The Struggle Between Good and Evil

I've been reading some C.S. Lewis lately and also Christian fiction novels by Ted Dekker. Almost all of Ted Dekker's novels have focused on the central theme of good and evil, especially the Circle Trilogy novels: Black, Red and White. I've always found this subject fascinating and a bit confusing. My original thoughts were, like many, that God is good and perfect and made us also as good and perfect beings. Therefore, even though we have free will to choose evil, we all begin as innocent children who are innately good. I believed that as infant souls, we are still very close to God because prior to birth, our unborn souls were with God and at birth and early infancy, still so close to our recent separation from God, we are, by nature, good beings with the capacity to choose bad. Not that we are born perfect, but that we are essentially born sinless, perhaps incapable of not eventually falling into sin, but nevertheless sinless at birth.

Now, I'm beginning to believe more that the original fall into sin by Adam and Eve left us all "doomed" to be sinners from birth. While I cannot logically see a newborn infant as a sinner, I'm not sure that it matters. We live in a world that is ruled by fleshly, not spiritual, desires. The environment of the world we live in, hugely separated from the spiritual realm in which God resides, and heavily influenced by the selfish arrogance of satan, makes sin an inevitability no matter how "good" we may have started out. This makes it impossible for us to return to God's presence on our own because God's pureness cannot be tainted by the presence of sin and His righteousness demands that sinners be punished and completely abolished. This is beginning to sound really hopeless!! But we have to remember that God created us originally in complete perfection and without sin, but in His ultimate love and fairness gave us the choice to love and trust Him or to abandon and doubt Him. We chose the latter by listening to the great deceiver and liar and believing that God was keeping some great thing from us. God, our Creator and the One who loves us more than anyone ever could was completely heartbroken by our lack of trust and faith in Him. Determined not to abandon us to our just fate of death for our sins, He created a plan to save us from ourselves. He came and lived among us as one of us, tempted daily by the same fleshly desires of this world as we and He did it perfectly without succumbing to sin, and then allowed Himself to be killed, a perfect sacrifice to attone for all the sins of the world past, present and future. That is a beautiful love story. Never before has anyone and never will anyone love us that much.

Dekker's books, like Showdown, remind us of how tragically lost we all are, of how easily we are led down the path of lies and deception by worldly pleasures, and how utterly incredible it is that we are forgiven for our intolerable and unappreciative behavior. We are so fortunate to have such a loving, giving, merciful and forgiving God above us. So many in this world believe that this world is all there is, and in so believing they give undue value to this world's principles. Colossians 2:8 says "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ". For many years, I believed in many of the pop spiritual beliefs that abound in our world, many of which contradict the Bible or try to add things that aren't there. These "spiritual" meanderings usually left me more confused and unsettled than I was before. They left me with a lot of "well.....maybe this, or maybe that". Matthew 5:37 says "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes', and your 'No', 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." Seven months ago Jesus spoke to my heart personally and all of these texts that I had been reading in place of the Bible became meaningless and empty to me. I completely lost my desire to pursue them. I began to pray more and read the Bible more and to simply talk with Jesus more on a daily basis, and I believe the evil one's hold on me was greatly lessened as I surrendered myself completely to Jesus. Not only is Jesus far better than any pop spirituality I have ever encountered, I need Jesus for my very salvation. I want to be reconciled with God and have a chance to be in His presence again and Jesus is the only way.

As many of those readers who are more mature in their walk with Christ can tell, my posts are very basic stuff and probably mostly what is expected of someone very new to Christ. I embrace that and hope that there are others out there who are also new in their walk with Christ who can identify with my shaky, slow but progressive maturation process and will take heart that they are where they should be, no more no less. I still have lots of questions that I have yet to understand. For example, it appears to me that there were really two Falls from grace. One in the earthly realm with Adam and Eve and one far before that in the heavenly realm with Satan. Apparently heavenly beings were created with the same gift of choice as well? Is evil necessary for us to fully appreciate true goodness or even to identify what is good? Perhaps I'll tackle that in my next post. Until then, my prayer is that my Father in heaven will continue to open up my hardened heart and will fill me to overflowing with His love and goodness and teach me to walk always in His ways each minute of each day and to resist and overcome the evil that surrounds me. I love you Lord!