**What Is the Knowledge of Evil? And What Are Its Harms?**
**What Is the Knowledge of Evil? And What Are Its Harms?**¹
Not all knowledge is beneficial for everyone. There are kinds of knowledge that may negatively affect a person’s life, as they defile his mind or heart, implant false feelings within him, and may develop into committing error…!
** When God created man, man was pure and simple, knowing no evil at all… then he began to err and to know evil. However, his knowledge of evil was limited. With the passage of time, his knowledge of many evils increased. At present, many sources have appeared that lead to the knowledge of evil, including some information transmitted by the internet and computers, some satellite channels, magazines and media outlets, films of excitement, films of violence and sex, some pornographic books, and the spreading of criminal means. We add to this what Satan suggests of thoughts and tricks…
** The knowledge of evil may lead the weak to fall. As for the mature, this knowledge leads them to protection from evil. Spiritual guides, fathers, and leaders benefit from this knowledge in teaching our children how to stay away from these evils, showing them their harms and bad consequences. Likewise, any person who has fallen through the knowledge of evil tries to be cautious so as not to fall again…
Thus, this knowledge may give some people experience and wisdom, especially vigilance against sins that come in sheep’s clothing while they are ravenous wolves…
** But the danger of the knowledge of evil comes from its influence and attraction that lead to practicing it. An example of this is a woman who desires to have children and comes to know news about organ banks and the fertilized ova they contain, whereby she selects from them an ovum to be placed in her womb, carrying what she wants in terms of the desired child’s appearance, height, and the color of his hair and eyes. While she has no right to have placed in her womb a fertilized ovum from a man who is not her husband, resulting in her having a child of unknown father, and she being merely a carrier and not a mother. Undoubtedly, this is an evil to which the knowledge of evil has led…
** Likewise, among the knowledge of evil is attempting to contact spirits through hypnosis, using an intermediary who is under the control of the hypnotist to summon a “spirit” whose reality we do not know!!
Also attempting to know the future through palm reading or cup reading, or through stars and horoscopes. Unfortunately, there are many who believe in these unseen matters and take them as a means of knowledge and practice them, even in agreeing to marriage, by making sure whether the fiancé’s horoscope and traits are compatible with the fiancée’s horoscope or not?!
** The knowledge of evil may teach a person where sin exists, how to practice it, and also how to cover it up and escape responsibility for it!!
We do not mean by sin merely the sins of the body or the senses of various kinds, such as knowing smoking, for example, and drinking wine, and knowing the methods of addiction and its substances that destroy the brain or damage the body.
** Rather, there is other knowledge that concerns the mind, such as doubts.
Not only doubts about the sincerity of a friend or the fidelity of a wife, as a result of information that reaches the mind and tires the mind and heart.
But even more, knowledge of doubts related to religion and doctrine through deviant sects that spread their doctrines, or through those who distort teaching and spread their own ideas, or through some atheistic philosophies.
** And the knowledge of evil may come to adults through their investigations into the mistakes of others, or while solving problems, where each party throws responsibility on the other, explaining the evils he commits or the evil intentions within him…
** There is also false knowledge that comes through lovers of this knowledge and those who seek it to satisfy their lusts for erroneous knowledge.
** Among the knowledge of evil is a person’s knowledge of what people say about him (I mean his enemies), which chews up his reputation, especially what is called backbiting, which is said in his absence, and what this knowledge leaves within him of distress and of a bad relationship with others.
** Among the knowledge of evil also is knowing methods of fraud and deception. Among its examples are methods of cheating in commerce, and worse than that, cheating in medicines and cheating in foods in a way that leads to harming health or leads to death.
** Among the knowledge of evil also is knowing methods of cheating in examinations that students may learn from one another. There are students who are experts in this field. It once happened that a student entered an examination having written a large part of the syllabus on a small piece of paper. When they caught this with him, they placed that paper in the college museum because of its astonishing precision, and the student was punished.
** Among the knowledge of evil is knowing types of methods of theft, especially bank theft, or trickery to obtain loans from them without guarantees, then traveling abroad to escape repaying the loan. Or stealing a house in the absence of its owner, by the thief using a Master Key and not a bunch of keys as cartoon images portray. Among those deeply involved in theft are those who specialize in opening safes.
** Among the knowledge of evil also is knowing how to evade responsibility, and perhaps at the same time how to pin it on others. Thus evil becomes two evils. One of the strange things is that the one who does this sees himself as skillful despite the duality of the evil he commits, and he is also pleased with what he does. An example of this is a chairman of the board of a company or a bank who steals a large sum of that institution’s money, and if the theft is discovered, he tries to pin it on an accountant or a treasurer, and he comes out innocent and honorable!!
** Among the knowledge of evil is knowing kinds of “clever trickery,” and means of deceiving superiors through methods of hypocrisy, false praise, or ostentation…
¹ An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III published in Al-Ahram newspaper on 23-3-2008.
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