When Good Can Be Evil<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Greg Koukl
 
      I would like you to consider for a moment how something can be good and evil at the same time. Then I want to explain why this insight is so important for you as an ambassadors of Christ.
 
      At first glance, to say something is good and not good (evil) at the same time sounds like a contradiction. There is no conflict, though, if the thing is good in one way, and bad in an entirely different way. It is possible, for example, for something to render benefit in the short term, but have devastating consequences as time wears on.
 
      A man with cancer can take morphine to reduce his physical suffering. In a temporal sense, that's good. He feels better. His distress has departed. He is sedate and calm instead of crippled by pain.
 
      But what if the artificial sense of well-being induced by the drug dissuades him from receiving the therapy necessary to heal him? The morphine cannot correct the disease; it only covers it. If no further steps are taken, the malignancy eventually kills him.
 
      Can we say that the morphine is really good if it eliminates the symptom, but the patient dies from the disease? No. Ultimately, it is destructive. If relief from pain keeps a man from remedial surgery, then the relief can't be called good. Whenever a soothing remedy substitutes for health-giving therapy, evil results.
 
      This is true of everything. A fine meal laced with arsenic is delicious, but deadly. The good is also evil. A casual sexual encounter may be stimulating, but with AIDS the apparent "goodness" is eclipsed by the ultimate result.
 
      Here's why this insight is important. As you expand your horizons as an ambassador for Christ, you will face the growing challenge of religious pluralism. Generally, those who promote the "goodness" of religion do not appreciate the good/evil tradeoff I've just described.
 
      Alternate religions might offer effective guidelines to moral living. That's good as far as it goes. It's good to live righteously. Holy living contributes to spiritual health. Those who continually practice sin eventually suffer its consequences.
 
      The problem is, it doesn't go far enough. If a given religion is wrong about the eternal consequences, then it cannot be called "good" in spite of the short term benefit it offers.  The final analysis is what really counts. Any temporally "good" thing, including religion, must be measured not by its immediate effect, but by its ultimate result.
 
      The fact is, our most valiant attempts at goodness are met with failure because a deep-seated malignancy sucks the life from our efforts. No matter how hard we try, each of us is dying from a spiritual disease that no amount of righteous living can repel.
 
      Therefore, every religious system that promotes righteous behavior as an ultimate end-Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, and even Christianity in certain forms-is treating the symptom and not the disease.
 
      If the Christian view is accurate, then every human being, from the greatest to the least, has broken God's law. That makes us all guilty, and guilty people must seek God's surgery: the new birth that follows forgiveness. Agreed, some need more forgiveness than others-sometimes much more, just as disease can ravage one body more violently than another-but every person is fatally stricken, nonetheless.
 
      Anything that grants a temporal benefit while robbing of an eternal deliverance is poison, no matter how good or decent it looks in the short term. Thus, we are never free to call religion good in the final sense. That which was good has become evil. To rephrase Karl Marx, false religion is the opiate of the people. It soothes, but does not cure.