Good and Evil: part deux

Sorry. Opening day at camp happened, and now I'm back to finish my thoughts.

If we look at John, then we see a reason to view the darkness as evil.

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood^[a] it.

Yes, this is a metaphor, but the parallels to Genesis have to be intentional.  At any rate, the point is that in tbis passage, the light, which in Genesis was good, has now been personified. The darkness has also been personified, and the action it takes is misunderstanding the light. So perhaps the darkness mentioned in Genesis was bad after all.

Supposing I am reading into John too much, then the first mention of evil in the Bible comes in Genesis 2:9

9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

From this verse we know at least 2 things (I'm sure others could tell me 100 things). First, that evil existed before mankind. Second, that evil has existed long enough for there to be knowledge about it, a history of evil.

What does this have to do with kids?

I cannot think of a time, when I did not think of the world in terms of good and evil. All that I know is that kids at an early age know the difference. Do we learn that each exists, or are we born with the knowledge? Ever since Adam didn't man up and tell Eve that eating the fruit was a bad idea, those two had the knowledge of good and evil, and their offspring, us, have been cursed. Are we born with this knowledge, or did we learn it?

Comments

[Jason]

Interesting thoughts Jim. Thinking about good and evil I remember the verses in Matthew that go something like: 'Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.'

A two year old doesn't need to be taught to do bad things. What it needs is some instruction on how to be nice and kind to others. I think that we are all born with that heart knowledge of both good and evil.

If not for Christ and his life-giving Spirit we would all be left to die in the dust.

[David Dalrymple]

One of my favorite talks is Donald Millers Rez week talks. He talked about the genesis story in several of them. I buy his ideas that God had to put the tree there to give us a choice. We choose wrongly and sin entered us. But I am curious about the devils role in that whole process. When the devil was an angel did he have a tree up in heaven that he ate from. It's like the fall behind the fall.

I like what you said though about evil always having existed in our creation.

[Drew Leatherberry]

I would tend to agree that evil existed from early on. Contrast is the word that comes to mind. Good vs. evil. Light vs. darkness. How does one know good is good without evil? How does one know light is light without darkness? Or, at the very least, with free will, there must be the capacity for evil and darkness in order for good and light.