A New Ethos

Love erases pre-conceived equations of expectation. When love makes itself known in our relationship with God, we begin to understand that everything he has created is good. With the Spirit of love alive, breathing and active in our spirit, soul and body, we are truly able to test all things. The Apostle Paul’s directive to ‘hold on to the good and avoid every kind of evil’ is not an equation where the two sides, good and evil, reduce to a common denominator or equal sums. It is not a balancing act, where, for every good thing, there must be lurking some dark, sinister evil waiting to cancel out the good. When love comes into our relationship with God, we see the overwhelming, abundant and lavish goodness of His favor toward us. The Genesis accounts of creation all refer to God’s response to HIs creation (including the vegetation) as good. He didn’t say, “It’s all good - except for this nasty tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” I don’t think God planned to keep us in the dark about good and evil for all eternity; I think he knew that this was the one area where he needed to be present - love needed to be at the center of human interaction with this knowledge - God would have to be there with us as we experienced the face of evil for the first time, holding us as we cried our first tears. Oh, how I wish this is how it would have happened for Adam and Eve. For me.