Spirituality of good and evil is descussed from the Christian Orthodox Tradition perspective and its implication in personal, family and community relationships presented with illustrations from the Bible.

Spirituality of the ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’

We read about ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in the Bible. We hear the use of these words in religious and non-religious circles. We use these words frequently – in assessments of others or situations, in discussions, and especially during arguments. Yet, what is the biblical understanding of ‘good’ and ‘evil’? How are we to follow the ‘good’ while remaining away from the ‘evil’? How can we apply this understanding and sense of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to our life? In order to comprehend this, we need to understand the spirituality of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’

The Biblical Perspective. Let us use a few examples from the Bible as illustrations. At the very beginning, we read that God created the various aspects of the universe, and at the end of each it is said: ‘And God saw that it was good.’ [Genesis 1:10, 1:12, 1:18 . . .] What does ‘good’ mean? It means that God saw that His creation was living and helped in sustaining life. If a creation was not living and impeded life, then it would not be ‘good,’ it would be ‘evil.’ This is the biblical understanding of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’

In the Garden of Eden, God did not want Adam and Eve to taste of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. [Genesis 2:17] Why? Would you let a two year old play with a box of matches? Would you let six year olds sit on a jury to decide whether a person ought to be sentenced to death or not? All these seem obvious. Yet, if God allowed the human being greater powers, He would have done exactly what we would consider ludicrous – like placing six year olds on a jury for a life and death decision. God realized that the human being needs more time, experience, and maturity in order to have the wisdom, compassion, and patience to know that which is ‘good’ and leads to life, as opposed to that which is ‘evil’ and leads to death.

Here for example, a key understanding of ‘killing’ arises. St. John Chrysostom, among other Saints of the Church, has exhorted the faithful not to give wild animals a bad name by likening evil human beings to ‘wild animals.’ Why? Because he points out, animals kill other animals because of their nature. For example, an animal kills a smaller one in order to eat that animal and be nourished. If an animal, such as a lion, is not hungry, it will not kill another animal. Thus killing by an animal for the sake of nourishment is not ‘evil.’

However, the human being does not have to kill another human being. That is not part of his or her nature. However, when a person kills another, others cannot quickly and simply condemn that person either. Instead, they must consider the spirituality of the situation – what was done, thought, and intended. A representative example of an evil act from the Bible is that of king David when he took Uriah the Hittite’s wife Bethsheba to be his wife. [2 Samuel 11:1 ff] David already had many wives and could have taken any single woman in his kingdom for a wife. Yet, he chose to have the wife of one of his soldiers who had no one and nothing else in life other than his wife. Perhaps this is an excellent illustration because David attempted to accomplish this secretly. He asked his general to place Uriah in such a situation in battle so that he would be killed. Although David may have fooled all human beings and justified his actions in his conscience, but he could not hide them from God or fool Him. In God’s perspective king David had committed ‘evil’ because he caused death of an innocent person for his own personal benefit.

Discerning between ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ This is a rather difficult issue to discuss, not only here, but in many volumes of books or even lifetimes. Why? Because of two reasons. First, only God knows the true intentions of people. St. Paul clearly points to the complexity of the issue: "Everything is permissible but not all is good!" [1 Corinthians 6:12] Thus, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ cannot simply be generalized into categories and listed as in an encyclopedia.

Second, human beings can know the true intentions of fellow humans only after a period of time. Let us for example take the life of Christ. For many of the Jewish leaders, the preaching of Christ, and especially people’s belief that he is the ‘King of the Jews’ appeared very dangerous. If it persisted, the Romans would have destroyed the Jews. In fact, the Chief Priest said: ‘It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.’ [St. John 11:50] Let us consider this from two perspectives. When the Father sent Christ to die in order to save humanity, Christ agreed to it willingly, and in the meantime, God had the power to resurrect Christ. The Chief Priest who condemned Christ to death, and did not seek his willingness and had no power to give life. The Chief Priest had no authority to put Christ to death! Thus, what God did in sending Christ was ‘good’ but what the Chief Priest did was ‘evil.’ No one at that point in time could discern what was ‘good’ or what was ‘evil’ in the case of Christ. If anything, the action of the Chief Priest may have been praised as the ‘good’ one. It is only decades later that his actions were seen by the Christians as betrayal of God. Therefore, only God can judge whether one’s intentions are ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ But, we as human beings need to be patient until we know of another person’s intentions.

How do we strive for the good while staying away from evil? As we described above, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are rather nebulous and hard to define terms for us. Therefore, simply stating ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ is not a simple matter. On the one hand, we can try to uphold the Ten Commandments, and based on those we can claim that we are doing ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ However, upholding these Commandments in intent as well as behavior is impossible for us. Only Christ was able to accomplish this: ‘Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.’ [St. Matthew 5:17]

So what do we do in our life if we cannot perfectly uphold the Ten Commandments? First, we uphold the ‘image’ of perfection in our life, because then we are upholding the ‘image’ of our Heavenly Father. Here is an example of how we accomplish this. Often we see people around us lying, cheating, and stealing. Do we go on saying and teaching others that the ideal way of life is to get what you want at any price, even if it involves lying, cheating, and stealing? Or do we still uphold honesty and sincerity as the ideals? If we accept and teach others that lying and cheating is the way of life, then we have joined those doing ‘evil.’ If we teach others to be honest and sincere, then we help in maintaining life in this world and actually do ‘good.’ Of course, this is a simple illustration, and life is more complicated than that. But this is a place to start.

Second, it is not enough to simply have the ‘image’ of God in us. We need to also strive to make that image real in our everyday life and relationships. This is the ‘likeness’ of God in us. Very often we come across people who say they uphold the ‘image’ of truth and justice, but we find out that they are hypocrites – they tell us what to do and then they do just the opposite. They say one thing and do another. This is probably one of the worst ‘evils’ in Christianity. For this reason a whole chapter in the Gospel according to St. Matthew is devoted to condemning the hypocrites. [cf. Chapter 23] Instead of hypocrisy, we need to strive with heart, mind, and soul in everything that we do, to uphold the ‘image’ of God in us and "be perfect as [our] Heavenly Father is perfect." [St. Matthew 5:48] ‘Perfection’ we will discover is not necessarily that we are errorless, but rather we do our utmost to uphold God’s ‘image’ in our life by living a life based on the ‘likeness’ of God as shown by Christ. As we accomplish this, we will discover that we are gradually growing in the spirituality of ‘good’ while remaining away from ‘evil.’

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