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| Mary Katherine May |
a commentary by Mary Katherine May
I form the light, and
create darkness: I make peace,
and create evil: I
the LORD do all these things.
Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
Maturity is the capacity to
endure uncertainty.
~John Huston Finley
In the beginning man (Adam,
Eve), knew only God, and because they knew only God they were innocent of all
that is not good. To us in the 21st
century, with the daily news giving the latest display of evil and sin around
the world and in our own backyards, we may wonder if values like trust, honesty,
and pure motives even exist anymore within the human race.
When the times seems
overwhelming, you may want to step back as I do, taking time to place myself
squarely in the center of the source of all goodness, the One whom we should
know and trust more than anyone or anything in the world, and that is in the
presence of God.
Please let me clarify, for there
is no escaping from God because God is everywhere. We may trust only a few people or even have
become so brutalized by the world as to trust no one, yet the One who is worthy
of our trust and always with us is the one before whom we build barriers—between
us and God—barriers that instead of offering protection for ourselves actually
do us more harm by blocking God who in his true goodness comforts and heals. Trusting God, believing with unwavering
faith, assures even in the worst of times the knowledge that though perhaps not
at the moment but in the end all will be well.
Cast your cares upon the Lord
and He will sustain you….Ps.
55:2
He watching Israel slumbers not
nor sleeps…Ps. 121:4
Can we in the year 2013
comprehend how it would be to know only good, to live untouched by evil? What it would we be like if we only related
with people who could be trusted without fail, were always honest, who never
had ulterior motives, who were unwaveringly faithful and loyal? If you are like me you long for the day when
this will be true, when Christ returns and the world is reborn for eternity,
when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. How beautiful it is to think on this. The thought removes the heaviness of living
in a broken world. Its flavor is more
delicious than any nourishing food.
The ability to do evil existed before the Creation. In Luke 10:18 Jesus
relates that he saw Satan fall as lightning from the sky, which was before God
created all that we know. Evil is the attempt to make one’s self as God. 1John 4:8 tells us that God is love. Evil is
the absence of love. Evil is the absence
of God.
Why were Adam and Eve given
the choice of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? For by God
telling them not to eat of it certainly meant there was a choice. Why do we have the ability to choose good or
evil? We don’t know for certain why, and
mature faith allows us to accept that for which there is no empirical evidence. God allowed humans the ability to reason, to
think, to act independently of each other, to have more than animal instinct as
our guide. Satan in the form of a serpent
on that fateful day when Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened to knowing about both
good and evil in the moment they ate the fruit of the one tree from which they
were told to abstain demonstrates clearly why Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount
taught that even the thought of doing wrong is sin. Sin begins with a suggestion, suggestion
leads to thought, and thought leads to action.
Eve succumbed because she didn’t from the start reject the suggestion.
Christ experienced this in the wilderness, and used the Scriptures as his tool
against Satan’s suggestions.
Sometimes what we want is not
what is best for us. Sometimes we want
to know what we are better off not knowing. When doubt about doing something is
drawing us like magnetic gravity in the opposite wrong direction of our faith
in God to know what is best is when we find ourselves in our own Garden of Eden
and in direct contact with the serpent.
God is all knowing, and thus
God knows what is good and what is the absence of good, which is not of
God. God himself cannot be both good and
not good for one would negate the other.
Yet God says, “I form the
light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all
these things.” (Isaiah 45:7). What are we to think? Out of context we could think that God is the
author of evil, but that would be incorrect.
If God created evil for the
sake of itself He wouldn’t create good out of it as St. Paul tells us in Romans
8: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to his purpose. Using that which is evil for
good does not imply that the Author of Good created evil for its own sake. The Genesis creation story gives no account
of anything created other than that which God saw as good. What God had and has always had is the knowledge of both good and evil, to
which the first man and woman made the decision to have also. They were given
everything they needed and yet they wanted more.
Though it is good to be aware of how evil presents itself in the
world, there is also a reason that we are to remove ourselves from evil
surroundings. There is a reason to keep
company with our brothers and sisters in Christ, to read and absorb God’s inspired
word, to hear inspirational messages that strengthen our will to be Godly
people every moment of our lives.
Because of sin we have knowledge of such things, yet we are not to
participate in them.
Do any of us think that if we
had been in the Garden of Eden and it was us the serpent invited to eat from
the tree that we would have done differently than Adam and Eve? Would we have had complete faith and trust in
God to know what is best for us? I am
not so sure that I would have done any different unless in Eden I had been a
tiger, a sloth, an albatross or a zebra who hadn’t been given the ability to
think with reason in the same manner as humans.
The proof of how any of us would have acted is found in our actions
today, when Satan comes in many forms offering to us that which is not
beneficial to a Godly life.
When temptations come your
way—and they will, when others think poorly of you when you know you have done
what is right and Godly—and they will, when you want to be accepted and thought
highly of by others who are more of the world than of God, please remember that
just as in the moment when as the serpent came to Eve in Eden offering a choice
between staying in God who knows what is best and choosing what will make us
feel independently powerful and good is a choice that may last for an eternity.
Amen.
Rick and Mary Katherine May operate the internet webstore QualityMusicandBooks.com.
