A: These simple and direct statements from the text are the foundation for responding to your queries about evil: "The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there" (T.14.II.3:3,4). This is another way of stating the fundamental principle of A Course in Miracles,found in the Introduction to the text: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists" (T.in.2:2,3).What is true and real is our Identity as God’s innocent Son. Everything else is part of our experience in the illusion, which rises in our awareness when we choose to believe the separation is not only real, but a sin, deserving of punishment. This fundamental belief of the ego thought system breathes life into every thought of evil, pain, hatred, and despair that darkens our lives in the nightmare of "life" apart from God. The dream itself may be considered "evil" in the sense that its source (the thought of separation) is an attack on God and on His Son. The way into the dream is to deny God and our oneness with Him, choosing the illusion of the body and the world instead. Jesus gives us a clear exposition of the ego’s substitution for reality: "Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. They are the "proof" that what has no reality is real. Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more" (W.pII.4.3:1,2,3,4). Not a great place to be. Although it is not real, evil enters the illusion as a haunting force following the mind’s choice to identify with the ego. However, it is a force with no power, because it is an effect, not a cause. That is not to say that once we believe we are in the world as bodies we do not have some experiences that seem pleasant and others we call "evil." This is in keeping with the ego’s endless array of qualifications to differentiate every experience in the dream. We are not asked to deny these distinctions, but to recognize them as the ego’s scheme to make the dream real, and then acknowledge that they are powerless.
As an ego concept, evil is fear’s product. Fearful that God will punish His Son who has denied Him by choosing separation instead of oneness, the Son invents a myriad of evil "monsters" who are out to get him; just as a child believes his imagined monsters are poised to attack: "A madman's dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game" (W.pII.4.4:1,2).
The world filled with evil, fear, sin, guilt, enemies, danger and attack is the madman’s dream. Once we are caught in this thought system, it does not matter where evil lurks, nor in whom. The "good" and "evil" of the ego are the same because they serve the same purpose: to keep us rooted in the belief in separation. "Escape" from this system is possible only by learning to identify with the memory of God’s Love that remains in part of our mind. The paths may be different, but everyone will eventually accept this Love. For students of the Course, it is by bringing every ego misperception to the light of the Holy Spirit’s true perception, allowing His interpretation of our experience in the world to replace ours, that we are gradually freed of the ego’s "evil shadow." This requires only our willingness to see every experience as a projection of the guilt in our minds for having chosen to identify with the ego, as we mentioned earlier.
Though we are wrong about our ego identity, we are not condemned to the punishment of evil forces, nor have we succeeded in changing reality by our mad imaginings: "Correction has one answer to all this, and to the world that rests on this: You but mistake interpretation for the truth. And you are wrong. But a mistake is not a sin, nor has reality been taken from its throne by your mistakes. God reigns forever, and His laws alone prevail upon you and upon the world. His Love remains the only thing there is. Fear [evil] is illusion, for you are like Him" (M.18.3:6,7,8,9,10,11,12).
No destruction honors God. In fact, God does not require that we honor Him at all, but the ego’s God does. And since the ego’s God is a destroyer (T.23.II.7:8; T.26.VII.7), to honor Him is to be like Him. Yet the only possible honor we could offer God would be to accept that we are as He created us; nothing more than that, but also nothing less. The non-dualistic theology of the Course teaches that God does not know His Son as separate from Himself; He is only oneness. Our split minds cannot truly understand this, but we can learn what it is not: it is not fear, evil, or destruction.