THOUGHT: Good & Evil?

If evil is such a big problem, then why do we have stuff like poisonous plants and other stuff like that? Have you ever wondered something like that? I know I have. What's the point of bad stuff?
The question reveals something ugly. The question about poison presumes that poison is bad. Bad is not just what I don't like. There can be much that I just don't understand or fully see the value of. We know that many incredible discoveries are made from things that have been cast aside or seen as not valuable or even bad. Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing.
This is going to go all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
When something happens to you, how do you determine whether it is good or evil? Well, how do you make that distinction?
Is your answer something like something good is when I like it, when it makes me feel good or gives me a sense of security? The opposite then is evil if causes me pain or costs me something I want.
Pretty subjective then. You know, based on me. So then, it is certainly possible for different people to answer that question differently.
How confident are you in your ability to discern what indeed is good for you, or what is evil?
We tend to sound "justifiably" angry when somebody is threatening my 'good,' what I deserve. But do we have any logical ground for deciding what is actually good or evil, except how something or someone affects me.
It all seems quite self-serving and self-centered. How is your track record? Have you found that some things you initially thought were good turned out to be horribly destructive? How about some things that you thought were evil that have turned you and changed you into a vastly better person?
So it is you who determines good and evil. You become the judge. To make matters more confusing your opinions will change on what is good and evil. Worse that that, there are billions of people in this world all doing the same things: determining good and evil based on themselves. So when your good and evil clashes with your neighbour's, fights and arguments ensue and even wars break out.
If there is no reality of good and evil that is definite, concrete, unchanging, absolute, then you have lost any basis for judging. It is just language, and one might as well exchange the word good for the word evil.
We spend most of our time and energy trying to acquire what we have determined to be good, whether it is financial security or health or retirement or whatever. We spend a huge amount of energy and worry fearing what I've determined to be evil.
It allows you to play God in your independence.

with thanks & respect to
"The Shack" and Wm. Paul Young
ppg 133-136

Are you enough on your own?
I'm not.
Think about it, I know I have been.

g-ram