Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Good and Evil

Here are three questions I asked a Christian friend of mine followed by his response:

1. How do we understand evil through practical experience?

2. What makes something good?

3. If men can do evil, then can they create beauty / do good things?

3. I cannot think of one thing that man has done where he/she has created something beautiful. That may sound shocking, but what I mean is that anything man creates, whereby I assume you mean some kind of art or fabrication, is only beautiful to another person to the degree you can appreciate another's creativity and expression of that creativity. I've never known or read about someone who could not appreciate the beauty of God's creation, which man has slowly been destroying or manipulating to his advantage. So, that which God has made is beautiful…things that man makes are subject to scrutiny.

2. When men do good things, it's only if they follow God's ways. His ways are always righteous, just, good and true. When someone practices mercy, they participate in the divine way, even if they are pagan. Doing good things doesn't make one a good person. Doing what is good, ultimately, comes from being in tune with God. Jesus always did what was good because he was in tune with His Father; but those around him subjected his words and deeds to careful scrutiny and didn't always agree with who he was and what he did. But Jesus knew that anyone who wanted to do God's will would know that His teaching was from God (John 7). His teaching always promoted what was good, beautiful, righteous, merciful and true. That's why he could tell Pontius Pilot that everyone on the side of truth listened to him.

1. People understand evil as they remain true to their conscience. No matter what tribe you visit, there will be something set up in the social order that corresponds to what is universally felt as evil: Homicide, rape, thievery, adultery, pillage, etc. People have a sense of when injustice and iniquity is committed against them. There is an element of Common Sense to that because we've all been hard-wired to understand something of our universal rights as human beings who respect the rights of others. It's obviously different degrees for different groups of people, so there isn't a hard and fast rule to be applied because different civilizations are complex. But something of the ways of God is always somewhere etched into their existence.

Finally, the existence and power of God is really a mute issue. Unfortunately, not many people know of the mighty deeds God does for His people and the miracles He performs in other countries in the name of His Son, Jesus the Christ, in order to validate His ministry and His triumph over sin, death and hell. Demons surrender to him, Dead men walk, lepers are still cleansed, blind men still receive sight, and deaf men still hear (and I'm not talking on a spiritual basis, though that is also true). God is physically healing and supernaturally restoring people to new life in Jesus Christ. He is letting them experience His power so that they have a testimony to share of the victory in Jesus. Our modern Western culture sees so little of this power because it needs so little of it. We are too comfortable, too intellectual, and too ingenuitive to seek God's intervention. But God is and His power is alive for those who put their trust in Jesus.

Hope this helps.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

The Virtue of Lying

I love Oscar Wilde's essay/ fictional dialouge The Decay of Lying. In it Wilde extols Lying as the art of poets who lie to reveal the truth as opposed to time-servering opportunists (most often politicians, lawyers and their ilk) who lie to conceal the truth. One of my favorite sections is when Wilde comments on the Art of Lying in America:


I think of Eca de Quiroz's hilarious character Raposo from The Relic who announces the need for "the shameless heroism to lie."

Sunday, March 4, 2007

The Nature of Evil

A friend of mine asked what is evil and what makes evil evil. My response:

In seeking to define this term I have first turned to one of the best known authorities on religion the American philosopher William James and his famous book The Varieties of Religious Experience. He writes of two perceptions of evil: the healthy-minded view and the sick soul or melancholy view.

For the healthy minded view he gives Walt Whitman as one of the largest examples:

“…The only sentiments he allowed himself to express were of the expansive order; and he expressed these in the first person, not as your mere monstrously conceited individual might so express them, but vicariously for all men, so that a passionate and mystic ontological emotion suffuses his words, and ends by persuading the reader that men and women, life and death, and all things are divinely good. Thus it has come about that many persons to-day regard Walt Whitman as the restorer of the eternal natural religion. He has infected them with his own love of comrades, with his own gladness that he and they exist.” (p. 85-86.)

He goes on to describe the healthy-minded view of evil in general:


The same sentiment is shared by Hamlet when he says “There is neither good nor evil but thinking makes it so.” Nietzsche seemingly goes beyond this view in his ability to appreciate the role evil can have in bringing about goodness (which is for him power or nobility):

Evil.—Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible. The poison of which weaker natures perish strengthens the strong—nor do they call it poison.

I will only quote the closing remarks of James’ view of the sick soul where he compares it to the healthy-minded view:


…Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beast clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholic feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.


His reply/ opening statement:

Someone asked: "Mr. Webster, what do you consider the most serious thought that has ever entered your mind?"

"The most solemn thought that has ever entered my mind is my accountability to my maker," Daniel Webster

In order to understand what evil is and what makes evil actually evil is first to recognize that we, as human beings, are creations of a creative God who loves us, cares for us and wants us to know Him. He desires this so much that He sent Jesus to die for the sins we committed against God in ignorance and rebellion to what is good, true and right. Therefore, anything that goes against God and His nature is a threat to our being. When humans become the authors of truth and morality we end up making a mess of things...creating chaos and war and destruction. The religious wars of the last 1000 years should be ample proof of this, as well as the theoretical battles that plagued World War I, II and those wars proceeding on account of the Cold War.


The Idea for this blog came from several discussions I have had (and am having) with a friend I hadn't seen for years who I met up with at his brother's wedding. A few more people are joining the discussion and so I am recording our debates here. I'm sure this conversation will broaden out into many other topics.