Evil Parasite
If God is good and everything He created is good (Genesis 1.31), then God did not create evil. What, then, is evil, and where did it come from? The answer is simple: evil has to be a good that has somehow “gone wrong”. This is consistent with the opening chapters of Genesis.
In Genesis 2.18, God says “it is not good that man should be alone”. In the midst of the creation process where everything has been good, the Spirit of God speaks this sour note about a lack of goodness. It is not that there is an outright evil, but that there is a sort of void—a gap—that needs to be filled before God can finally declare His entire creation “very good”. He fills that gap, that aloneness, by creating a woman.
But God proposes that she be created for the man—fitted perfectly to him—to be his helper. In other words, there is something (or things) that he cannot do without her. She completes him, and without her, he can’t accomplish the calling given him by God.
As I noted in the last installment, a chief characteristic of goodness is that a thing does what it was made to do. Being deprived of its ability to do that is not good. God doesn’t call it outright evil, but He does say that it is not good—being incomplete.
It is not that “not-goodness” is a separate entity that exists on its own. It is rather a distortion or privation of the good itself. The creation was good. Adam was good. But there was an ingredient missing—the woman—that deprived him of being what God intended him to be, and that lack deprived the creation of being what God intended it to be.
That initial hint about non-goodness shows up again when the man and his wife stand before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are tempted by the serpent. The first mention of the tree was Genesis 2.17 in the sentence immediately before the statement that it was not good for man to be alone. The man is told not to partake of that tree and that in the day that he does so, he will surely die.
God had created nothing evil; there was only good. And yet God speaks of the possibility of the existence of evil. Both good and evil, and the distinction between them, can be known. Presumably eating the tree would give such knowledge. That God can speak of such knowledge would indicate that He has it—and that would make such knowledge, in and of itself, good. That God prohibits man from having it would indicate that man’s possession of it would not be good. It is a knowledge not intended for man.
Genesis 3 confirms these ideas. The serpent’s temptation is strange because he uses truth—good things—to lie. He uses God’s words, but reinterprets them, giving them a meaning other than the meaning God intended.
God had said “in the day you eat of it you will surely die.” The serpent said they would not surely die (3.4). This was true in the sense that they did not immediately expire, and not dying is a good thing. (Theologians usually argue that a different kind of spiritual death occurred in them that day.)
The serpent said their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good and evil, all good things. God confirms that these points are true (Genesis 3.7,22). Their eyes were opened to their own guilt of being disobedient to God’s commands—and they experienced shame. It was an experience of real evil.
Evil was not merely a being or entity equal and opposite to the good God. Rather it was the distortion, the twisting, the misuse of the divinely created good in ways and toward ends that God did not intend those things to be used. As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, “Goodness is, so to speak, itself. Badness is only spoiled goodness…Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.”
Consider how this works out practically. Because every evil has within it a distorted good, temptation focuses our attention on the root goodness and ignores or distracts us from the distortion of that good—which is the evil. Most people who end up doing evil believe that they are doing good because they are focused on the grain of good that has been distorted. For example, we don’t talk about killing the unborn; we talk about a woman’s freedom to choose, women’s healthcare, and reproductive freedom. We don’t say “I abandoned my marriage or family”, but “I needed to find myself” or “to be free” or “to be happy”. We don’t say that we slandered someone but that we’re just “keeping it real” or “telling it like it is”. Evil is always some form of distortion of good.
God can’t distort His own good will because He only wills goodness. Evil arose, not from Him, but from other beings that He created—beings that are not Him—beings created with freedom to choose (a good thing)—who choose to reinterpret, distort, and misuse the good things in ways or toward ends that God never intended. The serpent did so and so did the man and the woman who obeyed him rather than God.
Because evil is a parasite upon good, disentangling evil from its good “host” requires discernment—sometimes very fine-tuned discernment. It requires knowledge of the hidden details of hearts and minds that only God possesses.
In my experience of life, I have found that God’s throne of judgment is too big. I cannot comfortably take a seat there. But the first man and woman left us with little choice. The need for discerning wisdom is a necessary part of our life. We must do our best knowing what we know of God’s wishes to figure out good and evil, though we often find that our best falls short of His glory.
That’s why we need God’s grace to forgive us and His wisdom to instruct us.
In Genesis 2.18, God says “it is not good that man should be alone”. In the midst of the creation process where everything has been good, the Spirit of God speaks this sour note about a lack of goodness. It is not that there is an outright evil, but that there is a sort of void—a gap—that needs to be filled before God can finally declare His entire creation “very good”. He fills that gap, that aloneness, by creating a woman.
But God proposes that she be created for the man—fitted perfectly to him—to be his helper. In other words, there is something (or things) that he cannot do without her. She completes him, and without her, he can’t accomplish the calling given him by God.
As I noted in the last installment, a chief characteristic of goodness is that a thing does what it was made to do. Being deprived of its ability to do that is not good. God doesn’t call it outright evil, but He does say that it is not good—being incomplete.
It is not that “not-goodness” is a separate entity that exists on its own. It is rather a distortion or privation of the good itself. The creation was good. Adam was good. But there was an ingredient missing—the woman—that deprived him of being what God intended him to be, and that lack deprived the creation of being what God intended it to be.
That initial hint about non-goodness shows up again when the man and his wife stand before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are tempted by the serpent. The first mention of the tree was Genesis 2.17 in the sentence immediately before the statement that it was not good for man to be alone. The man is told not to partake of that tree and that in the day that he does so, he will surely die.
God had created nothing evil; there was only good. And yet God speaks of the possibility of the existence of evil. Both good and evil, and the distinction between them, can be known. Presumably eating the tree would give such knowledge. That God can speak of such knowledge would indicate that He has it—and that would make such knowledge, in and of itself, good. That God prohibits man from having it would indicate that man’s possession of it would not be good. It is a knowledge not intended for man.
Genesis 3 confirms these ideas. The serpent’s temptation is strange because he uses truth—good things—to lie. He uses God’s words, but reinterprets them, giving them a meaning other than the meaning God intended.
God had said “in the day you eat of it you will surely die.” The serpent said they would not surely die (3.4). This was true in the sense that they did not immediately expire, and not dying is a good thing. (Theologians usually argue that a different kind of spiritual death occurred in them that day.)
The serpent said their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good and evil, all good things. God confirms that these points are true (Genesis 3.7,22). Their eyes were opened to their own guilt of being disobedient to God’s commands—and they experienced shame. It was an experience of real evil.
Evil was not merely a being or entity equal and opposite to the good God. Rather it was the distortion, the twisting, the misuse of the divinely created good in ways and toward ends that God did not intend those things to be used. As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, “Goodness is, so to speak, itself. Badness is only spoiled goodness…Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.”
Consider how this works out practically. Because every evil has within it a distorted good, temptation focuses our attention on the root goodness and ignores or distracts us from the distortion of that good—which is the evil. Most people who end up doing evil believe that they are doing good because they are focused on the grain of good that has been distorted. For example, we don’t talk about killing the unborn; we talk about a woman’s freedom to choose, women’s healthcare, and reproductive freedom. We don’t say “I abandoned my marriage or family”, but “I needed to find myself” or “to be free” or “to be happy”. We don’t say that we slandered someone but that we’re just “keeping it real” or “telling it like it is”. Evil is always some form of distortion of good.
God can’t distort His own good will because He only wills goodness. Evil arose, not from Him, but from other beings that He created—beings that are not Him—beings created with freedom to choose (a good thing)—who choose to reinterpret, distort, and misuse the good things in ways or toward ends that God never intended. The serpent did so and so did the man and the woman who obeyed him rather than God.
Because evil is a parasite upon good, disentangling evil from its good “host” requires discernment—sometimes very fine-tuned discernment. It requires knowledge of the hidden details of hearts and minds that only God possesses.
In my experience of life, I have found that God’s throne of judgment is too big. I cannot comfortably take a seat there. But the first man and woman left us with little choice. The need for discerning wisdom is a necessary part of our life. We must do our best knowing what we know of God’s wishes to figure out good and evil, though we often find that our best falls short of His glory.
That’s why we need God’s grace to forgive us and His wisdom to instruct us.