The Difference Between Good and Evil

 Even when many religions, beliefs, and understandings clash, there is one thing we can all agree on. Some things are good, and some things are not good. Virtually everyone you talk to would agree that the concepts of good and evil are real. Helping the poor is good. Murder is evil. Stealing is bad. Hard work is good. Etc. etc. No one is going to say that harming a child is ok. It does not matter what they believe in. Whether God, Buddha, or nothing at all, everyone is going to at least agree on that point. And we enforce this idea of good and evil. We make laws and restrict behavior to keep people in check and coinciding with this ideal. The main difference is how to determine what exactly is good and what is evil. How can you tell the difference between the two? What determines which laws are enacted and which are redacted?

Man is by nature sinful. He will act in his best interest whenever possible. He will lie and cheat and steal to survive, even kill. People need restrictions. They need laws to stop them from having free run of their actions. They need to control their behavior and not simply give into their desires. Laws are a complete necessity, without which society could not function. So how do we determine what they are? How do you see the difference between good and evil? Many people would say that logic and reason determine the difference. They say that by applying these two things one can tell which is which. But human reason is fallible. We change laws all the time. Divorce is legal now, it was not legal in the past. Which law is more correct and how do you know? What determines that the current law is better than the old one? Because it is more convenient? Clearly not because convenience is not connected automatically to the right thing to do. And it is not just the laws themselves that are contradictory. Carl can claim he is completely enlightened, and has discovered the mysteries of good and evil. But Bob has also declared this, and he has different views than Carl. So which one is right? What makes Carl better than Bob or vice versa? Who is to say that one knows better than the other? By what standard can we compare them to to find out? In the end it comes down to power. Carl has a gun, bob has a stick. Hence, Carl's laws are passed and Bob simply follows them because he can do nothing else. If logic and reason determine good and evil, then by extension, “might makes right” must be correct. But people do not want to live this way. They do not want the guy with the biggest gun to win. And there is also the potential problem of said guy deciding that, for instance, theft is legal. Reason and logic, while widely used, are not the best tools to determine good and evil.

So what about the Christian route? We determine good and evil based on the Bible. Because it comes not from man, but from God, it is an objective standard. We can determine what is right by comparing the action in question with the law laid forth by the Bible. We can say this is good and this is bad because it is written thus. It's not a matter of one limited mortal and another arguing, it is a comparison to a definitive standard. God is sovereign. He knows the difference between good and evil far greater than we do, his standard is objective and not clouded by sin. So why is this not the method of choice? Well many people do not believe in God and the Bible. The Bible is objective because of the belief in God. If you do not believe in God, it is simply the words of a man against other men. For many it is the same problem as before. If reason is fallible and the Bible is rejected, how do we decide what the law should be? In the end, people simply reject the idea the good and evil are knowable. They simply state that we can only know what we can prove, and that we will never know everything. Laws are then determined in a selfish sense. I do not want to be murdered, so I will make murder illegal. I do not want to be tied to a person I do not love, so now divorce is legal. This is currently how many laws are made. People decide laws based on what they want protection from, and the freedom to do. It becomes less about good and evil, and more about desire and want.

-BlackFox

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