Last week, I presented the definition of good, based on your world view. Now, how about evil? Good and evil are parallel to and inseparable from life and death. In Red Pyramid world, whatever keeps me from being happy is evil, most of all other people’s contrary opinions and rules. What is especially evil in Red Pyramid world is any disposition that does not affirm, fight for, and fund my claims to and methods of taking happiness. Here is a powerful source of conflict in Red Pyramid world, where some people call others evil for opposing them, but refuse to consider themselves evil for their opposition to others. People in Red Pyramid world demand a world without evil, which results in burdening everyone and everything else with the task of always, only, ever supplying happiness according to each demanding person’s preferences.
In Green V world, evil simply means the opposite or opposing force, like gravity. Evil is a necessary and unavoidable opposite of good. Light and darkness, heat and cold, thirst and drink, fatigue and rest. There is, at least in theory, the possibility of the opposite or absence of anything good that God created. If life is good, what should we call death? Evil. If God designed creation to work in a certain way, anything that opposes or corrupts that design is evil. The beauty of Green V world is that we have time in a material place in which to learn how good “good” really is and why, and also by experiencing how bad evil really is and why. And all this learning happens within God’s gracious and wise providence, so that all things work together for good.
