Evil

Don: In some ways, the death and the resurrection of Jesus embody the concepts of good and evil. Following the parable we have been studying, Jesus made the observation recorded in this passage:

As Jesus was about to go up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and on the way He said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.” (Matthew 20:17-19)

The concept of evil and the question of how a good God could allow so much of it to exist in the world are among the arguments most often used to deny the existence of God. The prevailing view is that evil is all around us and that we are only one catastrophe away from being overwhelmed by it. A newspaper headline the other day, over the story of a boy murdered while riding his bicycle, read: “We live in a troubled world.” Such stories are indeed easy to find.

And yet, for every story of evil there are probably hundreds or thousands of unreported stories of goodness. The very survival of mankind depends upon goodness outweighing evil and upon systems to restore order after evil introduces disorder and chaos, and by a significant margin. While some people do indeed flee from a disaster to save themselves, many will run toward it to lend a helping hand.

Scripture frequently puts good and evil side by side, beginning in the Garden of Eden and extending all the way through to the Book of Revelation, wherein the earth is made new and the good ultimately triumphs over evil. In simple terms, according to scripture, the world of evil is ruled over by Satan, the devil, the fallen light-bearing angel Lucifer. The world of goodness is ruled by the archangel Michael (whose name means “the one who is God”):

And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying,

“Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” (Revelation 12:7-11)

This language is rich in symbolism, and the contrast between good and evil is stark: Whatever is of Satan is evil; whatever is of Michael is good. Good and evil are not just the absence of the other. Each is a manifestation of the power behind it—God and Satan.

Evil figures strongly in the temptation of Christ, though we usually study the story from the perspective of temptation rather than of evil:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command His angels concerning You’; and ‘On their hands they will bear You up,
 So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him. (Matthew 4:1-11)

Note, first, that a retreat into solitude for meditation and prayer can result in an encounter with the devil and not just with God. As an insight into temptation, the passage can be enlightening but also discouraging.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

Not stated—but usually implied by the church—is that if Jesus can be tempted, hungry, depleted, without the resources to resist yet remain strong, we should be able to do so as well. How demoralizing, then, that many of us are unable to resist the allure of a doughnut or an extra scoop of ice cream, not to mention life’s bigger temptations! The argument persists that although we may not be able to resist with our own power,  we can call upon the power of divinity to help us overcome temptation. That we fail in this so often gives the grounds for discouragement and sometimes despair.

But from the perspective of good and evil, the story perhaps tells us more about whose side we are on than about the issue of self-control. The first thing the story shows us is that evil is opportunistic. It preys on our depletion, on our fatigue and hunger and loss of emotional resources and shortness of temper (whose root  is shared with the word “temptation”). They leave us vulnerable, and evil is ever ready to take advantage.

In the first temptation of Jesus we find the first definition of good and evil, with evil being self-reliance and good being reliance on the grace of God. Evil is not doing bad deeds—making bread, as the devil suggested Jesus do, is hardly a bad thing—but in these circumstances is self-serving and self-reliant. The word of God is nothing less than the logos:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:1-5)

The temptation story has within it some startling anthropomorphisms. The picture of Jesus being led around the wilderness then back to Jerusalem and then up to the pinnacle of the temple, up to the highest mountain, suggests strongly the extreme to which Jesus was willing to go in order to reveal to us the concepts of good and evil. The idea that we should see a story with such an arduous runaround as an encouragement to resist temptation as Jesus did seems a stretch.

Matthew provides a second definition of evil from the story:

Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command His angels concerning You’;
and
‘On their hands they will bear You up,
So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6)

In this definition, evil slyly attempts to get us to get God working for us. This is not faith—it is magic. It is not good—it is bad. To be sure, God is powerful enough to save us from harm, disease, loss, privation—and from ourselves, and perchance he might do so but has no obligation to do so. To test him in this way is evil. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego evidently thought so, when they…

… replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16-18)

God is not in our service, we are in his. To predicate one’s faith on whether God does what we ask him to is to test God and to be in alliance with the devil.

The third definition of evil is worshiping the creature rather than the Creator:

Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” (Matthew 4:8-9)

Paul elaborated on this definition:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. (Romans 1:18-25)

Worshiping the creature is self-worship.

Self-reliance, the demand for God’s power in our service (the expectation of magic), and self-worship, then, are three definitions of evil found in the temptation story.

Goodness is the opposite of evil. It is centered on God. It is defined by grace and not by works. It is putting ourselves into the service of God, rather than putting God into our service.

Jeff: I find it interesting that the temptations of Jesus did not involve deeds that are in themselves evil. One thinks of deeds that break the Ten Commandments as evil deeds. The third temptation could relate to the Commandment forbidding worship of other gods, but the connection is not all that direct.

Donald: To me, there is a relationship. The Ten Commandments ultimately are talking about not being selfish. “Love thy neighbor”, for example, is an admonition to unselfishness. Evil is selfishness.

Jeff: If good and evil are not simply the absence of the other, then I think there has to be something in between, something neutral, in which neither is present.

David: I agree. It seems to me the prohibition on eating the forbidden fruit was not just an either/or choice between good and evil. It offered a third option: Amorality, which is akin to the Daoist nothing of “Doing Nothing.” Good and evil are irrelevant—even nonexistent—in an amoral world, and that is apparently the state God would prefer us to be in. Jesus came to us as a man, therefore he was fallen, therefore he had eaten the forbidden fruit, therefore in his manhood (as opposed to his Godhood) he had some ability to discern good from evil—flawed, but enough to know that the things he was being tempted to do were not in themselves evil. Rejecting the temptation was as much an amoral as a moral response. It seems to me we are enjoined to disregard issues of good and evil because we are incapable of judging, and instead are expected to focus solely on God. By definition, of course, that means one is focusing on goodness! I don’t understand it, but it seems that God prefers amorality to our flawed view of morality.

Robin: It doesn’t matter what Satan told Jesus to do. All that matters is whether Jesus listened to him—or listened to the voice of his Father instead. The crucial issue was not the types of temptation but obedience and allegiance.

Rimon: Much depends on the mindset of the individual. What I might consider to be legal, others might not. It comes down to conscience. Some people are harder on themselves than others. Without some bad we would not recognize the goodness of God. According to the Bible, it was not God’s intention for us to know both, but if we didn’t, how could we appreciate God’s grace and goodness?

David: The Bible also says that having eaten the forbidden fruit we became like God, able to discriminate between good and evil. But it also says our knowledge is flawed in some way. How can this be? Or are we back to the middle ground where good and evil merge into amorality?

Jay: It’s one thing to know something exists; it’s another to understand it. Ignorance, as we had before the Fall, is bliss. But whether we could appreciate goodness in that state seems doubtful. In any case, where we are now is in that middle ground where we know of the existence of good and evil but lack a true understanding of them. That’s why we have a field of ethics—to help us distinguish.

David: The problem is we are using our intellects to try to figure it out and to create categories (morality, immorality, amorality), but our intellects are not the source of discernment of good and evil. The source is the inner light. When the chips are down, this is what tells us unequivocally what is right and what is wrong. There is no grey area. So our understanding of good and evil is flawed only at the intellectual level. But it is not true of God, the inner light. Therefore I suppose the Bible is maybe not contradicting itself here. We understand good and evil spiritually through the inner light, but not intellectually. We are both flawed and we are immaculate! It’s a question, as Robin said, of allegiance—which side do we turn to for guidance? To the self, or to God?

Jay: Does obedience/allegiance then tie into the concepts of good and evil?

Jeff: What troubles me about that idea is that, the way it written, the implication is that Jesus was able to identify the Devil. So that made it a clear choice, to obey the Devil or God. The Devil took on the voice of God by quoting scripture, but Jesus saw the speaker’s true identity. If we fail to identify the speaker as the Devil, then we mistake him for God.

Robin: I don’t think Jesus had an advantage, especially given his weakened defenses having been fasting for 40 days.

Jeff: But most of us probably could not have made the same choice he did in that state.

Donald: It seems to me we are having several discussions—about deeds, about loyalty, and about the value of moral discernment. With regard to loyalty: The Tree of Knowledge was really about choosing obedience over selfish curiosity. With regard to discernment: We can only distinguish smooth because we know what rough looks like. Sin was not part of God’s original plan. If there were no sin, would goodness be discernible?

Jay: To me, that’s why we should not be in the business of trying to discern. The mortal human brain can only understand things based on their differences. It is incapable of understanding concepts without comparing and contrasting those concepts against existing knowledge it holds. Because it is eternal, the mind of God does not need to store, analyze, and categorize knowledge.

Our brains are bound to make mistakes of discernment. Much of Jesus’s ministry was spent pointing out such mistakes.

Robin: Adam and Eve were created with childlike faith. They knew goodness in the sense that they knew God. But they did not know evil.

Jeff: So they could not have identified it.

Robin: Sometimes, I suppose, ignorance really is bliss!

David: Their knowledge of God was not the intellectual identification of goodness.

Jeff: It was just a matter of their proximity to God.

David: God is the I Am. The goodness that just Is. If that is all that appears to exist to those next to it then there is no need for discernment because there is nothing else to discern except goodness. Adam and Eve had absolutely no need to eat the forbidden fruit—there could not even have been a Tree of Knowledge—unless in fact evil was present all along. There must therefore be an I Am Evil, as there is an I Am Goodness. Adam and Eve were totally unaware of the presence of the I Am Evil until the serpent piped up.

Robin: They had childlike trust in God.

Donald: So should we even be bothered to engage in this discussion, intellectually stimulating as it may be, or should we just accept the way things are with childlike faith in goodness and let it go at that? God makes it very clear that the child is more likely to understand his will than adults are. We get bogged down when we try to intellectualize these things. Adam and Eve were told not to eat of the Tree and did so, so it was an issue of loyalty and trust.

Rimon: Eckard Tolle wrote:

In that sense, it is true that there is nothing you can do to become free of the ego. When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego’s cleverness begins to operate in your life. Emotions and even thoughts become depersonalized through awareness. Their impersonal nature is recognized. There is no longer a self in them. They are just human emotions, human thoughts. Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, becomes of secondary importance and no longer occupies the forefront of your consciousness. It no longer forms the basis for your sense of identity. You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.

—A New Earth, pp. 116-7.

Don: Sounds like the inner light!

Rimon: Things go wrong when we start letting our mind interfere with it.

Donald. We have come a long way from talking about works, to talking about good and evil. We are taught by society that both exist, but why not just focus on goodness? What’s the value in talking about evil, in knowing what it is?

Anonymous: Know thine enemy!

Donald: As Don remarked at the beginning of this discussion, human nature is attracted to evil. We can’t seem to just walk away from it.

Don: Why is that?

Donald: Is it because we are sinful?

David: We are also attracted to goodness, which explains the countless acts of goodness we see (or not!) every day. We are attracted to the inner light and will usually heed it when the chips are down, when disaster strikes; but if we allow our intellect to get a word in edgewise, we do the commonsense thing: We smother the light and head for the safety of the hills instead of staying to help our fellow in need. The inner light has no hesitation, and we will be doing the right thing to follow it no matter what.

Jeff: It appears that the childlike amoral state is the preferred one. It seems to have been part of the divine plan before the Fall. When we teach children good from bad we are imposing upon them the responsibility to do the impossible: To discern. The curse that we live under is that discernment exists; that we have changed from the preferred amoral state to the unwanted state of discernment. In the world as seen by our tiny brains, we are expected to discern using that same tiny brain. That’s why this is not heaven; why there is struggle and toil. The heaven to which we aspire is in fact a state of non-discernment, where the lion lies with the lamb but there is no morality in that.

Robin: Is the curse discernment, or the need for discernment?

Jeff: Either way, discernment and the responsibility to discern is the issue.

Donald: Up to about age 5, we really don’t have discernment. We generally just listen to and respect our parents. It’s really a nice place to be! There’s no right or wrong. Adulthood complicates things.

Don: As a young child, you do more or less what you want to do, and what you do and what you are expected to do are almost identical. But after age 5, they begin to diverge.

Rimon: When we follow the inner light we are at peace, but when we follow our intellect we are troubled.

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