As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to
bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
(Bereshit / Genesis 50:20; ESV)
Evil is in the news again. We don't normally hear a lot
about evil. I don't think most people believe in it any more. The Governor of
Connecticut, Dan Malloy, does. Commenting on the mass killing of twenty
children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, he
said, "Evil visited this community today". Joseph in the Bible did.
Commenting on his own brothers' murderous jealousy, he said, "you meant
evil against me". But most people don't believe in evil, not really, for
to accept evil as a reality is to embrace a worldview that we don't want to
consider. Somehow we sort-of cope with mass shootings and terrorist acts as
isolated aberrations - glitches in our evolutionary climb to perfection. But
evil? That's something else entirely. For if evil is real, then who is immune
to it? Who is its next victim, the next perpetrator? It might be anyone of us.
If evil is real, it's not just something that randomly and tragically falls upon
some; it affects us all.
The Bible claims that evil is real. If I read it correctly,
helping us to understand the reality of evil is one of the reasons why the
Bible was written. But before I get into that, I should first define evil the
way the Bible does. The Hebrew word for evil is "ra". It simply means
"bad", often used in contrast to the Hebrew "tov", meaning
"good". When translators choose to use "evil" for
"ra", it is because they have determined that the "badness"
in those contexts is of moral nature. The English "bad" is not strong
enough a term for English readers to sufficiently appreciate what the original
readers would have understood. But I don't think that really helps us get the
gist of what the biblical writers' intentions were when they wrote
"ra". To say something is "ra" is to say it isn't what it
should be as opposed to "tov" (good) describing that something is as
it should be.
As simple as an explanation as that might be, it is a
crucial one to understand the world in which we live. Commenting on people,
actions, things, and events by calling them good or bad as the Bible does is
only possible if there is a way that things ought to be. This is one of the
Scriptures' most foundational truths. God created a universe that was designed
in a particular way for a particular purpose. Human rebellion against God's
expressed will resulted in people, actions, things, and events going bad.
It is difficult enough to live within a creation gone bad,
but it's far worse to deny that reality. Throughout history, people have denied
evil in all sorts of ways. Some call it an illusion; some consider it
misunderstood goodness; others simply ignore it, which I would guess is most
common in many places today, especially in more affluent societies. By filling
our lives with pleasures and distractions we think we can escape the reality of
evil, that is until it completely overwhelms us as it did recently. But evil is
with us always. The sooner we wake up to that reality, the sooner we will be
able to deal with it effectively.
Joseph was a victim of evil, but somehow Joseph not only
endured it, he overcame it and became a source of blessing to the world of his
day that itself was victimized by a creation gone bad, a famine in this case.
Joseph's trust in God in the midst of extreme rejection, vilification, and
physical suffering not only enabled him to endure evil, but kept him from the
kind of bitterness that would have undermined everything that God intended him
to do.
3 comments:
I have thought about this. That it was our destiny to know Good and Evil when Adam and Eve partook of it's tree. Since Hashem is only Good it would only be natural that we would be separated from him as we go through this world. Hashem will never let evil completely overtake the world but just how evil will it get? hmmmm? I pray America and the world comes to realize Evil does not exist in itself but resides in people.
Really great commentary, especially the part about Yeshua taking on the extremity of evil and overcoming it. I never thought of it like that. Like Joseph the evil He came against was at the hands of his own family the Jews. That is a good comparison.
It is philosophically tempting to regard Adam and Eve's sin as inevitable, but the Scriptures do not regard their wrong in this way.
Evil does indeed reside in people, but to say it "does not exist in itself" makes it sound as if it wouldn't exist apart from people, which it does.
Post a Comment