The Righteousness of Evil
When Evil Believes It’s Good
Just because you think you’re good doesn’t mean you are.
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I read a very interesting piece on Medium this week that got me thinking about the state of “righteousness” or what it means to be “good” versus “evil” in today’s world.
Medium writer Eric Sentell posted a piece in Koinonia this week entitled When Our Fruit Is Rotten in which he attempts to ascertain the difference between what is truly “good” and what is abjectly “evil” by illuminating the difference between good and bad “fruit”; that is ostensibly what our actions and perhaps our attitudes toward each other actually produce.
I had to read and re-read Eric’s piece several times. At first read it really seemed Eric was advocating for a kind of “Woke” morality like so many others do here on Medium and especially at Dan Foster’s Backyard Church.
I initially took the piece to be a judgy kind of swipe at Conservatives. Maybe that was Eric’s intent or just my knee-jerk initial reaction, but the more I read and re-read the piece, the more I could see that there was more to it that some pithy pet political bent or cursory jab at Conservatives that most here on Medium typically take.
I think Eric really wanted to help all of us see that just because we think or believe something, does not make it right, righteous, or good.
What we think is good might actually be quite rotten and evil.
And for tackling this issue of good versus evil, I’d like to give Eric kudos, because he nails it with the rotten fruit angle—that is the Biblical perspective that helps us see, “are my actions really good, are they really helping people?” or am I just helping myself.
The Road To Hell
I don’t want to rehash Eric’s article, it was well written and Eric is a talented writer who can communicate his thoughts well, even if we occasionally, okay usually, disagree.
What I do want to add is some detail I thought was missing from his piece that might help us see what is really, actually, factually “good” and what is abjectly “evil”.
