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κακοήθεια (Kakoētheia): The Sinful Heart of Malice · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking O picture this.
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You are at the office or maybe a family gathering and someone
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makes a comment directed right at you.
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Oh, we have all been there, right?
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And on the surface, the words are, like, completely neutral.
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It might even be disguised as a compliment.
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Yeah, but you can just feel this sharp, deliberate edge
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underneath. It yeah, that passive aggressive
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sting. Yeah, that is it.
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Or, you know, think about your time online.
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You watch someone take a completely innocent social media
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post and they actively twist it into the most cynical
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interpretation possible. Which happens basically every 5
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seconds on the. Internet pretty much and usually
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we just write this off as someone being difficult or maybe
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they are just having a bad day. Right, we brush it off.
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But what if the malice you encounter in your daily life is
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not just a bad mood? What if it is a specific
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philosophical condition that the ancients diagnosed thousands of
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years ago? That is a fascinating way to
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frame it. Because today we are tracking
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that specific feeling, we are looking at a very particular
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ancient Greek word for this behavior, which is cacaothia.
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It is quite the word. It is, and we are going to
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follow its root word, kaikos, all the way from the earliest
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Greek philosophers to the Old Testament prophets and then
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right into the New Testament writers.
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We want to see how these ancient minds grappled with the origin,
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the nature and the defeat of evil.
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Because, you know, we are looking at a linguistic shift
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that tracks a massive theological revolution.
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The Greek and Hellenistic thinkers, they spend centuries
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categorizing evil. Try and figure it all out.
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Yeah. They wanted to know if it was a
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cosmic force or maybe a physical substance, or, as some of them
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thought, just a lack of education, right.
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But the biblical text took those abstract theories and brought
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the problem of evil right down into the center of the human
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heart. To make sense of that shift, we
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should start with the anatomy of this specific type of malice,
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Kakothia. So let's break that down.
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What does that word actually mean?
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Well, the word itself is a compound.
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It combines kakos, which is the broad Greek word for bad or
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evil, with othos, which means character, habit, or
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disposition. So it is like a habit of being
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bad. That is spot on.
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We are looking at a habituated vadnais.
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It is a basic defect in character that makes a person
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habitually hurtful to others. Some of the classical
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definitions of this word bring it right into focus for us
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because Aristotle, in his work on rhetoric, defines kakoetha as
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taking everything for the worse. That is such a piercing
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definition. It really is.
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And then Ammonius, writing around 100 AD, defines it as
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baseness, lurking in the shadows or hidden evil.
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Which sounds incredibly sinister.
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Yeah, it does. And the apostle Paul actually
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uses this exact word in his letter to the Romans.
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In Romans chapter one, verse 29, he places it in this massive
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catalog of human vices. He wedges Cacoathea right
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between deceit and gossip. That placement is so deliberate.
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Right. It feels incredibly intentional
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because it is not open physical violence.
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It is this quiet, persistent, toxic disposition.
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Yeah, wedging it between deceit and gossip tells you everything
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about how this vice operates. While Aristotle treated it as a
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specific vice of interpretation, like you said, taking things for
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the worse, the popular understanding in the ancient
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world was a bit broader. How so?
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Well, it encompassed varied mischief and like miscellaneous
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villainy, but the core concept remains constant.
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It is an internal disposition that actively works against the
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good of others. Got it, Philo, the Hellenistic
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Jewish philosopher. He linked it to a hot temper,
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savage behavior, and harsh sarcasm.
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It is the desire to hurt, but often executed through specious
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reasoning or, you know, hidden motives.
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Like smiling to your face while stabbing you in the back.
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Yeah, Josephus even uses it to describe the serpent in the
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garden. He says the serpent maliciously
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persuaded the woman to eat the fruit.
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Through Kaku Athea, it has calculated cynical damage.
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I think Aristotle's definition, you know, taking everything for
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the worse, perfectly describes A cynical modern social filter.
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Oh absolutely. It is like interacting with
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someone who actively spins every innocent comment or neutral
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action into a personal insult. We all know someone like that.
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We do. If you say good morning, they
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think what are they trying to get out of me?
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If you offer to help with a project, they assume you are
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implying they are incompetent. Right, there is no winning with
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them. Exactly.
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I mean, yes, that is it. The malice is not in the action
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they are observing. The malice is the lens through
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which they view the entire world.
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They filter reality through a lens of hostility.
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And the person suffering from kakuathea, They literally cannot
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accept a good motive. They are fundamentally
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suspicious of every action around them.
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But to understand why the ancients cared so much about
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this specific brand of malice, we have to look at its root
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word, kakos. OK, let's look at Kakos.
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The Greek world spent an enormous amount of intellectual
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energy trying to solve the puzzle of why bad things happen
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at all. This is the classic problem of
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theodicy. OK, wait, look, pause and unpack
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that word theodicy for a second. That is a heavy philosophical
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term. What does it actually mean in
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practice for you, the listener? Sure, The Odyssey is basically
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the attempt to justify God or the gods in the face of
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suffering. Trying to make God look good
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when things are bad. Pretty much, if the universe is
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governed by divine order, or if God is good, how do we explain
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suffering, weakness, and moral failure?
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How do we get off the hook for the bad things that happen?
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And the evaluation of the word cockos shows us how they're
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thinking developed on this issue.
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How did it start? Well, originally in the earliest
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Greek writings, the word does not even mean moral evil.
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It just meant an incapacity or a weakness.
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Oh wow, so when you read the earliest Greek texts, Kakos just
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meant poor of its kind, right? So a Kakos Dr. was not like an
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evil murderous physician, it was just a weak physician who could
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not heal your illness. Yeah, a bad doctor in the
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functional sense. Or a Kakos soldier was a coward
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or something useless in battle. It was a functional failure, but
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as Greek thought progressed it started to take on moral and
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cosmic weight. It did.
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It became the word for moral wickedness, and also the word
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for absolute disaster or ruin. Which leads us to the classical
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Greek dilemma. Is this evil, this kakos sent by
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the gods, or is it born of human ignorance?
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And the early texts show a very stark divide on this question.
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On one hand, you have Homer, who presents a very specific
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worldview. In the Odyssey.
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Right. In the Odyssey there is a clear
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sentiment that Zeus hands out both good and bad Caicos.
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By divine necessity, the gods are the authors of human fate,
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and human fate includes a lot of arbitrary suffering.
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So it is just random bad luck handed down from the sky.
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Basically. But even within Homer, we start
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to see a shift happening. There is a moment where Zeus
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complaints that mortals blame the gods for everything.
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Oh, the classic don't blame me from the top.
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Yeah, Zeus says. Humans bring disaster on
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themselves through their own reckless actions, usually by
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ignoring divine warnings. So this introduces the idea of
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human responsibility. Interesting.
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Later on, the Athenian politician Solon makes a really
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strong argument that political disaster is a self incurred
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misfortune. He tells the city of Athens that
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ruin is coming because they ignored the warnings.
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They brought the Caicos upon themselves.
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OK, so we have the poets blaming the gods and the politicians
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blaming the people. Then the philosophers enter the
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debate and they come up with a very different solution.
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Yes they do. Democritus and Socrates both
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develop theories around this, and their theory is that evil is
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simply the result of ignorance. Which is quite the leap.
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It is, Democritus says, that if you open a person up, you find a
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storehouse of evils. But these are brought on by a
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blindness of mind. Socrates takes this even
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further. He argues that human beings do
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not do evil voluntarily. Right, he thought, no one wants
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to be bad. Yeah, he believed that if humans
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actually knew what was good, if they possessed true knowledge of
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virtue, they would naturally do what is good.
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So the cause of Kakos is just a lack of education.
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Socrates equated knowledge directly with virtue.
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He believed that the human will always desires the good, so if
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someone commits a bad act, they must just be mistaken about what
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is actually good for them. Like a math error.
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Yeah, they think the bad thing will bring them happiness, which
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is an intellectual error. And this is a highly, highly
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optimistic view of human nature, say the least.
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It assumes the will is unbroken and only the intellect needs
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correcting. But Plato, his student, realized
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this was totally insufficient. Plato looked at the world and
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saw that irrational passions often overpower rational
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thought. People do crazy things even when
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they know better. Right, so he theorized that evil
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was not just ignorance, it was a cosmic force tied to physical
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matter. For Plato, the corporeal world,
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the physical stuff the universe is made of, is the source of
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cockos. He developed this dualism where
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the spirit is good and the physical body or matter itself
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is the origin of evil. Wait, wait.
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Let's back up. So Socrates thought malice this
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is just a lack of education. Like if humans just knew what
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was good, they would never do anything evil.
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That is his stance. He thought the issue was purely
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cognitive. You just need to teach people
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the right way to live and the problem of evil just disappears.
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I have to push back on that. That is incredibly optimistic.
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I mean, think about history. Some of the most calculated
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cruel schemes were executed by highly educated.
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People. Oh for sure.
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If malice is just ignorance, why does a PhD commit financial
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fraud? We have all seen brilliant, well
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educated people intentionally harm others.
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Education does not eradicate Kakuathea.
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Sometimes it just gives it better tools.
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Yeah, sometimes it makes it more sophisticated.
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A really sharp mind can invent entirely new ways to take
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everything for the worse. And then Plato's idea blaming
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physical matter? That feels just as flawed to me.
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How so? Well, if the physical body is
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the source of evil, then literally everything we do in
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the physical world is bad. And you are identifying the
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exact friction in the classical Greek system right there.
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Blaming physical matter, which is called metaphysical dualism,
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creates a massive problem for daily life.
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That makes everything is sin just by existing, yeah.
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If matter is evil, then normal and body human life is
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inherently bad. Eating, working, and raising a
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family are all tainted simply because they are physical
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activity. In that system, salvation
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consists of escaping the body entirely.
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Which is pretty bleak. It is.
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As history moved forward into the Hellenistic period and
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Eastern thought began to mingle with Greek philosophy, the
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theories became much more cosmic and psychological.
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We see new systems trying to explain the relentless presence
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of caucus. One of the most famous attempts
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comes from the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotness.
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Right plotness, and he takes a completely different angle.
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He viewed evil not as an active force and not as physical
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matter. He viewed it as an absolute lack
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or an absence of good. An absence, yeah.
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Use this analogy of emanation. If the supreme good is like the
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sun, then as the light shines outward it eventually gets
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weaker and weaker, and at the absolute furthest edge where the
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light completely fails, you have darkness.
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Just cold. Darkness exactly for plotness.
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That darkness is evil. It has no substance of its own.
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It is just the place where the good is totally absent.
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And plotness is really just trying to protect the divine
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from being responsible for evil. If evil has no substance, if it
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is just a non being, then God did not create it.
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God is off the hook. Right, God only created the
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light. The darkness is just the
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consequence of being really far away from the source.
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Let's modernize Plakinus theory to make sure you, the listener,
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understand the mechanism here. It is kind of like a Wi-Fi
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router. Oh I like this.
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The router is the good If you are standing right next to it,
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you have a perfect signal. You are thriving.
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But as you walk down the street away from your house, the signal
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drops. Eventually you have no
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connection at all. The dreaded dead zone.
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Yeah, in Platanus's mind, evil is not a competing router trying
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to hack into your phone. Evil is just the dead zone where
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the Wi-Fi cannot reach. That analogy clarifies his
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theory so well. But you know, other Hellenistic
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systems completely rejected this idea of evil as a mere absence.
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Who rejected it? Well, Parseism, better known as
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Zoroastrianism. They posited A literal
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pretemporal cosmic war. They believed in 2 twin spirits.
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One spirit shows truth called a Shah.
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The other spirit shows falsehood called drug.
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OK, so a massive conflict. Yes.
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In this system, evil is a highly active, conscious force.
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It has its own armies of demons. Humanity is caught in the middle
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of a massive cosmic conflict, and every single person must
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choose a side. The material world is the
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literal battlefield for these two competing gods.
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Man, think about what it would feel like to wake up every day
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with that worldview. You're not just going to work,
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you are a foot soldier in a literal cosmic war.
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It has a lot of stress to it Tuesday.
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It really does. But you know, I have a real
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question about Platinus absence theory, the whole Wi-Fi dead
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zone idea. How does that line up with your
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actual lived experience of malice?
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It doesn't seem to fit, does it? No, when you encounter True
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Cockyothea, it does not feel like a passive shadow.
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It does not feel like a lack of something.
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It feels active. It feels aggressive.
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Malice has real energy. It takes work to be that mean.
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It does. It takes effort to spin
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someone's words against them. Calling it an absence of good
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feels like calling a hurricane an absence of calm.
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It might be technically true in some highly abstract
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philosophical sense, but it entirely misses the destructive
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reality of the event. And Philo, who was a prominent
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Hellenistic Jewish thinker, recognized that exact same flaw.
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Philo tried to bridge the gap between Greek philosophy and
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Jewish theology. How?
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Did he do that? Well, he absolutely distanced
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God from evil, stating that the divine is totally free from
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Kaikos. But instead of calling evil an
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illusion or a mere shadow like Plotinus, he located the source
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of evil squarely in human desire.
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Internalizing. It yes.
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He used the Greek word epithemia, which means lust or
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over desire. Philo argued that every human
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soul is born with the capacity for both good and evil.
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It is our runaway desires that act as the source of malice.
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So he moves the battleground away from abstract matter and
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away from cosmic twins. He puts the battleground right
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inside human motivation. So while the Greek and
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Hellenistic worlds were busy categorizing evil as a
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metaphysical glitch or a seismic twin or a Wi-Fi dead zone, the
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Hebrew Scriptures took an entirely different, shockingly
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personal approach to the problem.
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Totally different. To understand this, we have to
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look at the Septuagint. This is the ancient Greek
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translation of the Old Testament.
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The translators took this loaded Greek word kaikos, and they used
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it to translate the Hebrew word raw.
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And when you look at how the Old Testament prophets use this
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word, the whole framework shifts.
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It is a massive pivot. We leave the realm of abstract
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philosophy and enter a deeply relational covenantal theology.
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The shift is so jarring if your mind is trained on Greek
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philosophy because in the prophetic view of history found
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in books like Jeremiah, Micah, and Deuteronomy, the focus is
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entirely on the covenant between God and the nation of Israel.
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The relationship. Right when the prophets speak of
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Kaka, the plural of kakos, meaning evils or disasters, they
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are talking about political blows.
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They mean famine, military defeat and exile.
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And the prophets make a shocking claim.
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These disasters are sent by God. That is a tough pill to swallow.
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It is There are punishments in response to Israel's idolatry
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and rebellion. God is the active agent bringing
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the Kakos upon the nation. That is a terrifying thought.
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I mean Deuteronomy says many evils and troubles shall come
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upon them because they have forsaken their God.
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Jeremiah says I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit
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of their thoughts. Right.
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It sounds almost like the Homeric view again, where the
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gods just hand out suffering, but there's a massive difference
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in the intention behind the action.
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What is the difference? The same God who sends the
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disaster, it's also the deliverer from the disaster.
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The intention behind the visitation of evil is not
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destruction for the sake of destruction.
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The intention is to bring the people back to their senses.
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Oh, that makes sense. The goal is to turn them away
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from idolatry and to restore them to peace.
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God uses the disaster as an extreme wake up call.
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So the prophets resolved the problem of theodicy not with
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metaphysical dualism, but with the sovereignty of God over
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history. Disasters are the response of
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God's righteous judgement to human guilt within a covenant
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framework. Like breaking a contract.
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Think of it like a treaty between a king and his subjects.
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If the subjects rebel, the king enforces the penalties written
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right into the treaty. But because God's nature is
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merciful, the disasters are teleological.
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Hold on, let's define teleological meaning.
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The disasters have a specific end goal or purpose.
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It is not just random lightning strikes of divine anger.
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That is correct. Teleological means moving toward
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a specific planned goal. Jeremiah specifically says that
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God has thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an
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expected end. The disaster is a severe mercy.
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It is designed to break the cycle of self destruction that
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the nation has locked itself into.
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I think the best way to understand this is to compare
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the prophetic view of God sending Kaka to a surgeon
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performing a major operation. OK, let's hear it.
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If you look at a surgery out of context, it looks like an act of
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extreme violence. True, the surgeon is causing
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intense physical trauma. They are cutting the body open.
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That is a bad event. It is physical damage, but the
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intention behind that trauma is to cut out a deadly tumor.
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The context changes everything, right?
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The goal of the violence is ultimate healing.
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The Prophet's view is that idolatry is a terminal cancer in
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the life of the nation. The political disaster is the
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surgery required to save the patient.
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The pain is intense, but the alternative is total death.
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It is a really severe intervention, and this concept
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of a stark choice between life and death is amplified in the
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wisdom literature of the Old Testament, specifically the book
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of Proverbs. Oh, Proverbs is great for this.
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The Greek translators of Proverbs injected a rigid
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ethical binary into the text. They took the Hebrew concepts
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and framed them as a constant choice between two distinct
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paths. Evil is personified as folly.
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Lady Folly. Yes, she is called Kaka Bulo,
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the evil counselor, and this counselor has her dwelling in
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death and Hades. The text presents a stark,
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unavoidable choice for you. You either choose the way of
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wisdom, which leads to life, or the way of the bad, which leads
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to death. It is interesting the
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translators of Proverbs use the word cockos nearly 100 times.
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That is a lot. It is.
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That is almost double the amount of the original Hebrew text.
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They were aggressively categorizing everything.
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You were either righteous or you are bad.
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There's no middle ground. And they located the origin of
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this vadnais right in the human heart.
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Right at the center. The Old Testament reveals that
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evil is not a cosmic accident. It is rebellion of the human
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heart against God. And then the New Testament arise
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and diagnosis just how terminal that heart condition really is.
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We see this definitive diagnosis starting with Jesus in the
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Gospel of Mark Chapter 7. He is addressing the religious
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leaders who are highly focused on external purity.
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Washing hands and pots and pans. Yeah, they're concerned with
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washing hands and avoiding physical contamination from the
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outside world, but Jesus completely dismisses the idea
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that evil is a physical substance outside of man that
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can infect him. He flips it.
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He says that it is from within, out of the heart of men, that
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evil thoughts, murders, deceit, and our word cacothea proceed.
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He takes the philosophical debate about the origin of evil
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and settles it. The origin is internal.
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It is not physical matter. It is not an evil world soul.
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It is the human heart itself. Jesus locates the rot on the
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inside, and then the apostle Paul takes that diagnosis and
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writes what might be the most devastating confession in
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ancient literature. Romans 7.
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Yes, in Romans Chapter 7 Paul basically takes a sledgehammer
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to this whole Greek idea of self improvement.
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He shatters the Socratic idea that knowing good means doing
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good. Because, Socrates said if you
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know it, you do it. Right, Socrates said.
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If you just educate people, they will choose virtue, Paul says.
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Look, I have the education. I know the rules.
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I agree with the rules. I desperately want to follow the
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rules, but he finds the Kakon evil is the only reality he can
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actualize on his own. That is a hard realization.
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He writes the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I
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would not, that I do. It is a total collapse of human
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optimism. Paul unmasks the fundamental
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contradiction of the human condition.
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He proves through his own experience that the intellect is
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not enough to overcome the defect in the will.
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The will is broken. Yes, his inner consent to the
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law of God shows he recognizes what is good.
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His inability to perform it shows that his nature is bound
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to a different law. He calls this the law of death,
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the human default state. What Paul refers to as the flesh
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is completely incapable of producing true righteousness.
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Total inability. Exactly.
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From a Reformed perspective, this is the reality of total
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depravity. It requires total reliance on
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divine grace. Without the intervention of the
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Holy Spirit, any belief in human self perfectibility is just an
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illusion. Man is at the end of his tether.
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His will itself is corrupted. You know we live in a culture
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obsessed with self optimization. All completely we.
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Have apps for mindfulness, endless routines for
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productivity, and shelves of books on how to fix our flaws
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through sheer willpower. It is very Socratic way of
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living. Trying to educate ourselves out
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of the problem. Right, but it is also incredibly
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exhausting because we constantly fail to meet our own standards.
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I wonder how freeing it might actually be for you, listening
21:50
right now to accept Paul's verdict.
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It changes everything. Instead of constantly trying to
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self optimize and failing, what happens when you just admit that
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your human will is fundamentally broken?
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What if admitting total inability is the prerequisite
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for experiencing any real freedom?
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Admitting that inability is the core requirement for receiving
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grace. As long as you think you can fix
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the problem through better education or stricter habits,
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you remain locked in the frustrating cycle of Romans 7.
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Spinning your wheels. Yeah, you are relying on the
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flesh to cure the flesh. The New Testament writers
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recognize this inherent bent toward Kakon so clearly that
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they even view human government through this lens.
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Like in Romans 13. Right.
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In Romans 13, Paul describes the state, the civil authority, as a
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divine tool specifically designed to restrain the evil in
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the world. The state does not exist to make
22:41
men perfectly good. It can't do that anyway.
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No, it cannot. It exists to carry the sword and
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limit the damage caused by human malice.
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It is a sober recognition of the reality of evil in the present
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age. Recognizing this brokenness is
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the first step. But the New Testament does not
22:56
leave us in despair. It provides a historical,
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objective solution. We see some incredible specific
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applications of the root word cacos in the lives of the early
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believers. I do.
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It starts with the crucifixion itself.
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The Gospel of Luke records that Jesus was crucified between two
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kakugoi. Kakugoi.
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Yeah, that is the word for malefactors.
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Criminals are literally evil doers.
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The savior of the world is executed, sharing the exact fate
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of the wicked. He enters fully into the reality
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of human punishment and death. And the use of kakugoi is highly
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significant for the narrative. Christ does not remain aloof
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from the human condition. He subjects himself to the
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ultimate consequence of Kakon, which is death under the
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judgement of the law. He takes the hit.
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Yes, by bearing that guilt he breaks the power of the law of
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death, but the New Testament and also acknowledges that
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believers, even after receiving grace, still have to live out
23:49
their days in a fallen world. This brings us to a fascinating
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eschatological word used in the text, which is unkake.
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Yeah, it comes from the same root, and it means to lose
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heart, to grow weary, or literally, to act badly by
24:04
failing. Let's define eschatological so
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we do not lose anyone. When we say eschatological, we
24:09
are talking about the end times, the final realization of God's
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Kingdom. But it is not just about the
24:14
distant future, it affects the present.
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Right. The early Christians were living
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in this agonizing tension of the already and not yet.
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Oh, that is a huge concept. It really is.
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Christ had already won the victory, the Kingdom was
24:26
established, but the final physical consummation of that
24:29
Kingdom had not yet appeared. Think of it like signing the
24:32
closing papers on a house. OK, you legally own it, the
24:35
transaction is done, but you have not been given the keys to
24:38
move in yet. You are living in the tension
24:40
between the purchase and the possession.
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And that tension caused 'cause massive psychological pressure.
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Jesus tells a parable in Luke 18, instructing his disciples
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not to incake in prayer. Paul tells the Corinthians and
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the Galatians not to lose heart in doing good.
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Why the constant warning? Because they were facing
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persecution, delay, and the daily grind of living in a world
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heavily influenced by Kakaethia, they were constantly tempted to
25:05
just give up. They were tempted to let the
25:07
surrounding malice wear them down into apathy.
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The Greek usage of the word unkake originally meant to fail
25:14
in your duties. It was used in military
25:16
contexts, like an army failing to send reinforcements to the
25:19
front lines. Dereliction of duty.
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Yes, Paul takes that military word and applies it to the
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spiritual life. To Lee's heart is to stop
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functioning as a citizen of the coming Kingdom.
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It is letting the present darkness dictate your reality.
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But Paul insists that because they have received mercy, they
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possess the strength to not grow weary.
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They have a new fuel source. They do.
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The believer is called to a new reality.
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This new reality is governed not by khakiya, the vice that
25:46
destroys fellowship, but by agape, the divine love that
25:49
builds it. If you were listening to this
25:51
right now, think about the last time you felt totally burnt out.
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That is exactly what the early Christians meant by Nkeke.
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The early believers were not dealing with overflowing e-mail
26:02
inboxes or the stress of corporate commuting.
26:05
Right, different problems. Very different, but they face
26:08
the intense pressure of awaiting a delayed Kingdom while
26:11
surrounded by hostility. They knew what it meant to be
26:14
completely drained by the surrounding culture.
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The command not to lose heart speaks directly to our modern
26:20
exhaustion. It is incredibly relevant.
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When you are constantly bombarded by the malice of the
26:25
world, whether online or in person, the easiest thing to do
26:28
is to become cynical. It is incredibly tempting to
26:31
adopt that Kakalefi filter yourself just to survive.
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But the New Testament calls for a radical endurance based on
26:39
hope. It is a call to overcome evil
26:41
with good. Romans 12 says be not overcome
26:44
of evil, but overcome evil with good.
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Which is unnatural. Totally unnatural world without
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God knows no true doing of good based on divine love.
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But the Christian community is meant to be the place where the
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impossible becomes possible. It is the place where the
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relentless cycle of malice is finally broken by forgiveness
27:04
and grace. That is a massive contrast.
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The contrast is absolute. Kakia destroys human fellowship,
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Agape restores it. This completely resolves the
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ancient Greek dilemma. Evil is not a metaphysical
27:16
substance you have to escape. It is a relational brokenness
27:19
that has been healed by the historical work of Christ.
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We started with the classical Greek philosophers treating evil
27:25
as an abstract concept. They thought it was a glitch in
27:27
the material universe or a simple lack of education.
27:30
Which is a decent attempt for their time.
27:32
Yeah, but then we watched the Old Testament prophets turn that
27:35
idea on its head, revealing A sovereign God who uses disaster
27:39
to discipline a rebellious nation within a covenant.
27:42
And we landed in the New Testament, which diagnosis the
27:45
fatal flaw right in the center of the human will, offering
27:49
divine grace as the only cure. The ancient texts give us an
27:53
incredibly precise vocabulary for the darkness we experience
27:56
and a precise solution. The progression of the word
27:59
Caicos demonstrates a massive shift in human self-awareness.
28:03
The abstract theories fall away, leaving the reality of the human
28:07
heart before a holy God. No word hide.
28:09
Nowhere recognizing Kakothea as an internal disposition rather
28:13
than an external accident forces us to drop our excuses.
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We cannot blame physical matter and we cannot blame ignorance.
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We have to confront our own nature and our need for rescue.
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Let's leave you with a final thought that I want Today we
28:26
talked about Aristotle defining Kakovaedia as the habit of
28:29
assuming the worst. We compare that to a cynical
28:32
social filter. Right, taking everything for the
28:34
worse. Think about the modern digital
28:37
landscape you inhabit every day. We exist in a social media
28:40
ecosystem that is literally engineered to thrive on outrage.
28:45
It runs on it. The algorithms reward conflict.
28:48
They practically beg you to read the worst possible motives into
28:52
the words of strangers. They train you to instantly
28:54
categorize people as enemies based on a single post.
28:58
Our technology is monetizing Cockoathia.
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That is a terrifying reality. It is What if the most radical
29:04
countercultural thing you could do today is not to win an
29:06
argument online? What if the most radical thing
29:09
you can do is to actively refuse the algorithm of malice?
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In a world desperate for outrage, what would happen if
29:14
you deliberately decided to assume the best?