Goodness is itself.

The past few days during the dead times at work (lets be honest, lately that has been 80% of the day) I have been reading C.S. Lewis' book "Mere Christianity." Those of you who are familiar with C.S. Lewis know that this book is more on the side of philosophy and less on the side of religion, but one point jumped out at me as I was reading and I decided to take it to the next level and really delve into the religious aspect of what Mr. Lewis was saying to us.

Condensed yet directly quoted C.S. Lewis wrote: "Goodness is itself. Badness is spoiled goodness." Could you then say "badness" or "evil" was definitely not a creation of God? If this theory is true, evil cannot exist without goodness. (C.S. Lewis does a much better job of explaining this thought than I ever could, if your curious to know more about his theories check out Book II of Mere Christianity.) In this theory, evil is a mere perversion of good, or perhaps even an absence of the intended good. Does this lead one to believe then that evil is not a created force at all? Not to say that it is not a "force" in our world, because most assuredly it is, it is simply not "created" as pertains to "created by God."

People have often questioned why it is that God created evil in the world. And the problem often surfaces that if we are speaking of the Christian God, how can a purely good, purely righteous God produce evil if He does not contain any evil Himself? This theory answers that question by asserting that evil in and of itself is not a created entity. It is present only because of the created thing or standard we all goodness (or moral law). Evil is the result of freewill (a good) being used to excess, or, in a way of perversion from its original intent. Instead of using free will for its original purpose of creating  the ultimate bond of love (relationship) between creator and created, it was used to gain Independence, solitude and a false sense of power. The creation used this freedom of choice in an evil way to seek a god-like stature of Independence and freedom. The goodness of freewill ( the free choice to love someone wholly) is the very part of it that makes it able to go wrong, but it simply could not exist without choice, and love (goodness) could not be complete or perfect without choice. Think about it, do you want your lover to care about you because someone is holding him/her at gun point forcing him to say so, or do you wish for him/her to love you in good and bad times, completely by their own choice. One is a lie, the other is truth. We could not exist as complex creations with emotions and personalities, or have the ability to develop and grow without this ability of choice, so it is beyond all doubt, at it's core a necessary good.

This perversion of a good creation, created an evil, that has effected us throughout the history of man, and even before. This is the same corruption of good experienced in heaven after the creation of the Arch-Angel Lucifer. Once again, God created a pure good, and only through that creations own means, through that creations perversion of that good, did we understand, and come to know evil, not through the creator, but through the created.