It is about evil within goodness, and goodness within evil".
Each session with the exorcist is a battle in the ongoing war between good and evil, with goodness gaining and sometimes losing ground.
Xunzi's most famous dictum is that "the nature of man is evil; his goodness is only acquired training".
This, of course, proposes one possible solution to the problem of evil: all goodness, purity and light comes from God, and the darkness of evil has a different source.
Sometimes Morrow seems inclined to credit the old dualism, despite noting its history as heresy "(Manichaeism, Gnosticism, Albigensianism, and so on)." Seeing evil and goodness as transcendent polarities both reduces human beings to the status of spectators before a cosmic drama and makes them its permanent victims.
In his illuminating book, The Long Road Home: the aftermath of the Second World War, Ben Shephard remarks: "How, in our modern culture – where evil is sexy, goodness is dull, and organised goodness is dullest of all – can we find a way to make organised altruism interesting?" How indeed, within the individualistic I'm-alright-Jack paradigm we are disappearing into?
We have even less reason, in fact, since moral evil outweighs moral goodness more than natural evil outweighs natural goodness.
Consequently, faith is required in order to overcome the dilemma between the existence of evil and the goodness of God.
Bravery, fear, cowardice, love, sadness, indecision, commitment, betrayal, greed, insecurity, goodness, evil, vengeance, regret — we know them all.
Evil was vanquished; goodness exalted and then the soap bubble popped and poured us all back into the world.
