In a world shaped by outrage, anxiety, and algorithms designed to keep us afraid, I went looking for goodness along the Milk River and found myself wrestling with a strange question: Why is there Good
Beautiful post, Michael. I agree that beauty is so significant and meaningful and a signpost to something mysterious deeply embedded in reality. I love the idea of the problem of good. This comes up at the end of your recent podcast with Tori and Jonathan and is very interesting there too. The first time I encountered that idea was in Philip Goof's book "Why?" He goes through a bunch of possibilities for how God could be, and he brings up the idea of an all powerful, all knowing, all bad God and says, but what about the problem of good? I laughed out loud when I read that. You have such a beautiful spirit that comes though in your writing and in the podcast.
I love that picture you shared. I grew up 100 miles north of there and think of southern Alberta often.
"Because perhaps evil is recognizable precisely because we already carry some deep intuitive awareness of goodness." This reminds me of the oft used phrase, we don't what this is unless we know what it isn't. Classic dualism is where we are born into and then spend our lives attempting to bring them back into relation. The creative lure of the divine recognizes the reality of evil but through uncontrolling love reminds us that goodness is where we want to go.
I like this: “The creative lure of the divine recognizes the reality of evil but through uncontrolling love reminds us that goodness is where we want to go.” Well said.
And surely out of my own propensity to overexplain 😊, I’d probably nuance it just a little differently. I resist the dualism too, the idea that goodness and evil are equal opposites somehow needing one another in order to be recognized.
My hunch is that goodness is somehow deeper and more original than evil.
That we recognize rupture precisely because we already carry some intuitive sense of tenderness, beauty, relation, and flourishing within us.
So for me, evil feels less like a necessary counterpart to goodness and more like a rupture within the deeper flow toward communion and love.
I completely agree. Evil isn't built into the structure of reality as a necessary opposite. It's what happens when the lure toward beauty/relation is refused. As you rightly state, it's a deviation from the desired, not a destination in its own right. Sometimes I revert to the old dualistic paradigm for illustration purposes without fully extracting myself when getting to the point, I appreciate the assist. ;-)
Beautiful post, Michael. I agree that beauty is so significant and meaningful and a signpost to something mysterious deeply embedded in reality. I love the idea of the problem of good. This comes up at the end of your recent podcast with Tori and Jonathan and is very interesting there too. The first time I encountered that idea was in Philip Goof's book "Why?" He goes through a bunch of possibilities for how God could be, and he brings up the idea of an all powerful, all knowing, all bad God and says, but what about the problem of good? I laughed out loud when I read that. You have such a beautiful spirit that comes though in your writing and in the podcast.
I love that picture you shared. I grew up 100 miles north of there and think of southern Alberta often.
"Because perhaps evil is recognizable precisely because we already carry some deep intuitive awareness of goodness." This reminds me of the oft used phrase, we don't what this is unless we know what it isn't. Classic dualism is where we are born into and then spend our lives attempting to bring them back into relation. The creative lure of the divine recognizes the reality of evil but through uncontrolling love reminds us that goodness is where we want to go.
I like this: “The creative lure of the divine recognizes the reality of evil but through uncontrolling love reminds us that goodness is where we want to go.” Well said.
And surely out of my own propensity to overexplain 😊, I’d probably nuance it just a little differently. I resist the dualism too, the idea that goodness and evil are equal opposites somehow needing one another in order to be recognized.
My hunch is that goodness is somehow deeper and more original than evil.
That we recognize rupture precisely because we already carry some intuitive sense of tenderness, beauty, relation, and flourishing within us.
So for me, evil feels less like a necessary counterpart to goodness and more like a rupture within the deeper flow toward communion and love.
I completely agree. Evil isn't built into the structure of reality as a necessary opposite. It's what happens when the lure toward beauty/relation is refused. As you rightly state, it's a deviation from the desired, not a destination in its own right. Sometimes I revert to the old dualistic paradigm for illustration purposes without fully extracting myself when getting to the point, I appreciate the assist. ;-)