Today it was my turn to start the discussion.
Esther: I want to do only what is right and good, and have no wish to do anything wrong or evil. But how can I know what is good and what is evil? I think that there are no universal rules that can be applied to all places, times, and situations. Whenever I plan to do something, the question whether it is right or wrong arises. Often I find it difficult to decide if it is right or wrong. It makes me uncertain, and often I retreat from doing it. If I do it, the possibility for it to have been wrong makes me feel guilty. I am sure you can help me overcome this problem.
Rabbi: Thank you, Martha, for stating such a universal problem so clearly from your own experience. In order to do good and avoid evil, we need to know what is good and evil. But how can we be sure of what is which? They can vary according to people, places, and times. Something good in one situation could be evil in another situation. Something good for me now may be evil for me later.
Therefore, trying to judge everything you see around in terms of good and evil or right and wrong is a very narrow and rigid approach. Moreover, nothing in the world can be seen as ultimately good or evil because everything in the world changes. Only God is absolutely good because God doesn't change as we do. Also, only God, being all-knowing, has the right to decide what is ultimately good and evil.
I agree that we need to make judgments in our day-to-day life because we need to choose right and avoid wrong. But our judgments should always be contextual because what is right in one context may not be right in another context, and what is right for one person may not be so for another person. If someone dares to judge another person without considering the context, he/she, in reality, is occupying the seat of God. Those who realize this will not usurp the seat of God and judge others. They will be willing to admit their limitations and be humble.
Our forefathers seem to have been aware of this problem, and they suggested a very good solution as well. In the story of Adam and Eve, there is a description of the kind of trees in the Garden of Eden. There were two special trees in addition to the ordinary ones. One of them bore the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and the other, the fruit of life. The fruit of the first were forbidden to Adam and Eve by God. God warned them that those fruits would cause death. Through this story, our forefathers are probably advising us to avoid the question of right or wrong as ultimate standards because it only leads to death.
Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is our attempt to do right and avoid wrong, and it leads to death. The available alternative is the tree of life, which, I think is an attempt to lead a meaningful and authentic life.
I know that this distinction is not easy to understand. I shall try my best to explain it as clearly as I can. Imagine that you go to a new place, where people do a lot of things differently from what you are familiar with. You start living your life there by imitating others. But soon you are supposed to understand the way of life in that place, stop imitating others, and start living your life in your own way.
To be authentic means you have to be the author of your own life. Let us say, for example, you eat three times a day, and someone asks you why you do so. If you answer saying, “Oh, that is the right thing to do” or “Oh, that is what everybody else does”, I wouldn’t call it authentic. But if you answer, “I have found it to be the healthiest way for me” I would call it authentic. If you have your own reasons for what you do in your life, your life is authentic.
Each one of us is in this world to live an adventurous life of an explorer. We need to keep on going forward facing life as it comes to us. We should always make the best possible judgments based on the contexts, and move on. Living a life of victory is the main thing. There is no guarantee that we will never do anything wrong. But learning from our mistakes, we have to continue our journey. This is a picture of an authentic life. This is the same as eating from the tree of life.
If I am obsessed with doing the right thing, I won’t be able to keep on going because my focus will not be on the journey of life, but on doing right. I will be stuck on the way looking for standards to determine what is right, and feeling guilty for all the wrongs I happen to commit. This is the same as eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The ability to think is a great gift from God, and our unwillingness to use it properly is what makes us foolish. In the story of Adam and Eve, we read that they were tempted by a snake. Don't you think that it is a pity for human beings, with such intellectual capacity, to act according to the words of a snake? They were too childish. I think this has been the major cause of most of the problems of humankind down the history. We have been so foolish as to accept any garbage someone thrusts on us without caring to think for a moment if it is good for us.
Martha: Please allow me to summarize the main things we have discussed so far. I have two ways to approach my life—a positive way of life, and a negative way of death.
· The positive way is to live an authentic life by being the author of my own life. I will have a sensible reason for everything I do in my life.
· The negative way is to try to live a life of deception by imitating others. I do what I do because I think that is right according to the acceptable standards, or because I think that is what most of the people do.
I believe we, in this study group, are making an attempt to understand our life because we want to live an authentic life. I am sure such an awareness of life will help us live an authentic life.
Rabbi: Thank you, Martha, for that excellent summary. Let me add some general guidelines that might help us determine what is good and what is evil. The humility and openness of our ancestors enabled them to look at the world from the perspective of God and see what is good for the whole world. In the hymn of creation, God looks at the world and finds it good after each day's creation. The well-being of the whole world is good in the sight of God according to our forefathers. They used this perspective of God as a standard to evaluate our perspectives of what is good. Whatever that leads to the well-being of the world is good, and whatever that contradicts it is evil.
Let me add a few more tips. Good and evil are gradable, which can be described with more and less. For example, it was evil for Eve to eat the fruit, but it was more evil to persuade another person to eat it.
The same deed can be good or evil according to the purpose and circumstances. For example, what the snake said about the fruit was not a lie, but truth. The snake was not a liar at all. But the purpose for which the snake said the truth made it evil.
It is often thought that only an act can be good or evil. Even inactivity (passivity) can be good or evil. There was something Adam and Eve could do immediately after they ate the fruit. They could apologize to God right away and seek forgiveness. But they didn’t do this, which is evil.
The knowledge of good and evil might be pointing to the distiction of everything that exist inside human mind. For eg: dark and light. Good and evil, symmetric nature of everything in our universe. For eg: two hands, two legs,two eyes, two ears, man and women, sun and planets, wisdom and ignorance etc... Even this symmetric nature can be found at the subatomic level(particle nature and wave nature). Even though this distinction of seperation exist within us, those who have gone deep into the process of meditation, like jesus, buddha and mohammed, they felt and claimed that everything is one and connected. So that might be the reason behind Jesus telling that I and my father is one and the same. Now modern science is also slowly coming to know this secret. Recently a group of scientsts claimed that their studies shows objective reality does not exist. A simple example can be given here. When sun goes around the other side, we feel darkness. But for an another being like bat, this is just a morning time for them. So reality is different for differnt beings. So the key point is when our mind come out of these distinction of seperation, we may be able to see the true nature of God. And this might be what Jesus, buddha and mohammed achieved.
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