I doubt you can
watch a movie, a TV show or read a book without coming across some sort of epic
struggle of good vs evil. But where does
this come from? Why should we even want "good" to triumph over "evil"? And it’s
a judgment call that we all make individually, not a societal value.
Translation: it's an inherent part of our nature. We see that good is valuable, something to be
preferred and the desire for it to triumph is so strong in us that we make
movies, books and stories filled with good triumphing.
And that desire,
being such an inherent part of us must have come from somewhere. Being a personality trait - something
personal - it would make sense that it came from the personal first cause of humankind. It makes perfect sense that it came from a
SOMEONE instead of a something. And God
being all good and all holy would be the perfect candidate for this
someone. After all, why would He create
creatures that would hate what He is, and that would hate good?
Another interesting point to note is that there needs to be a bad to
emphasize the good. Would we even know
what evil truly was without it being exposed by its opposite? Could we call anything evil without an
ultimate standard of goodness to measure it up against? Just like we wouldn’t know what light was
without dark, we wouldn’t have been able to truly understand good unless the
world went bad. In the Bible the first
people didn’t know what evil was originally, all they ever had experienced was
good.
Because of this C.S. Lewis said that Dualism (a
good god and evil god warring against each other for eternity) was the only
other view besides the Deistic view (a good God reigning eternally) that made
sense in light of the existence of good and evil. We know evil exists and people that claim
there is no evil become inconsistent when they want to condemn rapists,
paedophiles or murderers. And we can see
the opposite is good. Therefore it seems
to make sense that these two are the most powerful forces in our universe.
But which is more powerful? Are they both mutually powerful? And this is where Dualism falls flat. The two Powers, the good and the evil, do not explain each
other. You cannot accept two conditioned
and mutually independent beings as the self-grounded, self-comprehending
Absolute. But further research shows us
evil is not a real thing at all but
simply good spoiled. Good must be the ultimate and
evil has to borrow from good in order to exist.
There can be good
without evil, but no evil without good. Evil is a parasite. It is there
only because good is there for it to spoil and confuse.
Atheists
must claim that evil does not exist but evil is so self-evident that on the
flip side they use it as an argument against God. “Evil exists, so God can’t exist” which
almost all philosophers discount as untrue, as there is no reason both can’t
co-exist. Also, an atheist must first define “evil.” They cannot use the words evil and good
without assuming God (an ultimate good) is real. “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some
idea of a straight line. What was I
comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” C.S Lewis asked. And rightly, C.S. Lewis when as an atheist needed
to assume an ultimate good in order to say the universe was evil.
There is no
“evil” unless there’s a reason why it came into being. The best explanation given for its existence
is that God gave His creatures free will and thus evil came from there. Evil exists thanks to our state of spiritual
alienation from God, due to both the individual and culminated choice of
humankind (and “angelkind”). As an
atheist must borrow from the theistic explanation to say evil exists at all and
we shouldn’t assume anything without reason, we should rule atheism out as to
explaining the existence of evil.
So now we’ve ruled
out atheism and dualism. But since good
vs evil is such a universal experience of humankind, it would make sense also
if this struggle existed on a larger plane.
And what could be larger than for the fight for the very essence of our
beings, our souls? It should be on a
universal scale and there's only one scenario that truly captures this - God vs
Satan. We are told that this is a
spiritual war in the scriptures and all around us is a battlefield.
The amazing part is that
even though we unconsciously (or consciously) pick sides, we have inherent
knowledge about the outcome to this.
Good will prevail and there’s the inherent knowledge in us of the end
that God wins. Evil doesn't win. Cruelty doesn't pay. There is a just God who is good and we can
trust Him. And all these intuitive
truths about an ultimate good play out in the greatest fiction: in Star Wars,
in Harry Potter, in The Lord of the Rings.
Christianity is the only worldview out there where good truly exists and
truly prevails for all eternity and there’s a reason that resonates with us,
because God put that truth into our hearts.
