Reconciling the SPEs (4) Bad not Evil

Most English translations of the Bible refer to “evil spirits”. That translation is a bit misleading. The Hebrew expression is “raah ruach” (1 Sam 16:14), which means bad spirit, rather than evil spirit. They are spirits that have gone bad by listening to the wrong voice, rather than being inherently evil.

The New Testament expression is “akathartos pneuma”. The adjective coming from the Greek word “kathairo” means to be cleansed. The King James Version was closer to the truth when it translated this as “unclean spirits”. The best modern translation is probably “impure spirit”. These spirits have been lured over to the wrong side, so they are bad or impure. They are not inherently evil, but have become bad.

Learned Evil
Bad spirits have learned most of their evil from humans. Cain taught them how to kill and destroy by killing his brother. They learnt how to deceive and lie when Adam blamed Eve for giving him the fruit. Bad spirits learned how to do intimidate and control people by watching men use their physical strength, emotional force, and threats of rejection to control their wives. Others learned how to manipulate and control by watching women use their emotional understanding and skills with words to manipulate their husbands. Most evil was created first in human hearts. The bad spirits copied what humans did and became skilled at it.

They had worked with God to create the animals and plants of the earth. Once they had learned from Cain and other humans that living things could be destroyed, they used their knowledge to set about destroying God’s creation.