The birth of evil?

Well hello there, everyone. It has, yet again, been WAY too long since I’ve written some of my ponderings upon this thar electronic notebook thingee. It has been an up and down few months, between my wife’s discovery that she had thyroid cancer and having a complete thyroidectomy and other, unmentionable problems, I’ve had little time and energy to invest here even after I said last time I’d invest more. Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you.

Anyway, I have been doing my usual thinking about things and I have come to a strange concept along the way. Namely, as the title suggest, at what point in existence did evil first rear its ugly face? Speaking from a Biblical perspective, it seems we, as Christians, like many deep philosophical and theological points of interest, take things for granted and as givens without thinking things through using our own reason. Not to say that reason should replace faith, but rather reason should supplement that faith.

In any event, it seems commonplace to believe that sin first entered into existence upon Adam and Eve eating the proverbial apple. However, that seems to be an easy way out of the discussion. The mere fact that Adam and Eve both had the capacity to sin would seem that sin, itself, as if it were some metaphysical entity floating in space, would have had to existed prior to a human beings capability of committing it. It seems as if it was always there for humanity to take a bite out of, rather than humanity giving birth to it.

I didn’t spend long on that subject, however, before my mind drifted to the larger sense of evil itself. Again, my mind can’t wrap itself around the notion that evil was created, either. Evil had to have existed before Lucifer had the ability to defy God, much like sin had to have existed prior to the apple. So, even though evil is associated with the likes of Lucifer in almost every day common thought, evil itself had to have preceded Lucifer before it could have manifested itself with Lucifer’s actions.

Since evil preceded Lucifer, it seems that the only possibility is that it was created. That thought is repugnant to the mind. How could God create something such as evil? It seems to be the impossible question, such as whether or not God could create a wall that he couldn’t break. To me, though, the answer lies in a different type of creation. The more I think about it, the more I believe that there are two forms of creation: direct and indirect. Direct would be along the lines of God creating the universe, the world, a flower, etc. Indirect creation, on the other hand, is an unavoidable side effect of a direct act of creation and is, therefore, dependent on a direct act of creation. Although it is an abstract example, take the creation of “flower.” Not only does that create the notion of what “flower” is, but simultaneously, in order to fully understand the thing created, the notion of what “flower” isn’t comes into existence. You can’t seemingly have one without the other, or else a person would never be able to grasp any concept in the known universe.

So, existence and creation seemingly, for a lack of a better word, exist as a form and its antithesis. Whether it be a specific cell in the human body or something as large as the universe itself, a thing can only exist so long as its opposite exists simultaneously.

Which brings us back full circle to “evil.” Evil is, obviously, the antithesis of good. Good, however, can only be perfectly manifested in God himself, and God has always existed. So, because God and “good” has always existed, it stands to reason that evil itself was never created: it has always been here as long as God has, because evil has to exist for the sole fact that “good” has always been here. Therefore, I suppose evil cannot even be called an act of “indirect” creation. It just seems to have always been here.

And oh, the questions never stop. If God is the ultimate embodiment of “good,” then it would stand to say that evil is its opposite that coexists. What then would evil actually be? It isn’t an entity like God, or else that would lead to a bi-theistic belief. Lucifer also cannot be that embodiment, because evil preceded him entirely. When taken in the view of what Lucifer tried to accomplish, it seems to make a little more sense to me. Lucifer wanted to become God. It is this that drove him and ended in his fall. So, can evil be described as everything that God isn’t? If so, then another way of putting it is this: the state of evil is the desire to become God because it is a complete antithesis of what makes God who he is.

In that vein, sin itself wouldn’t be a separate entity, but would rather be just another name for evil. Why did Eve take the bite of the forbidden fruit? To gain the knowledge of good and evil and, as the serpent promised, to become like God.

I think that I best end my rambling. I don’t even know if I’m making sense anymore, and if I don’t make sense to myself how can I expect anyone else to see what I am saying? All of these musings, however, have given me a greater appreciation for why Genesis was written the way it was. It makes a little more philosophical sense to me when I look at it the way I do now. I just hope these thoughts don’t get me branded as a heretic by someone…