Rationale For Choosing Good And Evil Essays Example

VIEW OF GOOD AND BAD IN CHRISTIANITY

Introduction
The wrestling between good and evil in Christianity has never reached a satisfactory conclusion worldwide. All goodness in Christianity matches with God’s expected character while evil is not doing His authority including love and serving Him. The problem is the existence of evil which causes the major argument between the Christians, Scholars and philosophers. But the belief of Christians provides definition to the good and evil, describing the nature of the human and providing instruments for contesting evil with good( Northcott 1996 ).

Sinning is an important aspect in the Christian society. Sins are determined by the extent to which someone does good or evil. Christians view sinning as the relationship that occurs between one another with God (Dembski 2009). Doing evil is therefore seen as a taboo in the Christian society. Generally, what goes around Christianity is the doing of good and bad. Christians believe in good people going to heaven and bad ones going to hell. This shows someone relationship with God such that those who does bad are considered tom have no respect to God with those who does good being God followers. Christians believe so much in repentance. This also make good and evil an important aspect in the Christian society. They will always preach about repentance of ones sins so as to occupy Gods kingdom.

Description and Explanation of Good and Evil

Christians use Bible as a guide to their deeds. Looking into the verses in the Bible, many ascertain that “God is good and His love stays forever.” (Psalms 100; 5). Christian believe in God who formed the universe and all things in it, His creation plan is all rooted in goodness. Therefore Christians view well as coming from God and He does well since He cannot dispute His essential nature. In Christianity, evils form two categories as; natural evil which involves diseases, defects or natural disaster and moral evil resulting from suffering on behalf of others such as the genocide, abuse, exploitation, war. Most Christians believe that moral evil develops from rebelling against God, resulting to injustice, dishonesty, violence, greed among others (Orr 1904). The belief in the original sin of Adam and Eve forms the explanation in Christianity on how suffering and death came into the world through disobeying God. Because of the act of Adam and Eve making them to fall in sins, Christians holds the belief that human beings are born as sinners, not related to anything they have already done, previously with the occurrence of the original sin. Because of the evil, human beings are not close to God and there is need for a saviour to cover the gap providing way towards the salvation. Human wars of sinful nature forms explanation to the tendency of humans to surrender when attracted by the evils prevailing in the society, other than fighting for good. Apostle Paul says “I do not want, but I do what I say” (Romans 7; 14-15). There have been many explanations from scholars and philosophers for the existence of evils in Gods goodness. Explanation for evils by Christians rotates on the role of people’s free will and choice.
Looking across different religions and comparing them to Christianity, evil is viewed from different perspectives. The Hindus view evil from three different perspectives; evil in the vedas which involves humans not fulfilling the laws or not carrying out rituals properly which addresses the Varuna evil. This has the moral significance of people committing adultery or being evil minded. Evil in the Upanishads, which bring karma as the reason for existence of evil in the world. Ignorance brings karma into existence which in turn brought suffering into the world. Suffering is therefore viewed as natural effects of the lives before ignorance and needs to be carried on without any questioning. Buddhism explains the nature of evil and good through the constant becoming process. Ignorance is taking the world of impermanent, lack of a self and constantly leading to suffering. Taoism takes evil as lack of balance between the opposition principles and corresponding to larger participation of the principle of Yin. Muslims and Judaism rejects the notion of original sin as taken by the Christianity. They believe in all human beings born good and sinless. They believe in no inheritance of sins from one another, in contrary to Christian view. Both the Christians and Muslims sees God as creator and founder of all the good things. Furthermore Muslims and Christians have the same ideas as to the constituents of righteousness. Believing in God, taking care of the sick and orphans, becoming friends to strangers and discouraging selfishness. All these act are condemned in the Bible and Quran.

Example in Social Environment

In the society, bad and good deeds are brought in different ways. People are always after doing well in the society but they end up doing but just to come and realize later. People believe in bad deeds being against Gods expectations and they know of that as sinning and widening of gap between god and human beings. Sins are all over in the society and comes up in different ways. Looking into the social setting people sin and some don’t believe that what they do is evil. Evil deeds in the society overpowers good deeds and that’s why it is always said in Christianity that only the few will get chance to go to heaven. Good deeds are shown in different ways in my society; helping the needy is a common one, where people are always ready to welcome those who cannot afford for themselves. People usually sponsor the needy students or provide foods to the old who cannot find food due to their old age. Bad deeds are common and most in the society. Christians believe in the following of the Ten Commandments and people in the society will always disobey the commandments. The society is full of evil deeds; theft is common and people never view them as sins. Admiring at ones wife and prostitution is always there in the society but people forget to view them as evil deeds. Selfish, corruption are all bad deeds but they all fall into deaf ears. This has been worsen by the human feeling that repentance would come later on. They always feel that the only way to enjoy life is to like oneself. This has made bad deeds to be more in the society in different ways.

Conclusion

In conclusion, considering the overall pattern of religions, especially Christianity, evil is taken as consequences of spiritual ignorance. Christianity has looked into evil as something that is not created nor natural and not an element that is necessary. It is like a parasite that misuses Gods resources through following of the wrong direction. It is sickness in human beings that are not in intimacy with God. Therefore there is still misunderstanding of good and evil across the Christianity and other religions.

REFERENCES

Dembski, W. A. (2009). The end of Christianity: Finding a good God in an evil world. Nashville, Tenn: B & H Academic. Page 20
Northcott, M. S. (1996). The environment and Christian ethics. Cambridge: Univ. Press. Page 156
Orr, J. (1904). The Christian view of God and the world: As centring in the incarnation. Edinburgh.page 78