Does Good Always Win?

(3/10/22)

Does good always win in the end? Is the story already set?

Growing up Catholic and reading the Bible religiously - pun intended - I always felt that the ending of the story was set with the good guys winning. Just recently, I started questioning that and wondering if that is just a fairy tale that we tell ourselves to keep ourselves positive as we go through life.

Since I now believe and understand the universe to be a constantly shifting pendulum or a wheel of time, with the constant rise of evil and rise of good, fall all of evil and fall of good, where does the actual end of the story take place? It could happen at any moment in those times of good or evil.

Do we know if the story will actually ever end, or does it go on for eternity? When the story ends, is it the end of the universe or just the end of our micro piece of it? If the world does actually end, how do we know it will end with the good guys winning? Maybe it will end because the bad guys won?

On a smaller scale, think of the people who died during bad times throughout the earth’s existence. Famines, wars, depressions, natural disasters. To the people that died during those times of the earth's existence, it was dark or evil times. To them evil prevailed at the end of the world.

Is there a macro story where good wins that’s made up of micro stories where sometimes evil wins and each of our lives is a micro story that might end good or might end bad? Or does the macro story never end as in time being a wheel? If the macro story is a wheel of time, then it would have no beginning and it would have no end and good would never win because winning implies an ending to the story.

If the macro story is a pendulum swinging, it could perhaps have an ending, but that ending would be when the pendulum was down which would be at the point where good and evil were equal in the universe with neither one having won. It would be an equal amount of good and evil at the end of the story. So, neither good nor evil would win in that scenario.

Though not directly about good and evil and being a horrible movie overall, the second Matrix movie had a very interesting take on exactly what I’m talking about. (Spoiler alert if you haven’t s seen any Matrix movies.) In the second movie Neo is in the big room where the creator of the matrix is sitting with all of his computer monitors. Neo and him have a lengthy conversation about ending the matrix but the short version goes something like this. Neo says he’s “the one” and is going to destroy the matrix and free humanity. The creator agrees and then goes on to explain even more. The creator says the Neo will destroy the matrix, but then the machines will rise up again and build another matrix and enslave humanity. Then humanity will have another “the one” who will rise up and free humanity from the matrix. The machines will rise again, and the cycle will continue. The creator explains that Neo was not the first “the one” and that he won’t be the last “the one”. The cycle of humans rising over the machines and machines rising over humans has been going on for (in the movie) hundreds of years and will continue for hundreds more. That movie may have actually planted the seed in me, all those years ago, about how the universe operates.

If you think of the story as your journey to the final level of existence, then you could say it will end with good winning. Every time a body dies, the spirit carries on. That spirit ascends to a higher level of consciousness/existence, hopefully. (Souls can descend to lower levels but ultimately the path is to work your way up and I believe that every soul has the chance to do that.) Eventually, the soul/spirit ascends to the highest level of consciousness/existence, and they experience nothing but ultimate love, peace and joy. That is definitely good winning. So, all of the micro stories that occur over the years of evil people doing evil things and evil seeming to win, are just chapters in the book of the universe which will ultimately end with all of humanity as one with God in ultimate peace, love and joy.