The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Thomas Cole, 1828 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Reading the news often leaves me with an overwhelming sense of anger and frustration. It is a burden that has weighed heavily on my mind, and the thoughts expressed below arose from trying to make sense of those feelings. I wanted to put them into words because they may offer a perspective that others find interesting. I had also recently finished reading Milton’s Paradise Lost, and many of the themes explored in that remarkable work were lingering in my mind as I wrote. While this is merely my own reflection, Milton’s masterpiece undoubtedly helped illuminate the path.
I have always been interested in seeing parts of life from different perspectives. This will be written from a theological perspective, and the Christian idea that evil emerged from the fall of Adam and Eve.
When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of good and evil, they brought consciousness into the world. They immediately realised (like scales falling upon their eyes) what evil is. As a consequence, because of knowing evil, they discovered how pain and suffering impacted other human-beings, and how it could be used as a tool for evil and personal gain. This is how the evils of corruption, malice, greed, rage / wrath, destruction and war (…) came into the world.
This is the moment where the world was befallen with evil. This is why God banished Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. Had they not eaten the forbidden fruit, the Earth might still be flourishing in its natural health and abundance, clothed in vibrant greens, deep blues, rich purples, and all the majesty of an unfallen creation. Instead, since the dawn of consciousness, we have witnessed the emergence of evil and its resulting manifestation throughout human history. It is this profound mystery—the origin of suffering, corruption, and moral evil—that many of our deepest myths, religious traditions, and sacred stories try to wrestle with. In Christianity, through the story of Christ, we are shown the path back to the garden: a life devoted to the good, lived under the guidance of the Good Shepherd, so that we may re-join his flock and rediscover the harmony that was lost in Eden.
It is also worth considering how evil is, as St Augustine said, the corruption of the Good:
“Love becomes possessiveness.
Courage becomes recklessness.
Justice becomes vengeance.
Patriotism becomes nationalism.
Leadership becomes tyranny.
Self-respect becomes pride”
Before Lucifer fell he was the Angel of Light.
We see this manifest in our own conscience. When we do something that is not good, we have a voice deep within us that calls us out on it and we decide to take positive action to remediate – to contribute goodness into the world, rather than evil. If you think about it, this is what we do every day, to decide which side we are on and strive towards it.
The Russian novelist and former Gulag prisoner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn captured this idea when he wrote: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
I have found the ideas of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud relevant here. Jung’s concept of the Shadow suggests that every individual possesses a hidden darker side containing traits and impulses they would rather not acknowledge. Likewise, Freud’s theory of the id, ego, and superego describes the constant tension between desire, conscience, and reason. Whilst developed through psychology rather than theology, both seem to point towards the same enduring truth: that the struggle between good and evil is not only something we encounter in the world around us, but something that takes place within ourselves.
I will end in hope. There are many people on the good-side in this world, everyday they decide to fight bravely against the calling of evil. We are sometimes overpowered by anger which can sometimes get the better of us, but most of us very soon reflect and re-balance this back to the good, by admitting where we went wrong, saying sorry and doing something good in its stead. This is where humanity can be most beautiful, to be good and bring light and love into the world – to walk the trampled path back to Paradise. As it says in the Gospel of John “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
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