I’ve met a lot of people in the last week. Several hundred freshmen all going around asking the standard questions:

• What’s your name?
• Where are you from?
• What’s your major?

Two people get together, ask these questions, and promptly forget the answers to them. Then there’s always the person that remembers your answers and you forgot theirs and feel bad about it. Then you remember someone else’s answers and are disappointed when you realize they don’t remember yours and really don’t want to talk to you.

Everybody’s got a story, though. There’s the girl who lived in Austria her entire life, the guy who’s already campaigning for class president, the homeschooled girl who always seems to want to play cards, and hundreds more. Then there’s the group of rough-looking guys sitting out behind the gas station, who each have their own stories about drugs, alcohol, being shot, and looking for Jesus.

How do you really define relationships in a situation like this? How do you begin to fit into a hundred other stories, and find the people who fit into yours? Then the complications of who does and doesn’t like you come in, and you’re never sure if sitting with a certain person at lunch will make them happy or uncomfortable.

Dr. Davis talked this morning about the narrative that we always have running in our mind, telling our story to ourselves; and the metanarrative, of which our individual story is only a part.

Back to the work study paperwork…

…ends tomorrow.

At least the orientation program does, so I’m hoping things will get into some kind of rhythm around here.

Met some unemployed guys today outside a gas station. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to write more about that experience once I have more than 5 minutes of free time.

    Many Christians view good and evil as opposites on a sort of moral spectrum, with God on the good side and Satan on the evil side, and the rest of us somewhere between. Actions might be plotted along this spectrum as mostly good, just partly good, somewhat evil, etc. This, I believe, is an absolutely false understanding of morality and the nature of good and evil.
    In the beginning, there was God. There was the Word. There was logic and order and absolute good. In the beginning, there was no evil. Why was there no evil? Because only God existed. This is important, because it helps us to get at the root of thing. Because only God eternally exists, from everlasting to everlasting, and there is no thing greater than God, God has the authority and essential ability to define all things. He defines and embodies what is good by His very nature — because if He did not, then morality would be independent of God, and God would not really be God. He would be servant to morality, which obviously cannot be the case. God, therefore, defines what is good — and passively through that, I think, defines what is evil.
    Let’s look again at the beginning. If there was only God in the beginning, and no evil, where did evil come from? What was the first evil? It is generally accepted that the first evil was that of Lucifer, the bearer of light in heaven, highest of all the angels. What was his evil? He wanted to be like God — to take God’s place. Thus, he was cast from heaven to eternally be separated from the loving presence of God. Did Lucifer — now called Satan — invent evil? Did he suddenly create evil out of nothing? I think we must answer no to this, as no one can create from nothing but God alone. Lucifer did not create evil from nothing. He created evil from good.
    Think about the second account of evil. In the garden, Eve and then Adam disobeyed God’s command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, they didn’t simply eat the fruit to disobey God — they had other motives. The serpent, who is generally believed to be Satan in the form of a serpent, told Eve that she would be like God if she ate the fruit. So now we see that both the first and second sins (acts of evil) were the same. In both cases, the evil was wanting be like God.
    Now, is the desire to be like God evil? Not in and of itself, no. God desires to be Himself, else He would be someone else. It isn’t a sin for God to wish to be God. The evil is that others, who are not God, wish to imitate Him. This isn’t something we have created, it is something we have distorted. We are not capable of creation; but we are amazingly skilled at distortion.
    Look at the different forms evil takes. Murder, hatred, jealousy, lying, theft, and all the rest. These things are only evil for humans, not for God. If God kills, hates, is jealous, redefines reality, or takes away from us, it is not evil. He is justified in whatever He does. However, if we try to do those things — if we do what is only right for God to do — we are trying to be like God. We think we are like God, that we have the right to do as we desire. This is the heart of evil.
    I’d like to return to the issue of the binary nature of good and evil. Something cannot be a mixture of good and evil; it is either good, or it is either. Never both. Anything good that is distorted becomes evil. If you take Helium and remove or add a part, or rearrange the parts, it is no longer Helium. It becomes non-Helium. The same rule applies to all things. If you change them, they are no longer what they were. When you change something good, or when you take elements of the good from their proper context and transplant them, that thing is no longer good. It has become un-good, something other than good. What is there besides good? There is evil. There is no mixture, no spectrum, no compatibility between good and evil. It is a pure binary dialectic.

I wrote this in the car on the way to college. I’m at college now. Maybe I’ll post about life when I catch up with it.

I’m sure someone can make a good argument against some points I made. I haven’t had a good philosophical debate in a while. Thoughts, anyone?

So, I like my job at Chik-Fil-A. It’s certainly not the best paid, and certainly not easy sometimes, but overall the people are great and it’s gratifying. They’re also really reasonable when it comes to scheduling issues — that is, until Al took over scheduling. Yesterday, I told him I needed to be off at 2 on Tuesday for a dentist appointment. “Well, how about you stay until 3?” What?!? I have a dentist appointment at 2! How the heck could I stay until 3? I did finally work that one out, though, no thanks to Al’s understanding and helpful attitude.

Then this came up. I called in tonight to find out my hours for my last two days of work, hoping I’d be off one of those days. No luck. Worse, I’m working a 12-hour shift on Monday:

5:15 AM – 5:00 PM.

I’ve never so seriously considered just skipping work. What’s the worst they could do? Fire me on my last day?

I mentioned a few posts back that I was planning to periodically add pictures to my photoblog, but nobody seemed to pick up on it. So, I’ve put my photoblog on my front page. Here’s my latest addition, that I just finished editing:

I’d love feedback on some of the pictures I’ve put up!