Part Three: The Paradox of Good and Evil

In my previous blog post, shortly before my Christmas break, we looked at the evidence for God’s existence based on human intuition. This week we’ll look at a second example, the paradox of good and evil.

Many secular humanists and New Agers teach a favorable view of humanity. People, they claim, are innately good, and as the human race gains more knowledge (or spiritual insight), we will reach ever greater heights of goodness. At best, this is but a half-truth. It is a well-established fact that the human race—including people from every walk of life and every culture throughout history—has a predisposition to do both great good as well as great evil.

It is undeniable a paradox exists between human goodness and human wickedness. On the one hand, being created in God’s image and possessing the communicable attributes of God, such as a moral conscience, people are capable of great good. For example, natural disasters worldwide witness the selfless outpouring of money, resources, and volunteers to aid victims—with Christian organizations often in the vanguard.  Yet, on the other hand, people are equally capable of great evil—as terrorists depict.

Human beings have an innate idea of how we ought to behave but struggle to act accordingly. The Bible explains this paradox.  Although humans are created in God’s image (hence we possess goodness), due to our rebellion against our Creator and rejection of His perfect will for human existence, we possess what theologians often refer to as a “sin nature.” The result is a constant battle between our intuitive understanding of how we ought to behave, and our self-centered desire to engage in behavior our conscience recognizes as sinful. (The Apostle describes this conflict of our two natures in Romans chapter seven.)

History confirms this. People today can be just as greedy, covetous, selfish, cruel, and warlike as they were thousands of years ago. The heart of modern man is no different than the heart of ancient man. Indeed, the twentieth century is said to be the most bloodthirsty in history. Researchers have pointed out that under the umbrella of atheistic governments, more than a hundred and fifty million people were killed during the twentieth century.

The best explanation for humanity’s natural inclination to sin is the biblical revelation that the human race is “fallen” and subsequently possesses a sin nature, a natural proclivity to sin (see, for example, Romans 3:9-18, 23.) Any different ideological perspective contradicts what we observe worldwide, as well as what history records. The Christian worldview, that is, biblical revelation, provides the best explanation for the paradox of good and evil. No other worldview—secular, new age, evolutionary, pantheistic—gives a historically verifiable explanation for why humans are capable of great good as well as great evil. This gives tremendous credence to the claim that God not only exists but is the God revealed in the Bible. Only the Judeo / Christian God reveals human nature as it truly is. ©