and rich. We wish to excel in the competition for the things of life. At the same time, though, who doesn’t wish to be wise and good?

We place high value our security. And, why shouldn’t we? We are aware that if we were to fail financially or physically, then we would be less able to do generous things; by being too generous, we might eventually be limited in our ability to help others. We have an interest in preserving a secure base in order to remain good and generous.

There is a lot more to it than this, though. Regardless of whether we find it necessary to choose between wealth and goodness, should it ever come to that, we like to experience a dynamic life; a static life is not so satisfying. Variety is the spice of life and competition presents a wealth of variety. Many of great wealth compete largely for the sport of it.

There are so many possible great and subtle forces in life’s equations that we might find them intersecting in bewildering complexity. They might make a spider’s web out of ordinary life. Desires within the web might cause us to do very bad things. At some point we might need to decide, in an attempt to escape, whether or not to cross a threshold--a threshold, some would say, of evil.

At this threshold we might evoke the age-old question: Where is the profit in gaining a world and losing a soul? It is for each of us to decide what we want from life-- what is good and true and our relationship to it. Most of us don’t receive so many choices--there never seem to be enough choices for most of us. A few of us receive too many choices, though--enough choices to create a great crisis of conscience.

What if we were to receive all choices? What if we found ourselves facing an infinity of one thing and an eternity of another? What would we do then? Is this where the question can ultimately be answered--at the threshold of absolute evil?

Standing at this threshold, we would look out from our limited world of time and space and its desperate competition. We would look into an eternity of compassion, where pure ethics abides.

Angels would be there to encourage and to help. They might cajole or possibly even try to coerce. The angels would not easily be resisted. Most of us would wrestle with these angels a while. We might find that these angels are archangels.