Concerning Good and Evil?

These post-Modern Catholic thinkers (Maritain, Merton, Niebuhr) are always trapped by the tightening noose of their own necessary religious structure. When they bump up against the tawny strings of orthodoxy, they always choose to twist themselves in its loving embrace, instead of breaking through from out of their Catholicism into the full expression of their humanity. But always, just before they hang themselves on their faith in the human-created Catholic Church, they say some interesting things about God, life and humanity.
Maritain is shackled to the idea of morality as pre-existent, something that any religious person would be, but an idea that I struggle with more and more. For instance, he avers: “There are objective norms of morality, there are duties and rules, because the measure of reason is the formal constitutive element of human morality.”
Now, this is one of those places where religion and humanity might diverge. After all, if there are “objective norms of reality,” then how the hell are we supposed to know what they are? Is the Catholic Church (or any other religious institution, for that matter), really able to suss out right from wrong, the good, the bad and the ugly, and proffer us a literal and final version of objective reality? This is giving humans an awful lot of power – to look into the soul of God and divine just what, in the Grand Scheme of Things, is “right” and what “wrong,” what “is” and what “ain’t.”
There are many religious paths – Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism – which have a much more nuanced view of “good” and “evil,” in some cases even erasing the line between the two. In these cases, both “good” and “bad” fall under the category of “human actions,” after all.

"Actions Exist," acrylic, ink on paper, 10" x 7", 2007

As this tale about the Sufi saint Rabia stated:
“One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said: I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God.”
Here, “good” and “evil” simply become veils. And, as Dhu’l Nun averred: “Whatever you imagine God to be, He is something different.” Mightn’t this be so for good and evil, as well?
________________________________________
A friend of mine, Colette, had this to say about morality:
“I thought that the best response was perhaps a few words about my bedrock assumptions -- that humans are nothing more than any other creature in the natural world. Different, of course, but no better, no worse, no more part of the divine than sharks or bacteria. I do not believe in a divine spirit, other than the energy that connects all forms of life, and all inanimate objects, past, present, and future.
This, then sheds a whole different slant to ideas of morality-- that it is one expression of human life forms, but no more inherently "important" than the ability to reproduce oneself by mitosis. And so, even as technology increases, and perhaps removes all biological functions from us, it may still be that morality remains the domain of humans. Or, it may be that we surpass such a need, such a state in development -- and move on to another way of ordering the world, that we can scarcely (if at all) imagine.”
If we are willing to open our minds to the extent that Colette has – to move into a truly post-religious worldview, one which eschews even the underlying assumptions of most religions (and approach the conclusion that morality is simply a stage of evolution) – then the idea of “acting” becomes completely disentangled from “duty.” I, myself, don’t know if I can go there – after all, my whole art and thought career is built around working for the common good, and inspiring others to do the same. In truth, so is Colette’s, as she is an environmental theorist who is clearly attracted to undertaking actions and living in such a manner as to be respectful and even positive in her influence on the world.
But perhaps it is simply a matter of perspective. Catholicism tells us that we have to act in a certain manner “or else.” This seems like a position wrought for the infantile. Simone Weil, coming out of the Catholic tradition but refusing (as did other great 20th century Catholic thinkers) to subsume her humanity beneath the proscriptions of the Church), said: “Where there’s a need, there’s a duty.” And the Sufis shared with us this story:
“A Sufi dervish was asked: ‘If you were the lord of this world, and had the reins of divine power in your hands, what would you do, what decrees would you issue?’
‘Oh, my master, if I were in that position, I would have everything continue upon the course that it is presently on. I would never intervene to altar the forces of destiny.’” (Sheikh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani)
I don’t know . . .