“Knowledge of Good and Evil”

Posted on November 10, 2008
Filed Under freedom |

I got into another discussion today regarding politics and faith and the state of our country, and ran headlong into a faction that believes Christians should not make statements of judgment about anything, including political candidates, because we all have sin, and so to point out that someone is wrong is hypocritical. This group was decrying the “hatred and anger” of conservative talk radio. When I asked for more information, I was pointed to a book by Greg Boyd called “The Myth of a Christian Nation,” and specifically this passage:

“When people assume the position of moral guardians of the culture, they invite—they earn!—the charge of hypocrisy. For all judgement, save the judgement of the omniscient and holy God, involves hypocrisy. Whenever we “eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”—this is, whenever we find some element of worth, significance, and purpose in contrasting ourselves as “good” with the others we deem “evil”–we do so in a self-serving and selective manner. We always bend the tree, as it were, to our own advantage and, as a result, we do the exact opposite of what Jesus taught us to do. Instead of seeing our own sins as worse than others, we invariably set up a list of sins in which our sins are deemed minor while the other people’s sins are deemed major. We may have dust particles in our eyes, we reason, but at least we don’t have tree trunks like “those people.” Unlike the tax collector who made no moral claims for himself, we thank the Lord we are not like other people just as the Pharisee did (Luke 18:9-14).”

And this one by Jacques Ellul in “The Ethics of Freedom”:

“There has never been found anything better in the eyes of men/women than the fruit of the tree in Genesis 3. As verse 6 puts it so well, “She saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise.” What more could be wanted? Good, pleasant, and useful, offering food, aesthetic pleasure, and intellectual profit, serving both the economy and the culture. What better?—and yet we know the outcome. The moment Eve listens to the serpent and is ready to hearken what he says, all is lost. From this moment on she has a defiled mind and conscience. She can no longer see things straight. She has lost everything. Nothing is pure for her any longer. Things are impure for the impure. But man cannot accept this and so he imposes his own classification on the world. He says that one thing is good and another bad. He speaks of noble professions and base professions, of valid acts and invalid acts. In his decree he obeys what we define as the knowledge of good and evil. From now on he lives in this divided universe and even when he says that all things are neutral and everything depends on their use, he is simply extending the division to the use, which changes nothing. Man is still not free and the world has not been made one again.”

I’m still in the middle of the discussion, so I’m waiting for confirmation from him on what I am hearing in this. But I’ll say that the theme I am hearing is that rational judgment is wrong, it’s a sin. That bothers me because that is the message coming from the world too: rational judgment is bigotry. The very act of separating right from wrong is itself wrong. The inevitable result of that, according to Evan Sayet (and I agree with him, because I see this happening everywhere around me) is that evil things are raised up and protected, and good things are torn down, so that eventually everything is the same. There will be nothing to kill or die for - no more wars, no more fighting, we’ll all be as one.

It seems like a noble cause. No sane person believes war is a good thing. Sayet says it is because people are motivated to find a solution to the problem of war that they turn to the idea that we must not make rational judgments, because saying something is right and another thing is wrong ultimately leads to war. Sayet said the basis of this kind of thought is this:

“In all the years of human civilization, none of the ideas, religions, philosophies, ideologies, or forms of government; none of these inventions of mankind has succeeded in creating a world devoid of war, poverty, crime, and injustice. Since all of these ideas of man have proved to be wrong, the real cause of war, poverty, crime, and injustice lies in mankind’s attempt to be right.

If nobody ever thought they were right, what would we disagree about? If we didn’t disagree,
surely we wouldn’t fight. If we didn’t fight, of course we wouldn’t go to war. Without war, there would be no poverty; without poverty, there would be no crime; without crime, there would be no injustice. It’s a utopian vision, and all that’s required to usher in this utopia is the rejection of all fact, reason, evidence, logic, truth, morality, and decency—all the tools that you and I use in our attempts to be better people, to make the world more right by trying to be right, by siding with right, by recognizing what is right and moving toward it.

What you have is people who think that the best way to eliminate rational thought, the best way to eliminate the attempt to be right, is to work always to prove that right isn’t right and to prove that wrong isn’t wrong.”

Now look around you and see if that isn’t what is happening in the world. Don’t you dare stand up and say that abstinence before marriage is right and pre-marital sex is wrong. In our society, exactly the opposite is trumpeted. Don’t try to make a case for personal responsibility and suffering the consequences of our own choices. Instead, the cry of “victim” and “entitlement” is the rallying call. Forget about pointing out that the company one keeps is a good indicator of one’s character and morality. Don’t even think about calling someone who has blown themselves up in the name of Allah a Muslim extremist - no, in the eyes of men like Bill Ayers, that’s a freedom fighter.

I was considering my friend’s position regarding “the knowledge of good and evil,” and though I am waiting for a response from him in clarification, at this point I have to say that I’m still going to keep using my brain and my conscience to tell the difference between right and wrong. That’s why God gave me those tools. I understand that at some point my ancestors Adam and Eve ate from the wrong tree (am I allowed to say that it was wrong?) and that for whatever reason, I have a brain that uses logic and rational thought to try to determine right from wrong. Does that mean I am pointing the finger at everyone else but calling myself sinless and holy? Hell. No. I know for a fact that I am the chief of sinners. But does that mean it is wrong to try to find the right way and follow it, out of love for my God and my neighbor? What exactly are we supposed to do with ourselves, if it is not to find the right way and walk in it? And if I see a public figure who is leading people and that person is leading people astray, I believe it is my duty to point that out. Not because there is or should be anything like the Pleasure Police (not me, I love my pleasure, just ask my friends and family), but because Truth is the only thing that sets people free. I know that no one country can mirror a perfectly Christian system (though the USA is the freest nation on Earth, and I think Jesus is all about freedom) - in fact, I believe all the systems of men are DOOMED to fail, from the start. But does that excuse me from the responsibility of trying to set things right when it comes to the oppression of others?  No! I want to be like the patriots who founded this country, who said, you know what, there is something worth dying for - it’s called Liberty. That’s what Jesus died for, so what more noble cause is there? I believe that all men have the right to Liberty. If I see someone about to lead others into oppression, I am going to call it. If I see someone trying to claim a position of leadership who isn’t qualified, I’m going to call it. If I see people trying to take this country down the much trodden path of failed tyrannies and away from Liberty, I am going to call it.

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