The Contest of Good and Evil Within Us: An Excerpt from Jack Deere’s Memoir
In East of Eden, John Steinbeck wrote that we all have one story, and it is the same story: the contest of good and evil within us. Any honest person knows that they are losing this contest.
As a child, I could lie to others, but hadn’t yet developed the sophistication to lie to myself. I knew my bad deeds would always push down the scale. So I chose to enjoy my darkness rather than feel guilty about it.
Then I discovered that Christ had already borne the weight of my sin, and that once I accepted his gift, he would never leave. Yet Saint Peter’s scales lingered. In church I was told that as a Christian, my good deeds eventually would outweigh the bad. Then I preached versions…
The Problem of Evil – An Excerpt from Core Christianity
“Either God is great or God is good, but he can’t be both.”
One of the biggest stumbling blocks in Christianity is the question about evil: How can a powerful and loving God allow pain and suffering?
This excerpt from Core Christianity lays out the problem of evil in light of the story of God’s sovereignty, goodness and love. Author Michael Horton brings the drama of good and evil into tension with the end in mind…
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IF GOD IS GREAT AND GOOD, HOW CAN THERE BE SO MUCH EVIL IN THE WORLD?
There are a lot of mysteries surrounding the attributes of God. The Bible teaches us both that God is all-powerful and that we have real freedom and responsibility. But how? We know…
Hebrew and You with Lee M. Fields — The Tree of the Knowing Good and Evil (Gen 2:9)
This well-known verse describes the situation in the Garden of Eden before the fall. There is great theological import in all of these chapters on creation, but what concerns us here is an interesting point of grammar, the last clause, וְעֵץ הַדַּעַת טֹוב וָרָע (weʿēṣ haddaʿaṯ ṭôḇ wārāʿ)
What is the Problem?
The usual analysis of the grammar is that הַדַּעַת is a noun with the article in the construct with the next noun meaning “the knowledge of.” The difficulty with this is that if the article is used to mark the determination (or “definiteness”) in a construct chain, only the last word may have the article. For example, וְעֵץ הַחַיִּים (weʿēṣ haḥayyîm), “and the tree…