The Tree of Life and the Perpetual Battle with Evil

The Tree of Good and Evil 

     Recently I had a conversation with some friends whilst looking at a great tree high up in the mountains. That conversation led to the tree of the garden of Eden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As I tried to conceptualize what it would be like to walk in the garden unashamed of my nakedness, unblemished by sin, I found myself thinking about evil itself, and then trying to conceptualize goodness alone without evil to oppose. I haven’t seen the Kingdom of Heaven and I do not truly know what unopposed good is like. I think of the great, dreadful and beautiful final battle of good and evil. Aroused are images of the armies of middle earth marching against Sauron, of Luke standing against the empire, or of allied forces fighting to the last man against the Nazi monstrosity. For me it’s only natural to think of good and evil through these images, after all we humans make understanding of truth through stories. 

     As I think of evil, even despite my sheltered life a flurry of atrocities flash through my head; I think of horrible wars, of devastating genocides, of tyranny and of corruption and their repetition in our world unanimously throughout our history. The presence of evil in our world is not only plain to see but vast in strength and commonality. It seems that every year there are countless new atrocities committed by man against man as they have been for time in memoriam. I wait with baited breath for the return of the kingly Christ, a conqueror on his steed of white with sword ablaze coming with passion to vanquish all evil and darkness from our world. I know the day shall come when the serpent shall be crushed by the heel of the son of man, but I cannot help but wonder why this deliverance has not yet come, why it must wait? I cannot resist the painfully present thought; how can he wait and watch so much evil flourish and often win, why not come as soon as possible? There are several answers I believe. 

     When I think of great battles of good and evil, I imagine a knight in armor fighting a great and wicked dragon and (perhaps pridefully) of a correspondingly aesthetic internal battle within myself. There can be no doubt that heroic bravery and sacrifice are the most virtuous of acts; however, I often forget the problems with that image. Firstly, I assume that I am the valiant knight in the face of evil, more often than not I may be a coward in hiding or an underling to such beasts. Furthermore, we must remember that the beast itself is not always an external foe the knight must slay; it was us humans not Satan who spit on, taunted, tortured and murdered Christ himself. 

     Furthermore, there is no great battle between Christ (the ultimate knight) and Satan. In the battle of light against darkness there is never any battle, it is the flip of a switch (or better yet the opening of a curtain).  As soon is true light is unleashed upon darkness there is no contest. So too will Christ instantly decimate all evil the moment he chooses. So once again I ask, “why continue to allow evil to exist” ? 

     The only answer must be that God allows it, and the only reason he does so is for our own sake. Wrapping our heads around this is difficult; how can it be that our living in a world with evil is better than one without it? The fact that our loving father allows evil to persist must mean that we are better off in a such a world (at least for now). 

    Firstly, I believe if God were to unleash the true totality of himself we would be washed away as the dark parts (or majority) of us was decimated. We are proud to assume that we would be amongst the saved and not the vanquished in such a coming. 

    Secondly, and far more importantly is the good we do in response to evil. It is true that the highest goodness, that of God, is pure and unopposed. However, since we are not a triune deity we are not capable of goodness solely within ourselves we need others to be good to and this comes most naturally by our repulsion to and of evil. This idea of goodness, and the fighting against darkness can perhaps be demonstrated by another image. The good of God is like the light of the sun, it is awesome and infinite and self sustaining (this is not to get into any scientific fusion based allegory which I am not capable of), the good of us is like that of a candle. The light of God fills any room with so much as a crack open completely, our light seems to be battling against the darkness because of its weakness.  By this image it may be easier to come to understand that in darkness our light may shine brightest, we are capable of doing (shining) much more good (light) in a world (room) without the full goodness of God (the sun). 

(That was tedious, I apologize)

        To me this line of thought does raise a question about the nature of fighting evil; are we to fight evil or to be good more primarily. As a jui-jitsu, superero loving man I of course am drawn to the romantic (pride serving) fighting of evil. Our world is full of many powerful men who are true heroes and who are without a doubt good men, men who abolish slavery, resist tyranny, and save lives by physically fighting evil. But I often forget that I am not the son of man who shall crush the snake, I will not, can not, could never stop evil; muchless in myself than even outside of me. This brings me back to our great teacher, Christ, who said to follow his ultimate example, not king David, nor prophet Isaiah, nor Abraham nor Moses but his.  

     Our example, the example of Christ, is our path to righteousness and justification. I likely forget this because there can be no story more tragic than his. Jesus suffered the deadly betrayal and abandonment by his best friends, he was tortured by those people he came to save, and he died a painful, shameful death for sinners in front of his mother, and he deserved none of it. That is our example of how to fight evil, our calling and salvation is not to reform corrupt government, or to bring peace to the world, or any untold invention or “progress”; Jesus was no doubt capable and his world needing of each. And while fixing the world is near the highest calling and a noble pursuit, it is in the always end futile. Our fight against evil is not quite so knightly as I thought it would be, and no doubt that reluctance is my pride.  I find myself forgetting that Jesus did not give his life to fixing the world, he gave it to save it. 

      This human desire for and natural struggling for a peaceful, and happy world may well be the longing for Eden but its application is Luciferian. Often in the quest for equality, peace, flourishing and freedom, we in our sinful pride create tyranny, poverty, slavery, and death. We claim to be searching to destroy evil and often we have no right.  One needs only to look at any Soviet, Nazi or Maoist “Utopia” and see how they root out “evil” with such murderous success. We cannot fix this world; we can only bring as many with us to the next. 

    There is a reason the darkness always seems insurmountable, that is that God gives us the greatest load we can bare so that we can be the greatest men we can be. This is the meaning in the darkness and so too in our time in this often dark world. The greater the darkness the greater the light shall shine. 

     Finally, we must remember that as we sacrifice, we give up ourselves to something higher, and what we give up is no part we want to keep. Sacrificing for this world is giving up the lusts and pride of our sinful mortality and giving them to the Lord so that in the next we may not be burdened by them. Justice will come and it will be swift and violent, we must only pray that we have good enough in us to survive its purging from within us.

“Whoever fins his life shall lose it, and whoever for my sake loses his life shall find it”