July 10, 2012
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It Takes Two?
There seems to be a great deal about Balance in movies these days.
I’m thinking of the third Matrix movie, of how Smith turned out to be Neo’s opposite number, his counterpart. Neo asks the oracle what Smith is, and she tells him, “He’s you.”
I’m thinking of the Star Wars prequels, where the prophecy about Anakin was that he would bring Balance to the Force. And he did, in a sense–killed off Dooku and Maul, killed off all the Jedi, until there were only two Jedi Masters and two Sith Lords left. It sucked for everyone concerned, but it was Balance.
I’m thinking of the pop culture understanding of Christian cosmology, with Heaven and Hell evenly matched, with God and Satan as equals, with Balance. Read Good Omens or Piers Anthony’s books about the Incarnations or any such stuff.
This was posted by someone on a Catholic/Protestant discussion forum I frequent.
“I believe that the spiritual world is in balance.
The tree of knowledge has two sides, good and evil. Both limbs are of equal length.
Westand in the crook of this tree seeing both limbs, one on each side ofus. We must start our lessons on good and evil by starting to climbthese limbs. Witch side do we start on. The easy side off goodness orthe harder side of evil.
From Eves point of view, She already has anexample of good in the garden. God has already stated that it was good.Will she chose to learn about something she already knows. In climbingterms one leg is already up on the good side.
The natural progression then would be to climb on the evil side in order to balance.
This is the choice she made and it was the right choice.
Why is it so hard for Christians to understand this simple truth.
This would indicate to us that we must identify evil and name it beforewe can climb the other good side of the tree to find the good answer towhatever was found to be evil. This seems to be the logical thing to do.
Why is this simple fact not understood.
Todo otherwise, or the opposite would make us look greedy for the goodside while letting the evil side go hungry for solutions and answersfrom us. This would cause imbalance and seen in physical terms, theclimber of the tree would have one leg way too high from the other andhis stance is quite uncomfortable.
If Eve simply stayed on theside of good, the tree would eventually bend towards that side andeventually break. Not God’s plan.
She took the right path for humanity…”It all sounds so right. Balance. Gaining knowledge was the right thing to do. Keeping the peace between the two extremes.
The problem is that it’s dead wrong.
…
Now don’t get me wrong. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m all about Balance. The Golden Mean, the Happy Medium, all that. I’m a political moderate, a peacemaker, a mediator. I’ve been Switzerland in a dozen relational disputes, I’ve carried messages between and given advice to feuding boyfriends/girlfriends, I’m always careful not to take sides in a fight that’s not my business. The Celtic knot that I use as a sigil–the one that’s on my signet ring and on my wallet and that I seal my letters with–is a four-sided knot, symbolic of the four elements or the four seasons or the four winds or the four cardinal directions: equal and opposite forces contained within a whole, oppositing vectors canceling each other out, Balance.
But when it comes to morality, when it comes to alignment, you just don’t want your Good and your Evil to balance out.
Thoughts?
Comments (8)
Great introduction to the idea. Definitely can see the line of argument. If I had to appeal to the world, I would agree with the protestant’s posts. If i had to appeal to the Universal truths in which I lean more towards, I would say good and evil does not need to be balanced among the single individual, but maybe it is balanced among all the individuals in the world.
Do we want kids to have parents who even out their good parenting with some bad? Y’know, just so they have balance?
Or should we hope for some rapes just to counteract the healthy sexual relationships? Some murder to offset vitality?
Bogus prospect imo.
I have to believe that Good outweighs Evil, both in the larger spiritual sense, as well as in our own growth as persons and as a civilization. It is a long process.
While it’s naive to think that Evil does not exist as a powerful force, I believe it’s also naive to think that Good is never attainable.
I think that God/Satan is not a balancing of good and evil, and that the serpent, or satan, faces damnation in the end. But God is the alpha and omega, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, a much powerful force than Satan, who is a created being, vs. God who is the creator and eternal.
Sometimes moderation and balance is the brave choice, because it means looking at two opposing factions and saying, “you’re both wrong.”
Other times, one side is clearly in the right and the other is clearly in the wrong. However, standing firmly for what’s right also means standing in opposition to what’s wrong. And that can be scary. In those situations, calling for moderation and balance is the coward’s way out.
So balance itself isn’t always right or always wrong. Sometimes balance is the right approach, and other times it is no approach at all.
I have much more to say, especially about that piece of total fiction about Eve and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but right now I have to get ready for work.
The spiritual world is NOT “in balance” — if that were so, what point would there be for God to wipe it all away and start anew? If the old world “groans” under it’s entrapment, then there it is not in balance, you think? (Romans 8 by the way)
Nowhere do you find the “tree of knowledge” as presented as a “balance”. it’s presented as a vain attempt at gaining everything at the cost of nothing. God placed it in the Garden because —- if we did not have a choice, we could never be free agents WILLING to choose to serve him, now could we? We would merely be like the angels, who knew God face to face, and when they fell, there was no redemption. Evil exists (presently) for just this reason, because it’s existence brings God glory in those who see it for what it is. My old Xanga header used to read:
Only those who’ve known the darkness can truly appreciate the Light.
I know my sin, I grieve over it and fight it all that I am able — from that, I know the goodness and mercy and grace of God… and am able to better praise him for just those qualities.
As for Eve’s choice, she was coerced. The speaker misses that point entirely. It was not within God’s plan for us to “climb the tree” and prevent it from tipping over. The fall of man was not so we could find balance — the fall of man was because we wanted to be like God….. just like this speaker in trying to represent his personal “logic” as something grandiose and sublime. he misses the point entirely, and by doing so rejects God’s wisdom and ways. He falls short and in the end will come up empty handed, cast out from the Garden for having thought his own reason greater than that of God. (Proverbs 28:9; Isaiah 1:18, 55:8)
Dead, dead wrong. Needs two “deads.”
Was the person who wrote that response a feminist by any chance?
The balance idea is totally bogus. I remember in The Dark Crystal that when one of the evil whatevers was eliminated, his good counterpart vanished. Some sort of yin-yang nonsense, as if evil has to exist in order for there to be good. The Matrix series was very disappointing at the end, and left me wondering why Neo suddenly accepted explanations from entities that had been deceptive up to that point. Star Wars was fun, but its cosmology was clearly silly.
Evil is a distortion of good. Evil is deception. There is no need for evil, but as things stand now, it is inevitable because we have it programmed into our flesh. Nature itself cries out for redemption and restoration. Someday evil will be done away with and things will be as they were designed to be.
God is good. Satan is evil, but he’s not God’s counterpart, he’s just a high-level angel who got uppity. He’s incapable of creating; all he can do is distort and lie. For a while he has power and influence, but someday he’ll be gone for good along with his minions.