"...whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." - John 4:14 KJV
Original sin and the introduction of evil into the world resulted from the Serpent's consummate opposition to God and from his successful maneuver in Eden to plunge humankind into disobedience to God. The Serpent deceived Adam and Eve with a brilliant scheme that only pure embodiment of evil could devise, and we have seen human understanding of evil and good develop precisely as the Serpent intended. The Serpent's highly effective plot spawned the perennial struggle of fallen man, relying on his own wisdom, with the everlasting Word.
The clearly observable direct effects of the Serpent's stratagem today is evidence of the Fall. In Eden, humans were assured by the Serpent that by eating of the forbidden fruit they would be like God. They ate, and believing themselves to be as the Serpent assured, proud humans replaced trust in God with trust in themselves; through the deceit of the Serpent humans believed that they had no need for God since they themselves had become "like God". Also, having become "wise" by eating the forbidden fruit and gaining knowledge of good and evil, humans were led to believe by the Serpent's assurance about being "like God" that their knowledge of good and evil rivaled God's. Pridefully they trusted in the wisdom that they had gained upon eating the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and perceiving their understanding as godlike, replaced God's wisdom with their own. Based on the Serpent's deceit, they deemed their new knowledge of good and evil to be correct and definitive, and humans rationalized sinful disobedience to God, since now as "gods" themselves neither the true God nor His infinite wisdom was of worth to them. They began to worship the "god within".
Even among some professed Christians, evil is understood only with respect to people and not with respect to God. The human-made systems of morality that have developed through humankind's own wisdom reflect clear obedience to only the second of Jesus' two great commandments, which is to love your neighbor, but not to the first Great Commandment, which is to love the Lord God.
Thus, because of the Fall:
In this treatise I will discuss the changeable definition of evil that has arisen because of the removal of the absolute standard of God's Word. In the future, I will discuss the actual reversal of the meaning of evil from its original meaning, facilitated by the degeneration of its meaning as described in this paper; with God removed from language and thought, and with moral relativism irreparably confusing terms, the stage has been set for "standards" to make a comeback, but in reverse. As Isaiah prophecied, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil".
"Evil" was formerly defined, among other ways, as anything apart from, separate from, absent of, in opposition to, contrary to, or against God. Similarly, "good" was once defined as being "of God" or godly. Because most people today have taken the biblical God and godliness out of the definitions of good and evil, indeed out of the connotations of almost all words in English vernacular, the words "good" and "evil" have lost their former meanings and have been opened up to newer, more subjective interpretation.
An obvious consequence to dispensing with an absolute standard in discussion of what constitutes evil is moral relativism. But to truly identify evil, one must necessarily recognize a real standard, a standard that can be trusted in all circumstances, sovereign Truth whose goodness is absolute. As a Christian, I submit that except for the God revealed in the Bible whose Word is absolutely good, there is no real standard by which to label evil, but there are numerous cogent yet illusory standards by which evil and good are assessed. Without an absolute standard, it is impossible to firmly define real evil or real good, and we must consequently rely upon specious man-made measures, or simply dismiss altogether the belief that good and evil are real. Most people opt to do the former, which I describe in the next section, because of the inherent tendency of humans to rely upon their own wisdom, an express consequence of the Fall from Grace (Genesis 3).
Today, the word "evil" hardly retains its erstwhile definition as an attribute of sin which, in turn, once meant a "separation from" or a "falling short of" the glory of God. Sin is another word that has lost most of its former meaning in popular usage. There have been times in history when godly people were continually conscious of God and of their place with respect to God. But there are times in history when God is removed from our vocabulary and from our consciousness, and during these times we see the manifest result of the Serpent's brilliant plot in Eden to deceive humankind and introduce evil into the world.
For the sake of this discussion and in order to avoid misunderstanding that commonly occurs in this sort of discourse as a result of people having different definitions for words, I will stick throughout this treatise to the first definition of evil that I propounded, that is, I will work with the following definition of evil: that which is opposed to God.
Today, people define evil in their own terms and attach the word "evil" to just about anything they don't like or to anything that offends them. Evil is popularly defined as anything unpleasant or harmful to people, whether to the flesh or to the mind.
With man deceived in Eden into believing that he was like God, and armed with the assurances of the Serpent that he is godlike in wisdom and knowledge of good and evil, the seeds of human-centered morality which challenges God-centered Truth took root, and has developed through the ages exactly as the Serpent intended, indeed becoming common wisdom of all Humankind. Man's own reliance of his knowledge of good and evil along with the assurances of the Serpent of man's godly nature have led to the formation of systems of morality throughout the world which render Man as the standard of goodness.
In the Western World, the modern resurgence of the Serpent's lies to humankind began with the exaltation and worship of Human Reason and of "Sovereign Humankind" during "The Renaissance" and, of course, "The Enlightenment". Unwittingly acting on the assurances of the Serpent given to their ancestors that they are wise, knowledgable of good and evil, and "like God" (and therefore worthy of centrality in their man-made moral systems), humans embraced a morality that can be reasoned by human wisdom alone, without God's Word. There is no need to think about His Truths, they reasoned, when Man will do just fine in His place. In fact, humankind, deemed good by nature, has been viewed as a model of beauty and perfection, which is entirely at odds with the biblical acount of humankind's innate depravity.
Because moral codes are man-made (with the exception of God-given Law) morality is relative. Every culture has its own mores, and thus, its own ideas about morality. Morality typically approximates universal truths, as can inferred by the vast commonality that is observed in the moral codes of diverse peoples in spite of great differences in culture. In almost all of them, for example, exist proscriptions against murder. Almost all peoples accept this moral rule. It is reasonable, and thus does not require direct knowledge of the true God to be readily understood. But morality is itself neither absolute nor universal, as can be observed by inevitable differences among systems of moral code.
Nonetheless, there are areas where people of all cultures do seem to agree about what is evil. Let's take a closer look at the modern definition of evil, established with no perfect standard. How do heirs of The Enlightenment define evil? I'll make an attempt at articulating the definition of evil that I believe is popularly embraced today. It is: that which decreases or curtails a person's creature comforts or "quality of life" on earth. Evil is not viewed as a fundamental attribute of acts against God, but is viewed on the basis of outcomes with respect to people. An act, sinful or not, is commonly considered to be evil only when harm to someone actually occurs. If harm does not evidently occur to any person, then the act is frequently viewed as innocent, and certainly not evil. Today, much behavior in which another person is not directly harmed is condoned, even if abominable to God.
The evil of blasphemy is called a mere momentary lapse of judgment in word choice if no person is evidently harmed in its utterance. Conversely, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are called "evil" even though they are not perpetrations of sinful acts with malevolent intent. These and other natural disasters are called evil because they most certainly decrease, or sadly terminate, creature comforts and quality of life for the unfortunate persons affected by them.
The modern worldly definition of evil can be expanded through philosophies of ethics to: "that which reduces aggregate creature comfort, happiness, or quality of life (on earth)." Again, God has nothing to do with this definition and His existence is of no relevance. People define evil only with respect to people, as a reduction in aggregate creature comfort, as unpleasantness, or as anything that gets in the way of quality of life on earth, which the godless insist is the only life. The Creator and any Life beyond the life given by Nature are excluded from consideration.
Most "enlightened" people also do not wish to portray anyone's understanding of evil as better or worse than another's (except with respect to Christians, whose definition of evil is characterized as decidedly worse and patently erroneous, but I will save that discussion for another treatise). It is this logic that has led to moral relativism. People say one to another: "who are you to judge another's actions as evil?" Those who make such remarks also make a good point, although they usually don't realize it: the point is that one person's personal definition of evil can scarcely be shown to be superior to another's. What they miss however, or rather what they reject, is the standard by which evil can be identified, an absolute standard, unchanging, and inflexible: God's.
Today in Western society, evil is popularly defined in terms of opposition to man and almost never in terms of opposition to God, even though sins committed against people are offenses against God. Furthermore, the modern definition of evil has all but lost any connotation pertaining to immorality, let alone the connotation of godlessness. In fact, a person can be morally bad, wrong, wicked, and yet not be perceived as evil unless he causes evident injury or harm to another person. So evil is defined by its outcome rather than by its essence.
Many people, including most Christians, define evil as something that is morally bad, wrong, or wicked. Even though this definition of evil thankfully goes beyond the simple definition of hampering of creature comforts, this definition still excludes God, because even unbelievers appreciate morality and Natural Law. They have adopted human-centered morality instead of God-centered Truths, and it surprises these people that temporal morality and eternal Truths are not the same.
Although "morally wrong or wicked" is a proper definition of the term "evil", I would go a step further and explain that evil is bad, wrong, or wicked before God, not merely bad or wrong before man. Morality today is typically defined, across cultures, in terms of people and personal relationships; it is defined in terms of human or Natural Law and morality, which are not the same as God's Laws (although it often approximates His laws, as manifested by commonality of moral code across cultures).
Heirs of The Enlightenment say that universality of certain moral dicta can be explained by the fact that they are approximations of Natural Law, which can be known through human reason, and they will point to such things as Greco/Roman tradition and the similarities of the Code of Hammurabi with Mosaic Law to defend their point. Yes, rules of morality usually are based on Natural Law, which is why they fall short of God's plenary Law, because God's Law and Natural Law are not completely the same. Although there is extensive overlap between Natural Law and God's Law, the former is always intuitive and knowable through the exercise of humankind's own finite wisdom. But God's Law cannot be known completely except through His divine revealed Word. As anyone familiar with the Bible knows, God's Law is not always intuitive, and is decidedly "unnatural" at times. Usually, the uncomfortable dissonance felt by Bible readers when studying His Law results when it interferes with humankind's own perceived "sovereignty" popularly embraced today. The dissonance can be explained by the fallacious belief held by many people that God must forbear if a man's own sovereignty or "freedom" becomes constrained in any way. In their minds, man is a god, and God and His laws exist to serve and to empower man; they say that under no circumstance should man's sovereignty be limited, jeopardized, or called into question. If anyone or anything stands in the way of a person's desires, comfort, or perceived happiness, then it is called an "evil".
Under this incomplete definition of evil, the Christian looks only to the 2nd of Jesus' great commandments to define good and evil, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31), rather than to both the 1st and the 2nd of His great commandments. Jesus' 2nd commandment is self-evident to believers and unbelievers alike, and goes a long way to pave common ground between Christians and unbelievers. But honoring the 2nd and not the 1st of Jesus' great commandments gives a person less than half of the whole Truth. As an abbreviated message, however, it is a definition of good that is easily accommodated to many cultures and peoples who do not know the true God. Anyone can appreciate truth in the 2nd of the great commandments without ever knowing God because it focuses on people. But the true God transcends the human approximation of Goodness apparent in humanly devised systems of morality, and is the only absolute measure of Goodness, and likewise of Evil.
The golden rule, based on the maxim articulated by Jesus to love one's neighbor as oneself, is self-evident, deducible through reason. But it is less than half the story of what constitutes good and evil conduct. People frequently ignore the Greatest Commandment; indeed, this singular Truth frequently incites hostility among unbelievers. The first and Greatest Commandment is to "love the Lord your God" (Matthew 22:37-38, Mark 12:30). Obedience to this commandment constitutes the ultimate good, and it takes precedence over the 2nd commandment because obedience to the 2nd necessarily follows from the 1st: if you love the Lord your God, then you will be obedient to Him and will therefore love and respect your neighbor, even your enemy. But many people have forgotten the Greatest Commandment, and have selectively focused attention on the 2nd, making humankind central, not God.
Jesus said that upon the two commandments "hang all the law" (Matthew 22:40). If we look at the Ten Commandments given to Moses, we see that the first four commandments expand on the Greatest Commandment to love the Lord God, and the last six expand on Jesus' 2nd commandment to love and respect your neighbor, including your parents.
The last six of the Ten Commandments, like the 2nd of Jesus' two great commandments, are easiest for most people to accept, no matter where they're from or what their religion. These commandments make sense even to those who do not know the Living God. Almost all cultures universally accept commandments 5 through 10 in one form or another, and have contained in their moral precepts parallels to these commandments. Let's review the six commandments that pertain to love of one's neighbor:
(Exodus 20:12-17)
But commandments 1 through 4 are ones that most people have difficulty with. It is 1 through 4 that the LORD is most concerned about, which is precisely why they are numbers 1 through 4, and not relegated to the second part of the list. Let us review what they are:
(Exodus 20:2-10, emphasis added.)
The first four of the Ten Commandments focus on the LORD, and the last six of the Ten Commandments on treatment of one's neighbor.
Because any perceived reduction in personal liberty has been characterized as evil by the wayward, these laws about Truth and God have thus been labeled by them as "evil".
Humankind has taken upon itself god status, so that anything that restrains, hinders, constrains, or weakens a person or people is considered evil, regardless of God's perfect will. Moreover, God is considered a hindrance to "Sovereign Humankind". But as our Creator, God is not subject to the laws that apply to man, and it is consummately presumptuous for man to reduce God to a level (or raise man up to a level) where God is subject to the same laws that govern humankind. However, this is exactly what unbelievers do in their arguments against the righteous and true God. Evidence of man's perception of elevated status above even God is the frequent cry of unbelievers: "If God were righteous, then why did He do (this or that)" or "could a righteous God allow (this or that) to happen? A righteous God doesn't do that."
How do they know? Do they know the mind of God? Is it up to them to define righteousness? Do they decide what is good and evil? Did they write the book on good and evil? No.
By whose standards do the godless evaluate God's justice and righteousness? By whose standards do they conclude that God is unjust, unfair, or nonexistent? They use man's standards. God is unjust based on their own man-made standards, or if you will, their own imagination. They believe they hold all the answers about what is just and right, not God. This is pride to the extreme. The fact is, justice and righteousness are God's, and true and absolute standards of justice and righteousness are from Him, not from the imagination of humans.
When humankind's limited understanding of good and righteousness is considered to exceed God's perfect, infinite wisdom and understanding, it is arrogance of a magnitude that is quintessential evil.
It is God's clear instruction to never harm another person. But people forget that God, by His sovereign and righteous will, can freely take away what He freely gives. Nothing is our own, not even our lives. It is all God's. Yet people through their own pride believe that they are unconditionally entitled to things that are from God, such as health, possessions, well-being, and life itself. These things came from our Creator and belong to our Creator, not to us. But humans have a human-centered worldview and believe that God is here to do things for them, so anything disagreeable to them, even if glorifying to God, is called "evil". They believe God exists to do things for them and they get angry when things don't go the way they want. Worst of all, people have the unmitigated audacity to declare that they are right about what is "good" and "evil", and that the eternal God is wrong.
The fact is God does not exist to serve us, glorify us, or make our lives pleasant and trouble-free. God made us for His own glory, not ours.
We cannot understand all of the things that God does, because we are merely people with limited knowledge. God is sovereign and His justice is absolute. But unbelievers conclude, however, that God is unjust, unrighteous, or that He simply cannot exist. The implicit premise to these conclusions is that their own definition of evil, forged from their own imperfect wisdom, comes first, and then somehow they must try to fit God into their picture of the universe. It is a premise that is unsound. Nobody can force God to fit into this flawed paradigm. With an imperfect definition of evil, God will not fit, and we are left with an apparent paradox that cannot be resolved through human wisdom.
The fact is, God is first, evil is defined by Him, and it is unmitigated pride for people to presume that they know the key to evil and that somehow God, whose definition of justice just doesn't measure up, is not good simply because He doesn't fit humankind's deficient model.
When a person says God is unjust because God did this or that, the person is stating implicity that he knows what is just, and that his own notions about good and evil are superior to God's. Therefore, such a person judges God by mankind's standards of goodness, truth, and justice. Again, this is sheer pride.
The passage in Genesis 3 where humans are told by the Serpent that they "shall be as gods" can never be overemphasized. Fallen humankind's attitude is clearly manifested today. Genesis 3 sums up modern humanist arguments against the biblical God. You can hear the voice of the Serpent - "you will be like God, knowing good and evil" and "you will not die" echoed in the contemporary remarks of unbelievers every day. The pursuit of immortality continues at a feverish pace, with experiments in cloning, genetic engineering, elixirs of youth, and a formidable array of pharmaceuticals designed to overcome, even reverse, effects of age upon the body and mind. Not only do humans pursue conquest of death by relying on their own wisdom, but also they believe that their knowledge of good and evil is supreme and unchallenged, superceding God's quaint "old-fashioned" and obsolete truths about good and evil. Genesis 3:2-6 reads:
"And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate." (RSV, emphases mine.)
True believers know that evil in the world is intimately tied to Man's Fall from Grace. Eating fruit of the tree of knowledge condemned Adam and Eve because they sought discernment in order to be morally independent of God. But previously they had relied and trusted completely upon God for guidance and leadership, and when they did this, there was no evil in Eden or in the world. Indeed, their eyes were opened when they ate of the forbidden fruit, and they received knowledge: an imperfect, rational, human form of discernment of good and evil that is not equivalent to God's own. Although it might approximate God's truths in some instances (for example, humans seem to intuitively understand that murder is evil), it is yet separate from His. By trusting in his own imperfect understanding, man shook off the yoke of God and made himself as a god and the final arbiter and judge of good and evil. But contrary to what the Serpent had promised, humankind's knowledge does not equal God's, even though that is what humans are deceived into believing when they act in fatal pride.
What Adam and Eve did manage to do was to fall from total unquestioning reliance on God's Absolute Truth, and uninterrupted communion with Him, to an abject independent existence relying on a creaturely sort of discernment that their descendents trust and use in replacement of the Absolute Truth. The tragedy is that humans fell from total, unquestioning reliance on God's Absolute Truth to a "godlike" but inferior form of discernment, which today is assumed superior. Simultaneously, the Absolute Truth of God's Word is called "superstition", "darkness", and even "evil".
The Serpent promised divinity to Adam and Eve, as well as knowledge of good and evil, and people today have bought this deception wholesale. But humankind's knowledge will never compare with God's infinite knowledge and wisdom. Still, the desire to be like God continues to this day, and the most arrogant of people insist that their understanding of good and evil is better than God's. They hold God at fault for things of which they have no understanding at all.
The problem is that people have elevated themselves in their own minds to god status. Therefore, as that which is opposed to God's will, His plan, His purpose, His Kingdom, is evil, so that which is opposed to a person's or people's will, plan, purpose, domain, desires, and goals is also evil. And either God has been taken completely out of the equation, or is considered secondary to Sovereign Humankind. By the proudest of people, He is looked at as an enemy.
Nothing I have said in this treatise is new. Almost 3000 years ago, the prophet Isaiah said:
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!"
(Isaiah 5:20-21 KJV)
Ron Blevins
Last modified: May 16, 2003.
For further reading on this topic, go to Word to the Wise (Part I).