People change sides, often get corrupted (or, sometimes, repent)

Good and evil are sides in a spiritual war: the sides either for or against God and divine creation. 

People take sides in the spiritual war - and nowadays the two sides are widely distinct, and it is essentially impossible not to take a side. 

But the sides were no so distinct in the past as they are now - because now things have "come to a point". 

Also, we need to remember that people themselves are always mixed; and someone who allies with God will surely be a sinner in the sense of having evil motivations and doing evil; and another person who takes the side against God will, in some respects- even though not overall, be working-with the divine*. 

*(The important Christian distinction is not whether people sin, nor how much they sin - but whether they repent their sins. That is; whether or not they recognize their sins as sins, and spiritually reject them. Ultimately sin is death, while repentance of sin is resurrected eternal life - so repentance means to follow Jesus Christ to Heaven.) 

Plus people change. Nowadays, in the West, people mostly change for the worse; that is, there are many-fold more people who change sides from Good to evil than the opposite. 

And, just as it is never too late to repent and follow Jesus Christ; likewise it is never too late for a follower of Jesus to become corrupted, and embrace expediency in this moral life and world as his de facto priority in life. 

I have seen this so often among friends and colleagues - and especially among human groups such as nations/ institutions/ organizations/ corporations/ churches - that corruption and affiliation with evil are (statistically) normal. 

Indeed the pattern seems almost like an inevitability (which is a reason why I regard these times as terminal, The End: the "end times"). 

What is particularly dismaying is that track-record seems almost irrelevant. 

Someone may have lived five, six, seven decades; or a social institution may be 100, 500, 1000 years old - and remained overall on the side of Good all those years; and yet (over and again) I find that they have crossed the line while my back was turned! 

This happened to many people and institutions and nearly-all of the (previously net-uncorrupted) churches (including "Christian") in 2020. 

 

The overall picture is indeed dire; yet there are other and positive implications less obvious. 

In the past, the line between Good and evil was much less distinct. This applies especially to pre-Christian and non-Christian societies. 

For example, going back some two and a half millennia: I am confident that Socrates was on the side of God; but Plato seems very mixed in his affiliations - and despite the deistic sublimity, much of what Plato said and advocated seems obviously evil-affiliated and corrupting; and the same could be said of Aristotle. 

Even nowadays; there may be great good that can be extracted-from the early work of people who nonetheless ended-up on the wrong side. 

An example for me is Rudolf Steiner. I would not want to be without some of the major insights Steiner attained in his earlier life - indeed I regard these as vital to my understanding. But he became corrupted by power and expediency; and overall Steiner was much-more wrong than right; and he ended up as overall a bad influence. 

I regard this as a frequent pattern. In science, literature, medicine... the areas I know best; there are people who made major and good contributions in their earlier years; before becoming corrupted and enlisted on the side of evil. 

The opposite is rare; and most of the disseminated examples of repentance and conversion are shallow or fake - and nowadays (when the West is a totalitarian and evil-led society) the best-known, most publicized and praised examples of late-life Christian awakening and behaviour, are (almost) certain to be deliberate and manipulative deceptions. 

The genuine article of a corrupt person on the side of evil changing to affiliate with God is rare, but real - and that is what we need to discern, and learn-from. 

As usual, we cannot rely on other people (and especially not on other institutions, including churches) to do this discernment for us. 

We must each discern for ourselves - which is to say, we each Just Are responsible for our spiritual choices - and that responsibility cannot be farmed-out or avoided.   

My conclusion is that we should be discerning and clear-sighted about where people stand in relation to the spiritual war, on what side. 

But we also need to be aware that in the past people were more mixed than they are now, and good and evil not so clearly separated as now. 

And aware, also, that people do change throughout their lives - nowadays usually changing for the worse, and crossing from Good to evil; and such a person's earlier work, dating from an era before they embraced corruption, may yet be of great value.  

All of which is to reiterate Solzhenitsyn's comments about the line between Good and evil lying not between people, but within the human heart of each Man. 

This means that - if we are being strictly accurate - there are no Good or evil people as distinct categories. 

What matters about a person (or institution) is which side they individually have chosen to affiliate-with in the spiritual war of this world: and what matters most which side they are taking here and now. 

Here, now; and Not what side they took yesterday, last year, or 2000 years ago.