Good and Evil, and the Sinful Nature

If one doesn't know what is good, how can he be good? If one doesn't know Divine truth, how does he know it exists? When goodness loses its absolute standard, we make our own definitions of good and evil based on our own standard. Then the boundary between good and evil becomes blurred and ultimately lost...

By Xia Wei-dong

The saints' views of good and evil

The subject of good and evil must be considered a very important philosophical proposition, for it determines one's whole moral orientation and view of life. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine why Confucius, the saint of saints in China, did not talk much about it. The closest he got were these few words: "Our earliest ancestors had similar moral standards to begin with, but their customs have driven them far apart."

An age of political chaos and the loss of the ancient traditions impacted heavily on Confucius, the forefather of Chinese culture. He lamented to his disciples how much he missed the good old days of morality, unselfishness, knowledge and peace. He described his own age as one of immorality, corruption and selfishness. It seems that, as regards convoluted corruption, the Chinese government had its predecessors long ago, back in Confucius' time. Why did Confucius see such big differences between the two eras? This great intellect, who spent most of his time traveling and preaching, found this hard to understand. Were the differences really caused by human customs, as Confucius claimed? The Kingdom of Lu had stayed where it was and its customs should not have changed, but standards of good and evil did change. The geographic location had stayed the same, but the people were different. Confronted with cruel realities and with past days long gone, Confucius could only sigh: "All has passed!" When it came to the issue of the nature of man, he had nothing to say.

The second most famous in the list of Chinese saints was Mencius, who hurried to fill in the blanks for his predecessor. He brought up the theory of good: "The goodness of human nature is as natural as water flowing downstream." In fact, this theory is not really a theory at all. It is a slogan more than anything else, just like the slogan "The East is red; the sun rises", which offers no necessary conclusion as to whether the leader was really great or not.

Water flowed for Mencius, and it did for Gao Zi and Xun Zi too. Gao Zi also used water as a metaphor when he claimed: "Human nature is neither good nor evil, just as water can flow in either direction." What he meant was that human nature was like water which flows to the east when the outlet is in the east or to the west if the outlet is in the west. He probably meant to say that human nature makes off in whichever direction it wishes. But was he really simply talking about natural instincts? It seems as if Gao Zi was more than two thousand years ahead of the great Austrian psychoanalyst on this subject!

Xun Zi went one step further by bringing up the theory of evil. He claimed: "Man is born with greed in his heart; therefore the selfish survive and the unselfish perish. Man is born jealous; therefore the unfaithful survive and the faithful perish. Man is born with lust; so the adulterous survive and the righteous perish." Although Xun Zi's theory is far superior to Mencius' theory of flowing water, Chinese people turn a deaf ear to this third-place saint because they do not particularly enjoy being criticised and, after all, Xun was more than sixty years junior to Mencius. The Chinese people are very sensitive to "order", and a third place saint can never be better than the one in the second place. In order to show a modicum of respect to the second place saint, they simply take his unconvincing theory for granted. "In the beginning, human nature was good." We learned to memorize these words as children.

The appearance of good and the actuality of evil

Before I learned to pronounce the name Kong Rong, I already knew his famous story about giving pears to his brothers. We often conclude from this story that human nature must be good, or else how was it that little Kong Rong was able to give the pears to his brothers? It was not until I grew up that I came to know the outcome of Kong's life, something which young children are never given the opportunity to find out: The "White-faced" Cao Cao completely ignored Kong's fame and in a rage he had him put to death. As he was dying, watching his own life-blood slowly drip away, did Kong still believe in the goodness of human nature? A pear and a butcher's knife, these two completely different metaphors shocked me. To what extent can they be illustrative of human nature?

The story of Kong and the pears was a fable for children. But the story of Yan Zi, who conducted a conspiracy to eliminate the three generals, must be on the restricted list as quite unsuitable for children.

Yan had no special scholastic achievements, but his fame was second to only a handful of the great saints. Some of his stories demonstrated his political talent and temperament, but his murder of the three generals with two peaches demonstrates his wily malice and cruelty. Yan was angry with the three generals simply because they did not show enough respect to him as a Prime Minister. So he played a cruel trick on them: He had two peaches sent to them with the message that the peaches were to be given to the two most courageous fighters. Each of the three generals believed that the other two deserved the title of "the most courageous", and yet each of them wanted to show he was also courageous. So finally each of them drew his sword and committed suicide. What astonishes me is that surprisinglyYan never received any kind of condemnation. On the contrary, Yan was highly admired for his wisdom, and the three generals, on the other hand, became a laughing stock for generations to come.

But actually people like Yan are much worse than straight thugs. They kill as they entertain. They kill with no bloodstains in their hands. And they appear to be genial people. Can you really conclude that Yan was the murderer of the three generals? Of course not; the three generals clearly killed themselves. People like Yan can do the most shameless things while uttering the most high-sounding moral excuses. For instance, Yan suggested to the king that the three generals should be eliminated for the sake of "stability and solidarity", and this immediately elevated Yan above others because of his "loyalty" and "wisdom". Yan did not initiate any kind of revolution in order to eliminate the three generals. But if he had failed to achieve his goal with the two peaches, then I strain my imagination trying to guess what new scheme Yan would have come up with and be remembered by.

The "golden apple effect" used on Achilles shares many similarities with Yan's peaches. Only for Achilles it brought about much more tragic consequences. Because of Queen Helen, the Greeks and the city of Troy fought a bitter war which lasted two years longer than the Sino-Japanese War. Many were killed in the war. Homer's Iliad describes this tragic story. Achilles was just as shrewd as Yan, but the outcome for him was not as happy.

The Greeks seemed to have little interest in conspiracies; or at least they didn't seem to resort to as many tricks as the Chinese. They admired courage. There are more than thirty places in The Iliad describing bloody battlefields. It is hard to tell which of the warring sides was in the right; but what is obvious is that all of them, the survivors or the ones that perished, the strong and the weak alike, were bloody-eyed butchers. All of them had been manipulated by the gods who had nothing better to do. And they all considered themselves heroes.

For a while I was impressed by the human courage and dignity depicted in Homer's works, until one day I came across these astonishing words of Augustine: "Homer invented these stories, in which he turned gods into evil mortals, evil deeds into justified deeds to give the illusion that our sins have come from the gods and not from ourselves." With these few words this great philosopher was able to tear apart the facade of Homer's poetry.

Augustine was a little too harsh on Homer. After all, Homer had not really made up these stories. He was only elaborating on legends that were widely circulated among the general public. But the fact that these legends were widely circulated is even more alarming, because it indicated that the evil had taken root and was growing fast. Judgement between good and evil had given way to contests between the strong and the weak. The strong possessed everything including the right to define good and evil. As goes a Chinese saying: "The strong become the royal and the weak become the outcast." And this is not just a rule of the orient.

Since when has mankind ceased to know evil? Or since when has mankind ceased to know good?

The good and evil in sinful nature

Adam and Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a well-known story. But what is not well known is how the significance of "eating the forbidden fruit" has been altered so that the important symbol of the sinful nature has become unimportant and vulgarised. Actually, in western philosophy a fundamental assessment of human nature is the theory of "the sinful nature", from which stems the important concepts of repentance and deep self-searching. Man is born in sin, and this presupposes that all are equal. For a person to claim that he is without sin is in effect saying that he is not human. Nobody would make such a claim. For this reason, there are no saints in the western world and no politicians or political parties will label themselves as "great, glorious and correct".

There are similarities between the theory of the sinful nature and the theory of evil. But there are differences too. Xun pointed out the evil characteristics in human nature: "Wicked but not upright; evil but not ordered." Isn't that the reason our earliest forefather ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? But Xun went too far. He completely ignored the good which is also part of human nature. One may call it conscience. It is this driving inner force that leads mankind in continuous pursuit of righteousness and eternity.

Human history is full of examples of evil. Nevertheless, history also offers heroes of goodness, including Si Ma-qian, who completed Shi Ji while undergoing terrible torture, Giordano Bruno, who held on to the truth while being burned to death, and Zola, who stood up before a corrupt judicial system and shouted "I condemn you!" Even the story of little Kong giving the pears to his brothers brings warmth. Had evil been all there was to find in human nature, then all philosophical teachings would have been nonsense and all artistic endeavours would have been fruitless. Had this been true, there would be no mentally disordered patients, because this never happens with animals. But how could the Creator of a great harmonious universe have ever come up with such trash, such good-for-nothings?

The theory of good goes to the other extreme. If all is good, then why do we still need enlightenment from the saints? This theory is nothing but a double-edged sword for the hypocrites. In Zhu's "Enhance heavenly truth and puncture human desire", "heavenly truth" was but empty talk¡Xwhat kind of truth is left when heaven is abandoned? But to "puncture human desire" seemed realistic - so long as the word "human" meant everybody but himself. When Zhu talked about truth, his audience did not even have time to blink. But in reality, in his old age Zhu got involved in a sex scandal. He pursued a prostitute to the extent that she almost hanged herself¡Xa much worse scandal than Clinton's. If somebody dared to take him to task about this, he would pontificate: "Outside of normal routines there is wonder; out of hopelessness there is hope." Lao put it in a better way: "When an important person does something and no one reacts, he rolls up his sleeves to try to enforce order", meaning "If anyone dares to rebel, throw him into the river to feed the fish."

While affirming the evil in human nature, the theory of the sinful nature never denies the existence of good. Rather, good and evil are as closely knitted together as life and death.

Adam and Eve accepted the snake's cunning words and they ate the forbidden fruit. This event appeared to be a fairly isolated incident, rather like two kids touching the electric outlet when their parents are not at home. A warning would appear to have been sufficient. But the seriousness of the incident lies in the reinterpretation of God's words by the snake and Adam and Eve. God had clearly told Adam, "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." (Gen. 2:17) But the snake reinterpreted this simple command into a misleading paradox: "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Gen. 3:1) This reinterpretation was followed by an additional reinterpretation by Eve, who either had a poor memory or lacked the ability to analyse. Right after the simple "must not eat" command, she added "must not touch" (Gen. 3;3). These reinterpretations suggested confusion and negativity and led to Adam and Eve touching and eating the fruit with no qualms. The exact type of fruit they ate is no longer important, because good and evil were dislocated and the relation between mankind and God was displaced!

Their first action after eating the fruit was pretty dumb: they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves (Gen. 3:7) because they realized they should not be naked. By contrast, the Chinese saints' principle of segregation of males and females seems less stupid because Adam and Eve were talking "moral standards" between a husband and a wife! But where did this artificial shame come from? It came from sin! Their conscience brought them to a sense of shame, but they chose to cover up rather than to confess. When cover-up failed, they put the blame on others, which was actually a different way to cover up. Thus they committed more sin. In succeeding generations there have been all these empty words about morality and benefiting the people. Aren't they all coverings of fig leaves? Leaves as skirts? What a wonderful metaphor!

The only effective remedy for sin ought to be true repentance. When a child does something bad and then comes to his parents and says he will not do it again, his parents will forgive him. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, did all they could to avoid responsibility. At one point they almost put the blame on God. No wonder God was so angry that He drove them out of the Garden of Eden.

Then began the disastrous course of human history. Fortunately, Adam and Eve were not completely evil. At least they still remembered where they came from. This was good. This was the centripetal force that brought them home. It provided hope for mankind to come back to their home, which is eternity. Moreover, from the experiences of Enoch, Noah and Abraham, we see how it may be possible for us return home.

The fundamental problem of the theory of good and the theory of evil is not their intrinsic incompleteness, by which they recognize only a part of the characteristics of human beings. The problem is their indecisiveness when it comes to the origins of good and evil. If one does not know good, how can he be good? If one does not know the Divine truth, how does he know it exists? We make our own definitions of good and evil based on our own standard. Then the boundary between good and evil becomes blurred and ultimately lost. Consequently, it is the one with the voice of authority who defines good. Hence the difference between the royal and the outcast, and between the saints and the villains.

The theory of the sinful nature is so straightforward that it allows no room for misinterpretation. Human beings are sinful, and this means they need to repent, which means they need salvation. Before whom can they repent? Only to Him who is sinless. From whom can they receive salvation? Only from the One who can provide it and who is willing to give it. The consequences of being driven out of the Garden of Eden were not simply their having to go on to lead lives of bitterness. What followed was an even more serious consequence¡Xdeath! Sin and death are two sides of a coin, and so salvation implies overcoming death. But the One who can overcome death must be same One who is the origin of life and who has overcome death. It is He who is able to wash away human sins by His sinless blood and lead us back into the Garden of Eden where the evergreen tree of life still stands.

Someone asks me why I believe in Jesus. I believe because only He can give me a complete answer. If anyone were to show me a better way, I would gladly follow him.

The author came from Anhui. A writer, he earned an M.S. degree in statistics from Rutgers University. He lives in New Jersey.