Question 4: Good and Evil

What is the nature of good and evil?

At first glance, you might think you can answer this question. You might say that obviously, murder is evil. But there is really a lot more depth to this question. For example, why is murder evil? That's what the question is really asking. It's not asking what actions are good and what actions are evil, but what it is about these actions that makes them one or the other.

I've had several thoughts on this, but I know I don't have the answer quite yet. So I'm answering this question today not so I can give you the one correct answer, but to show you where I'm at in my own thinking. And honestly, this applies to the rest of my posts, too. You can choose whether or not you want to believe me -- I'm just showing you where I'm at in the hope that it may somehow help you.

A book that I read recently made me want to try answering this today. I first started thinking more deeply about this three years ago when I first read Confessions, by St. Augustine. But the book I read recently that prompted this question for my blog was The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. In this story, Dr. Jekyll makes himself a potion that will transform him into a being of pure evil, namely, Mr. Hyde. In order to change back to the form of Jekyll, he must drink the potion again. One twist I found interesting, though, and one which I think many people who have not read the story do not realize, is that although Hyde represents pure evil, Jekyll does not represent pure good. Jekyll does have good in him, unlike Hyde, but it seemed that when he transformed into Hyde, he basically lost whatever good he had temporarily. As the story progresses, it becomes more difficult for Hyde to transform back into Jekyll, until eventually he is stuck as Hyde.

One reason I have trouble explaining the idea of good and evil is that if you say that both good and evil exist, where did they come from? Based on Genesis we know that God created everything and saw that it was good. But then sin and evil entered the garden when Eve was tempted, and she and her husband ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But did God create evil along with good? Because if He did, then there must have been evil in Him, as well, for it to have come from Him. But this is completely contradictory to God's nature. If God were evil He would not be God. So since God could not have created evil, how then did it come about? I would have to say that evil is a perversion of the good that God created. Take the sin of gluttony, for example. We were given good things to be enjoyed so that we praise God for them, but a consumption of good things to the point where your focus is on the object and not on God makes the desire for the thing evil.

Now back to Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll said in the story that his motive for creating his potion was that he could not stand living with two warring sides existing within him: one desiring good, and one desiring evil. Thus, he wanted to separate the two so that they could more fully exercise their desires. Instead, his potion fed the evil within him and made it stronger. What I do not agree with here is his belief that evil is somehow equal with good and that it should be allowed to thrive along with good. I would say that although sin is powerful in its hold over our hearts, God's grace has conquered it so that it does not have the same sway over us as Christians. Of course we are still tempted, but with God in us, we are made able to become more like Christ. Ultimately, although evil is strong, God's goodness is infinitely stronger.

What I do agree with, and what I think should be a warning to us all, is that as tempting as it may be to give in to evil, doing so only allows the evil more power over us. Giving in to evil does not do away with evil, as much as we might want it to. The only way to be rid of it is to accept God and grow more like Him--to fill ourselves with good.