gregoryfl
11-07-2008, 06:58 AM
Is evil really the opposite of good? Is evil something that is separate from good? If so, then how can it be true that "From [God] are all things", as the scripture says? Does that mean that evil is within God, part of his very nature? A simple piece of paper will serve, I hope, to illustrate what evil is, and how it can indeed come from God yet not be a part of his nature.
With paper in hand, the first thing we need to do is redefine what God means when he thinks of something as good or evil. The Hebrew people thought in terms of concrete things that you could taste, see, smell, touch, or hear. The Hebrew language used sense oriented words. However, words such as good and evil are abstract things; they are thought oriented words.
What is the concrete meaning of good and evil? To the Hebrew, and to God, something good was functional, and something evil was something dysfunctional. In other words, it either could be used as intended, or it could not.
Now, let us go back to that paper. If it is fresh in our hands, and ready to write on, we could say that the paper was good. In other words, it is functional, because it is intended to be written upon and we can do so. However, if we wanted to make that paper dysfunctional, what would we have to do? That's right. Simply crumple it up in a ball in your hands. Now you have a dysfunctional, or we could also say, evil, piece of paper.
This answers the questions at the beginning of this blog. The paper that is good and evil is the same paper. The paper started out good, and then it was made evil by crumpling. Thus, they are not opposites, but the same, just different forms of the same.
You see, when we think of evil in most cultures today, we tend to associate it with wickedness, with sin. Scripturally that cannot be true, for if it were, then you would have to say that God was wicked, and that God sinned. While evil can express itself in wickedness and sin, in and of itself, evil is merely the distortion of good. To crumple the paper is to distort it.
Remember I also asked how could anything evil come from God, since all things come from him? What comes from God is only good, nothing starts out evil from him. Yet, under his sovereign control, he can choose to "crumple" the good when it reaches us and thus it appears as an evil, as something dysfunctional, from God to us.
An example can be found in Job. We know that God wanted to test Job. That was something good that originated from his very being. Yet, in keeping with the paper illustration, God crumpled that good, using Satan to inflict evil on Job, and yet, Job rightly said that evil came from God himself. God also used his friends to further bring evil on Job in the form of accusations. Job was thus tested and God used it to reveal himself further to Job than he already knew. In the end, good was restored and revealed to Job.
Now, let me speak a bit on the purpose of the test, and how that relates to why God bothers to bring evil on man in those ways.
Why does a magician do magic? What does he want you, the audience, to think about him? Yes, he wants you to think something like, "Wow, he is so amazing! How did he do that?" He wants to direct attention to himself, to be in awe of him and what he can do. Of course, this is selfish.
However, consider that God, like that magician, takes that piece of paper, crumples it up, or maybe even cuts it up, so that it is totally dysfunctional, or evil. He is not going to leave it that way, of course, or that would not be a very good show. He turns around, waves his hand, and restores the paper to its original condition! It is now functional again. He has truly turns evil into good. Why? So that "every knee may bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." In this case, God's selfishness means our very life. For it is only when we acknowledge him and commune with him, giving him the praise that he is due, that we truly live and experience all that is good and functional.
Truly out of him, and through him, and back to him, are all things. Life is a cycle. That is how God works. All things out of him are good, some remain good, some he crumples into evil for his good purpose. When that purpose is completed, he restores it to good, and in that condition it returns back to him.
With paper in hand, the first thing we need to do is redefine what God means when he thinks of something as good or evil. The Hebrew people thought in terms of concrete things that you could taste, see, smell, touch, or hear. The Hebrew language used sense oriented words. However, words such as good and evil are abstract things; they are thought oriented words.
What is the concrete meaning of good and evil? To the Hebrew, and to God, something good was functional, and something evil was something dysfunctional. In other words, it either could be used as intended, or it could not.
Now, let us go back to that paper. If it is fresh in our hands, and ready to write on, we could say that the paper was good. In other words, it is functional, because it is intended to be written upon and we can do so. However, if we wanted to make that paper dysfunctional, what would we have to do? That's right. Simply crumple it up in a ball in your hands. Now you have a dysfunctional, or we could also say, evil, piece of paper.
This answers the questions at the beginning of this blog. The paper that is good and evil is the same paper. The paper started out good, and then it was made evil by crumpling. Thus, they are not opposites, but the same, just different forms of the same.
You see, when we think of evil in most cultures today, we tend to associate it with wickedness, with sin. Scripturally that cannot be true, for if it were, then you would have to say that God was wicked, and that God sinned. While evil can express itself in wickedness and sin, in and of itself, evil is merely the distortion of good. To crumple the paper is to distort it.
Remember I also asked how could anything evil come from God, since all things come from him? What comes from God is only good, nothing starts out evil from him. Yet, under his sovereign control, he can choose to "crumple" the good when it reaches us and thus it appears as an evil, as something dysfunctional, from God to us.
An example can be found in Job. We know that God wanted to test Job. That was something good that originated from his very being. Yet, in keeping with the paper illustration, God crumpled that good, using Satan to inflict evil on Job, and yet, Job rightly said that evil came from God himself. God also used his friends to further bring evil on Job in the form of accusations. Job was thus tested and God used it to reveal himself further to Job than he already knew. In the end, good was restored and revealed to Job.
Now, let me speak a bit on the purpose of the test, and how that relates to why God bothers to bring evil on man in those ways.
Why does a magician do magic? What does he want you, the audience, to think about him? Yes, he wants you to think something like, "Wow, he is so amazing! How did he do that?" He wants to direct attention to himself, to be in awe of him and what he can do. Of course, this is selfish.
However, consider that God, like that magician, takes that piece of paper, crumples it up, or maybe even cuts it up, so that it is totally dysfunctional, or evil. He is not going to leave it that way, of course, or that would not be a very good show. He turns around, waves his hand, and restores the paper to its original condition! It is now functional again. He has truly turns evil into good. Why? So that "every knee may bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." In this case, God's selfishness means our very life. For it is only when we acknowledge him and commune with him, giving him the praise that he is due, that we truly live and experience all that is good and functional.
Truly out of him, and through him, and back to him, are all things. Life is a cycle. That is how God works. All things out of him are good, some remain good, some he crumples into evil for his good purpose. When that purpose is completed, he restores it to good, and in that condition it returns back to him.