A Ramble About Good and Evil

There is popular sentiment that the ability to decide good from evil is one of God's greatest gifts to mankind, and that it is what separates us from the animals. The problem with this sentiment is that it ignores a basic truth of Holy Scripture which is spelled out in the very beginning of the Bible. It isn't an ability we were created with, it is the consequence of an act of disobedience. This fact alone should give someone pause to consider. God considered us “good” without it, and gave explicit instructions to prevent its occurrence, and made clear what the consequence of disobeying those instructions would be. Now the question that should be asked is “why?” The answer should be clear: because it would cause us and everything else harm if it occurred.

The thing we must understand and come to grips with about this ability is that it isn't an ability. It is a malfunction which creates an illusion of ability. In its original, natural state, the human psyche had no need to anchor itself in it's own perception of good and evil because it was already anchored in the continuous present Reality of God. This fulfilled all the foundational needs of emotional and psychological stability and security which in turn fostered and fulfilled the higher needs as well.

When the disobedience occurred (which God gave instruction to prevent) that security and stability was abruptly disrupted, and the human psyche could no longer immediately sense Him. It was plunged into a kind of blindness which causes it to panic, in the same way that a sudden loss of one's most important senses would cause a person to panic. This panic caused it to launch into “survival at all costs” mode and caused it to reach out for “anchors” to keep a hold on what reality it could sense and comprehend. These anchors were the information which it could know immediately about the world around it and itself from the five physical senses. The human psyche, because of this malfunction, had an absolute need to hold on to different concepts and perceptions as either right or wrong, good or evil. It uses them as anchors to keep itself stable, and itself as their arbiter. As a result of the malfunction, unless it is conditioned otherwise, the psyche's first consideration, whether the individual is conscious of it or not, is its own survival (or the survival of anything it sees as necessary to its own survival) and anything which contributes to this is seen as “good”, anything which is seen as working against this is seen as “evil”.

The reality is that the human psyche has no actual idea what is truly good and what is truly evil (being what is best or worst for everyone and everything inclusive of all and exclusive of none), and cannot determine this for itself. There are too many factors that are unknowns to any one individual human being to make that determination, and it doesn't have any natural access to those factors. It's making a best guess based on its limited perceptions and understandings which is why it changes from person to person and even within the same person it changes over time as that person's perceptions and understandings change. Like the person's life is constantly in flux, so also the anchors they use for good and evil are also in flux, whether they choose to admit it or not.

The human perception of good and evil is therefore a product of the sin disorder, which is this blindness to the all consuming, pervasive presence of God. As a result, all of the judgments which we make are subject to our own flawed understanding of good or evil, and are themselves flawed for this reason. This is why it is so important to let go of all our judgments concerning other people in particular, and to only judge ourselves based on who He is. The human psyche tends to see difference as a threat to its survival. If someone does something different from the way the individual in question does it, the psyche reacts and says that they're doing it wrong. Why? Because it must then come to terms with the possibility that it, the arbiter of right and wrong, may be wrong or flawed, which leads it to paradox. Movement through and past the paradox is achieved only by conscious effort.

“I, the psyche, know what is good and am myself my own standard of good and yet by this new information I must define myself as flawed which I am incapable of doing because I must be the arbiter of what is good therefore I must myself be good, but if this new information is correct then I must be flawed and therefore not good...” And on and on it wrestles with itself either submitting to the conclusion (which it doesn't want to do), or rejecting the new information (which it desperately wants to do but may be unable to reconcile with the undeniable reality presented to it).

The malfunction itself is functionally amoral, inasmuch as any psychological disorder is functionally amoral. It is neither moral nor immoral. It just is. The psyche can produce words and actions according to its own standard of good and evil which can be either generally considered moral or generally considered immoral (by majority consent), and feel fully justified in its own reasoning that it is making the “right” decision based on all the experiences and evidence which it has at hand. This is why even actions which can generally be considered moral can be just as much “sin” as are actions which are generally considered to be immoral, because they both stem from the same malfunctioning psyche. It is the malfunction which is the root problem, not the actions, words, or thoughts themselves. For this reason, every human being born since Adam, except One, has been born with the malfunction, and therefore has been born “sinful”. Every decision made, and thus every action performed, is flawed because it is based on the malfunctioning psyche. It is neither morally good nor morally evil per se, it is simply malfunctioning; but it is the fact that it is malfunctioning which causes so much harm even if no harm is intended.

The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and our being joined to Him through baptism, was meant to treat this malfunction of the psyche and start us on the long road to normalizing our ability to relate with God and sense Him, with the ultimate goal of union with Him once we shed this physical body which inherited the malfunction from its ancestor. The psyche must be reconditioned to not trust itself and to trust only the Presence of God with whom it has been joined. Anything we do or say which does not originate with trusting Him originates with our own malfunctioning psyche (Romans 14:23). If it isn't reconditioned in this way, it will continue to only trust itself and it will remain in a self-imposed blindness regardless of its being joined with Him.

The implications of this are profound. First, it is hypocritical for any human being to judge another as evil when every human being, except One, has the same malfunction which produces the same flawed reasoning in everyone. The only difference is how it manifests in each individual. Second, there is no “good” action which a human being can take on his or her own which will correct this most fundamental malfunction. We simply can't fix it on our own, and any attempt to do so is only exacerbating the problem, not correcting it. Third, we simply can't trust our own judgment about what is best for us or for anyone else no matter how “good” our intentions are. Similarly, the further away we get from trusting our own judgment and the closer we get to trusting God's, the better off we will be. Fourth, we must cooperate with Him. This is an absolute. We must learn to trust Him on a real and fundamental level and we won't do that if we refuse to cooperate with Him. If we refuse to cooperate with Him, then we are judging Him to be flawed and ourselves not (1 John 1:10). This is the ultimate delusion.