S5E3 - Why Star Wars is Heretical - "Evil and God"

[MUSIC] Welcome to Lesnar Known Lewis, where two friends and CS Lewis fans explore his Lesnar Known works. I'm Jordan. And I'm Sean. Join us for Season 5, Mirror Theology, where Lewis's writings on the faith he lived by will help us to better understand and live out our lives as Mirror Christians. [MUSIC] Jordan, I have noticed that since the last time we recorded you still are coughing. Yes, it's true. This cough has been lingering for the last five minutes. [LAUGH] Because we are recording this episode, five minutes after we recorded the on the reading of old books episode. And so yes, my COVID throat is still present with us. Despite having a loss in between, but folks I apologize for that. Once again, I hope it's not too annoying to listen to. But Sean, this essay, sorry, excuse me, let me, that was rude. I was just going to jump into the essay. I kind of like that. Let me, unless you've got other staff we can. I just wanted to check in with you, see how you've been since last time. Well, since last time, Jordan's a little older and a little greater. That's all. And I have a little bit of noticing. Yeah, well, it's significant every five minutes or so. A new gray hair just pops out on my head. And you know, I know a little bit more about Lewis. And what I know a little bit more is about how God who is perfectly good and all powerful and loving. And the reality of evil can exist in this world. That is what I have learned since the last time that we recorded. And I mean, obviously this is a bit of a clumsy outrageous tie-in to our essay. But we are covering tonight evil and God. Can you tell us about this work? Yeah, so this work is he's replying in some sort of some magazine. I can't remember to a an article that someone else wrote. The previous issue of this magazine. I think the guy's name is Dr. E. M. Jodh, something like that. He wrote, uh, he wrote an article called evil and God. And this is Lewis's response to that. And it was I think in 1941. Now what's interesting, Sean, is I did a little bit of digging. And I found out that right before Lewis wrote this article evil and God, he wrote a review that you can find published in, um, in image and imagination, uh, this collection of Lewis writings. And that review is called Helen Embarratt, Buetheus, some aspects of his times and work. So that was a book that he read by Helen Embarratt. He wrote this review. You can find it published in image and imagination. And that work had a little bit to do with the idea of evil and what it is. Because that's something that Boetheus talked about. A lot of what we believe are theology. As Christians about evil can be, um, really well art, is really well articulated by Boetheus. He's this early Christian writer and, uh, Lewis was a big fan of his. And, uh, so I, I warned you early, Sean, that in this season will be covering a lot of small works that Lewis wrote, that we would, you and I have, would have really no interest in reading, um, for much reason, except every now and then he says something interesting. And this is one of those times in this review about the book on Buetheus. There's like three short paragraphs that I thought were interesting. Two of the paragraphs have something to do with his essay evil and God, which is probably because he wrote these things back to back the review. And then this essay evil and God. So I'll bring that up when we get to the, uh, that point of the essay. But do you want to give an, uh, summary of what the essay evil and God is about? Yeah, I mean, like many of Lewis's essays, but not all of them. This one is, is well named. We're talking about evil and God. But I guess within that, it really is a discussion about monotheism or the belief in one particular God, usually an almighty God and other spiritual world views, especially, uh, Lewis. Uh, Lewis, if you read this, is going to be talking about Zoroastrianism, which is an ancient, um, Persian belief system, uh, that is dualistic, meaning what? There's two creative forces. One is good. One is evil. You see this in, in, uh, Taoism as well. And so one of the famous symbols that would come out of that that our listeners would be familiar with would be the Yang and the Yang. And where there's this dualism. There's good and there's evil and they're balanced in all things. Some of our other more cultured readers are sorry listeners rather will be familiar with something called Star Wars. And, uh, may understand that, you know, the promised one is supposed to bring balance to the force and what is the force? How does a light side has a dark side? So you see this dualism in pop culture and you see this dualism in ancient religions. And, uh, Lewis is arguing for a good ultimately sovereign God and says that the idea that good and evil exists in themselves, each good and evil exists in themselves and are two forces underlying reality and kind of fighting reality. He says that idea is a no go. Okay. It's a no go. So, um, Jordan, this theme of good and evil God and evil is definitely something that is a Lewis reader that felt quite familiar to me. In fact, when I first started reading this, I thought, have we already read this or maybe have a we at least talked about it, something like that. The answer is no. Where else does this show up? Yeah, it shows up a couple places in Lewis. He argues against dualism in your Christianity, Book 2 chapter 2, the chapter called the invasion. And he wrote that within a year of this essay. So it's something that's on his mind at this time in his life. I think it also comes up in chapter five of problem on pain. It's kind of there in the background of screw tape letters a couple of times. For example, there's that bit about one problem with modern people is or I guess there's two there's two errors that people can fall into. One is believing that the devil doesn't exist, but the other is believing that he's more powerful than he is. And that's essentially dualism. But oh, and as I said, it also. It ties in briefly with this review that I'm going to sneak into today's episode, the one on Buitheus. Well, let's jump into it then. If we follow the structure of the essay, evil and God, he actually starts off not by talking about dualism so much, but he gets right into it talking about materialism. Again, the idea that created matter and energy is all that there is and mechanism, which is, would be, you know, if you can think of cause and effect that since the big bang that there has been actions and reactions that have happened that ultimately over the infinite, the infinite number of permutate, not quite infinite. Extraordinarily high number of permutations of all these chemical and energy and energy interactions have ultimately resulted in what we are experiencing of intelligence and and and meaning and perspective and consciousness and all that kind of thing. But really ultimately what we are are all just kind of balls on a cue on a pool table that are knocking around that is what mechanism would be like in terms of what Lewis is talking about in this particular essay. And I think just before we get talking about dualism, even though it's only a paragraph or two that he discusses it in the essay, I think it's worth discussing a little bit because of how relevant that is to the maybe some prevalent ideas and worldviews of today. So what does he say about materialism, Jordan? Yes, he just says in materialism has the problem of a problem with it is regarding knowledge. How do we know things? Because if we are just a bunch of pool table pool balls being knocked around on a table, right? One thing leads to another fish crawled out of a lake somewhere and grew legs and then it became a monkey and then with the monkey became us. You know, just this this idea of like this chain of cause and effect that just has led to today where you and I are talking through the airwaves on microphones. Whatever the truth is you can't trust what you know if all of that is true because what you know is just the thoughts going on in your head and the thoughts going on in your head are electrical impulses being carried through this anapses in your brain. It's just a biochemical process that makes you think you know what you're doing. things and how can you trust what you know if they are what he says you know just a byproduct of cerebral motions. And so that's kind of that's a classic Lewis argument against materialism. He says it has it would need to explain how we can trust what we know. But then he also has a problem with evolution. And he doesn't just mean like Darwin's theory of evolution which I just completely botched a second ago. But he's talking about this idea of progression that comes from evolution and he's talked about this in some essays we've covered before. But here he says quote if things can improve this means that there must be some absolute standard of good above and outside the cosmic process to which that process can approximate. So what he means is this he says there's no sense in talking of becoming better if better means simply what we are becoming. It's like congratulating yourself on reaching your destination and defining your destination as the place you have reached. So how can we talk about progress is his point if there's no outside standard of what we are progressing towards. How can we say that you know progress implies that we're getting better. Again this comes up all the time with Lewis better according to what you know good according to what we're just we're just changing. If you have no standard to measure goodness by we're not progressing we're just changing. Did you find that helpful? Oh 100%. I would actually say that one of my biggest takeaways from this particular work and from related thoughts that we have already covered in other essays is that is that comparative idea that there has to be an objective outside good by which we measure things. And now let's let's use an example even just like from from modern time when we talk about plurality of religions. Okay so there's lots of religions and belief systems and spirituality in the world and because we can't have certainty and and definite knowledge about a lot of truth claims that are made about the spiritual world in different religions and because those claims are at odds with each other. Christianity does not teach the same thing as Islam. Islam does not teach the same thing as Hinduism. Hinduism does not teach the same thing as Wica. So there and and what we would like today is to so and I hear this lots is we're somehow going to like look at the the inner core of all different belief systems and rhythms and if you guys could see me on the video right now I've got like a really helpful hand gesture that I'm making but anyway the inner core of all these different belief systems and we would find in the midst of them almost like a mere humanity the way that Lewis does with Christian orthodoxy and he says here's the thread that's running through all of Christianity we would take all these religions and kind of mash them together and say here's the internal truth that's being taught that's actually a belief system that has has come to emerge in the millennial and generation and is is kind of coming on down now related to postmodernism so okay why do I say all that because what Lewis is saying is hey actually it is possible to say that one religion one belief system one ethical ethical approach is better than the other but the way that we do that is actually measuring it against the objective good without the objective good we only have relativism and with the objective good we can say this thing is better than that thing we need a third point to kind of compare things to because otherwise now let's go back to the materialism and the mechanism if we really are just animals then there's not really much of a philosophical or ethical argument for why one person can't dominate another person so interestingly in in our culture today like again Jordan I don't I don't know if you would say this is true but when I have conversations with people there isn't there is an underlying ethic a belief about good and evil that for me to be colonial or imperial and to impose my or patriarchal and to impose impose my will on another person is actually just inherently bad and Lewis would say that even by saying that something is bad we have to have like that again that outside third party objective thing to measure it against because why is that bad why is that bad if I'm just an animal why is that bad if it's just been a chain reaction leading to this moment there is no actual bad and good there needs to be some kind of objective kind of standard meaning behind it so I love that idea that's something that I would say Lewis has has kind of implanted in my mind I'm sure it's not original to him but certainly he articulated it well does that does that resonate with you the way that I describe that yeah totally yeah that makes a lot of sense to me it is it's one of my favorite things that Lewis harps on all the time and I would be interested to know what a relativist relativist might say to that because it seems very clear to me yeah so yeah he throws out materialism he says that doesn't seem to work the worldview of it this idea of progressive progressing or evolution as a as a worldview for how we got where we are that doesn't seem to work because it would imply relativism and that doesn't seem to make sense either and so he says it's either got to be monotheism which would imply that there's you know one single good almighty source of being Lewis says or so that's what Christians believe in case that wasn't clear but the alternative to that he says it's dualism and of course this is essay where he's arguing against that where and here he defines that as two equal uncreated antagonistic powers one good and the other bad so shan you mentioned that this is something that is present in zero astrianism it's it was there in the early heresy sect of manachiasm that St. Augustine actually was a part of before he became Christian and I like the popular version you gave of it that it's the Star Wars light and dark sides of the forest that's a really good example it's it's interesting this essay is really important because this is actually prevalent in our society this is kind of the default way of seeing the world yes in our society not because of Star Wars but honestly I think it helped think it helped just put like a picture on what everyone already kind of internally believed anyway but it's still kind of a way that people actually really see the world and one of the people who's wrestling with their own dualism is and maybe even popularizing it still is Jordan B. Peterson right so anytime that he talks about you know ancient mythologies of there's the chaos monster and the order and there's these two opposing forces in the world of chaos and order and we have to wrestle out the dragon of chaos and and bring it to order anytime he's on that okay well first of all has my Jordan B. Peterson impression improved it all since last time I was going to comment on how accurate it was despite the fact that you were struggling with COVID right now maybe that helps maybe that gives me the extra like kermit quality to his voice I think that just the extra angst and agitation it really helps but no anytime anytime Jordan Peterson's talking about that I think I think he's a bit of a dualist and I've heard him talk with Bishop Robert Barron on this topic of goodness good and good versus evil and they kind of disagreed on this point but I also it seemed like Jordan Peterson wasn't actually sure what he believed he was disagreeing but then he he was also agreeing with different parts but I think to the degree that he or anyone else talks about chaos and order as two equal forces yes that's dualism yes is there chaos in our world yes but as Christians we call that sin and it's not an equal force to the goodness in the world but I'm getting ahead of ourselves here do you want to pick up on anything here well no I I love all of those things that you're saying and and I think it it is important for us to understand how much pop culture and how much just kind of Western worldview has been affected by this that there would be an idea where it's like oh yeah like we there's never a time when gods hands are tied you know there's never a time for that and and that especially if you come from any kind of Christian tradition or out of any kind of Christian tradition that that has reformed teaching in your background you are likely to really emphasize evil and sin as a major force in your life whereas say in other place it like other other ancient Christian sources as well as orthodox Catholic Church there's this idea that original blessing actually goes deeper than an original sin and that, you know, in our last episode we were talking about Athanasius and just something that I was reading in him very recently, who he's a fourth century theologian and church leader, and he really talks about evil as being an absence of something that evil is non-creation, that when a person is being evil that they are dehumanizing themselves, it's not like, oh there's, you know, that you can be fully human and evil at the same time. So it's a minus. It's a darkness and and maybe even again that light and dark thing is helpful to talk about because we have in John chapter 1 the light, you know, the light shone in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. There is this sense in which evil and badness and sin are actually very easily dealt with because of how radiantly good and all powerful God is. I think the really honest part for us as like everyday people to keep in mind if you're listening to this you're probably also going, yeah, but so Lewis having to deal with dualism and you know you've been talked about Jordan Peterson walking through his dualism and different people. The reason why this is so prevalent is because darkness is so prevalent. So we still suffer. We still get sick. People mean well and then they harm other people. Children raised in good house holds still go off the rails and they make horrible decisions. And we have to grapple with this idea that there is an internal compulsion toward evil and that evil is a is a major issue in our world today. Like I was just a dialogging a little bit with somebody who reached out to the Bible college who's working with Ugandan refugees and they're going just through a lot in Uganda. Lots of refugee camps have flooded and been destroyed and normal since the war in Ukraine, which is another form of evil has broken out. The aid, the international aid government aid going to refugee camps in Uganda and other places like that has significantly diminished. And so what's happened in that vacuum is that more and more people are stepping into that, finding people that they're most vulnerable and taking advantage of them. This is this is a ripe place for human trafficking to happen and other forms of like indentured servitude or slavery to happen and and just like dishonesty of promising one thing, taking somebody's livelihood and very few resources and living them there. And it's like, man, how can humanity be so bad to itself? And because that darkness is present there, we have to grapple with the problem of evil. So I think all of that is very, very natural. And so coming back to Lewis, he said that it would be normal that his generation, he's writing in 1941, you know, the Nazi party is going strong. The third Reich is conquering different lands at the point of this writing. There was a real question mark over whether the island of Great Britain, the United Kingdom, would be conquered by Germany and by the third Reich. And and so he said, yeah, of course, that people of this generation are going to be grappling in a special way with the problem of evil. And maybe some of the reason why he is writing on dualism so much in that particular year is because to the people around him, evil felt more present. Contemporary thinkers were talking about it. But Lewis comes in with this argument in this essay where he says, okay, yeah, we can look back to the Victorian age where maybe people were happy or seemed happier. You know, it was the, what do he call it? Something like the brightest time in the brightest place. And with the brightest people, you know, he like really elevates the Victorian era. And he says, of course, when we consider, when we compare ourselves in the middle of a world war with with that experience in Great Britain of the Victorian era, it's going to seem way worse now. But he said, actually, there's been these cycles of evil through all of human history. And for us to think that we live in a particularly evil time is just not quite true. Do you think Jordan that people who are living today might have that same bias of looking back to a golden age and then thinking, oh man, we're we're steeped in greater evil. And therefore, that's why they're thinking about dualism and the problem of evil more often. Yeah, I do think so. I think it's because I think it is, well, in a sense, we were living in a golden age, like even I think like the 80s and the 90s in North America were probably some of the most affluent and relatively speaking, free of trouble in all of human history. And it probably similar to how he describes the Victorian age. And so now that there's more evil, more apparent evil and evil touching North America more, I think people are more drawn to dualism because it seems like evil is bigger than it used to be. And so it seems there for that evil is is just huge. Evil is impressive. And I have heard Jordan Peterson, I don't do the voice, but I have heard him talk about why he thinks evil is so why it's he thinks it's a thing. Right. Because he's just studied the atrocities of World War one and World War two and fascism and communism and stuff. And he just sees all the evil there. And he's it's almost like he's so impressed by it. Like it's impressed upon him that he, you know, evil to him is this real serious thing. But Lewis points out that Christians don't think what they think about evil because they're naive of evil. Right. As though like they've just lived in this happy time. And they're like, oh, evil is not that big of a deal. Our God is just bigger and goodness is better because, you know, we have enough to eat and we nobody's hurt us for a while. He says that the two best and probably most well known expositions of evil by Christian theologians is one Augustine when he's meditating on the sack of Rome, one of those brutal historic events. And the other one comes from Boethius while he's waiting in prison to be beaten to death inevitably. And so he goes, Christians aren't naive to evil. They're like in the midst of evil. They are writing that, well, this is where I'll bring in a little bit from that review that Lewis wrote on Boethius's book on Boethius. There he talks about how Boethius said that evil is nothing. But Lewis clarifies, and I think he's correcting the author maybe that Boethius didn't mean that evil is meaningless by that. Rather, he says, quote, evil is not a thing like grass or virtue has no nature of its own was not created, but consists always in the deprivation of some thing, which in being so depraved departs from its nature from what it is. And therefore, in a sense, tends towards nothingness, evil consists not in being, but in failing to be. It is privative, defective, parasitic. And so actually Lewis goes on to say that that's this view of evil that evil is nothing. It's not a thing. It's only a deprivation of the good. That's really the only sound basis for us to then make any value judgments on. It can't be that evil and good are two equals, but opposites, but that good is a thing that exists. And evil is kind of tending towards nothingness. It's getting away from good or twisting good. Yeah. Before we, let me just put a pin on that whole thing. I want to know your thoughts on it. But I really wanted to just pull these two quotes also from the review just to tell people that they're there. They don't have to do with this essay. But Lewis in it, covering Boethius, he just says, he says something interesting about the present, like our present time. And it's something that I think he then covers in both letters to Malcolm and in screw tape, where he says that the present is the point at which time touches eternity. Uh huh. Because, because in it, in the present alone, will we perceive, will we, will we choose, will we decide, will we enjoy and will we suffer? So just at earmark, this essay or this review is somewhere to go. Look at that. If people are interested, another thing he says is that it's, it's always good to go over the basics of Christianity. So we were talking about that in the old, uh, on the reading of old books. And the reason is because continual, he says, quote, continual reconversion is perhaps the nearest most mortals come to stability. Yeah. So the idea that we need to stick with the basics because we're always in need of, of a reconversion. Um, so I just thought those two things were interesting from the review, but they got nothing to do with this essay or little to do with it. So coming back to this idea that evil is not a thing, Sean. Um, what were your thoughts there? Well, my thoughts, first of all, is when you look back and you say, Hey, like the 80s and 90s in North America were particularly prosperous time and that it was, I'm not gonna, I think I'm quoting you directly here. You would say that it was the peak of pop culture, movie creation, um, definitely pop music. And of course that all the best people alive today were born in the 80s. That's what I'm understanding you to say. Well, um, I mean, my mom wasn't born in the 80s. So she's pretty good. Okay, - Two Shay. Two Shay. - But yes, you and I were both born in the 80s. - Yeah. That's what that's in reference to. And yeah, I want to say that I understand even what is being said here. And I only sort of do. So if you are listening to this and you're thinking, wow, that really felt very philosophical and very deep and a little bit esoteric and abstract, yes, when we're talking about good and evil, that is a reality that is going to happen. So again, we have to use all these metaphors and analogies to make the rubber meet the road. And so when we, you can almost imagine, again, like scripture uses, uses the picture of light and darkness. We've already talked about this. Darkness is insubstantial. It is the absence of light. And again, that's not going to be earth shattering to most listeners. You've probably heard somebody preach that before or you have had that thought yourself or read it somewhere before. The darkness is the absence of light. It is actually quite difficult for me. We're watching the expanse right now. Jordan, have you ever watched that? I've seen a couple episodes of it. Okay. We're watching the expanse right now and it does a pretty good job. It's called, it's called quote, hard science fiction, meaning it tries to make things as true to fact as possible. And one of the things for me when I'm watching any kind of, or reading hard science fiction is the reality of space that there actually is just a gap of nothingness, like that there's nothing there. Because it's one thing to have air and distance, but like that there would be nothingness in space is mind boggling to me. And not only that, but that astrophysicist would tell us that space has an edge and that there is a space or a place, it's not even a space, I guess, where space comes to an end and outside of space, there is not even nothing. Like to really wrap my head around that is nearly impossible. So in the same way when we're talking about evil, having a substance or having no substance, it's okay. You're in good company. But think about the light and dark thing or maybe another way that would be helpful to think of it for people who are familiar with scripture is in Genesis chapter one, and actually doesn't start by saying that there was nothing. It starts by saying that the earth was formless and void. And so that formlessness, again, we're referring lots to the chaos versus order, dualism. But that formlessness is a picture of kind of nothingness of creation just kind of being bits and blobs, not quite happening and God bringing order there. And now don't get the wrong impression from that because it's really important that we understand that God is the only pre-existent thing. So it's not like there was this kind of raw matter material that he builds the universe out of. In fact, that is something that some dualists believe. And that's not what we're talking about here. But again, that formlessness, that void, that chaos is the unbearing that happens. And goodness is being. Goodness is ordering. Goodness is existing. And so a total tangent to this, but it actually made me think that this is one of the great arguments for art. You know, art is not practical per se, but you're bringing an image or a sound or a texture or a meal into being. You're bringing these elements together and kind of co-creating and I thought, oh man, that's so interesting because it's bringing it out of non-being into being. So I promised you, I said, listener, that it's going to be a little bit abstract, but that was what I was thinking about a little bit. Well, I love what you just said. You described it as unbearing, which then I clicked for me in Parallandra, Weston, the villain character. He becomes, he unbecomes. He becomes so evil and he just becomes, Lewis calls him the unman. Yes. He's no longer Weston. He's the unman. He's just, yeah, the process of unbearing. And in that story, he becomes the personification of evil. And you know, there's a parallelism there between that and the temptation of Adam and Eve, specifically Eve in Genesis chapter three, where Weston is, is like, he's destroying this, this beautiful world on Venus, Parallandra, and trying to bring the stewards of that into his, his mode of unbearing as well. And that is exactly what Lewis is saying happened in scripture that God created this wonderful world, brought it into being out of nothing, X and Hilo, out of nothing. He makes it and gives it being and evil then both personified and just as a system is unbearing is taking it apart. Again, we can think about murder or war is the, is the, is the unbearing of people. You can think about abandonment being the unbearing of relationship. And so I do actually think that there's something to be said there. I don't know how far that can be stretched, but I think it is helpful, a helpful argument that Lewis makes here about what evil really is. So there's two problems that Lewis says he has with dualism. One is metaphysical and the second is moral. Do you want to explain what he means by either of those, what, what the argument against it is? I will try. So Lewis says quote, you cannot accept two conditioned and mutually independent beings as the self grounded self comprehending absolute dualism has not yet reached the ground of being. So what does he mean there? Again, let's make this as simple as possible. This town ain't big enough for the two of us. Okay? So you can imagine a Western, you've got the bad guy and the good guy, your dualism there and they are trying to make the town in their own image, so to speak, like just follow with me in the analogy. So you've got the sheriff, maybe who is trying to bring law and order and goodness for the citizens and you've got the outlaw who is just trying to shake down everybody and live off it. So you've got good and evil at play there. What Lewis is saying is that if there is a town already for them to fight over, if there is something pre-existent there, then dualism hasn't actually gone down to the roots to say, "Here is the uncreated," and Lewis's words quote, "self comprehending absolute." Dualism is almost like talking about, you can think of Lord of the Rings, where there is a creator in the background of all this, but you have this back and forth between these great strong beings, but they're created. So Sauron is created. And I'm sorry, I don't know my Lord of the Rings lore well enough to name all of the beings that might be in there. So he's saying, even if there's not two uncreated beings that actually just doesn't make sense, there needs to be one core source. That's the metaphysical part. Jordan, since I stumbled through that, if there's anything you want to add to that, you can, but why don't you cover the moral piece? Yeah, no, I think that's great. It's an argument that he brings up often about, there needs to be a third thing, right? If it's a good versus evil, what's measuring what's good and what's evil? There's got to be a third thing by which they're measured. That third thing is really the God, not these good and evil things. Anyway, but yeah, yeah, that's what you said. So what I'm getting into is the moral argument then, is that if evil has the same kind of reality as good, Lewis says, basically just, what do we mean by calling this one good, except that we happen to prefer it? Yes. You know, so there has to be, there has to be a third thing by which we're measuring and defining which one's good and which one's evil. And so for that reason, he says that good should be the original and evil, a mere perversion. And that good should be able to exist on its own, while evil requires the good on which it is parasitic in order to continue its parasitic existence. So that's, that's evil. That's Lewis's Christian definition of good and evil, what good is and what evil is. And I like, you know, he uses the analogy of the tree with ivy growing on it. And I think even that is a closer, understandable natural illustration of what the Christian and therefore the true perspective is on good and evil because it makes it very inequitable. Again, we want to emphasize that over and over again. If God is good and you know, the forces of evil, the systems of evil, demonic forces are bad, are evil. There's actually no competition. There's no comparison between those two. There's the infinite and the finite. And so in the same way that it's like, yeah, like that tree could become a towering giant red, you know, redwood. And it's got a little bit of ivy growing on it. And that isn't to diminish our experience of evil on a personal level. It can be very profound and damaging and traumatic, but he's saying we're not talking about that. We're talking about the at the metaphysical level of all of existence. Evil is not equal to good. So how does this begin to again, we've been, it's a pretty philosophical essay theological essay. How does it begin to work back into the way we see the world or yeah, how does it challenge pop culture even? Yeah, I've already teased this so I don't want to talk about it too much, but just to bring it into its context, we already said at the beginning that my main takeaway was that this idea that there'd be the third reference point and how that just expanded my perspective so much. And I think we live today in relativism so much that it actually seems self-evident to us that things aren't actually better or worse. They're just different. So again, like ethical decisions, well, that's, you know, that's that particular decision is good for you, but it would be bad for me or, you know, again, political structures. Ah, that's just a difference of opinion. Forms of education, that education is not better than this education. It's just different or ways of knowing, et cetera. We could go through all these examples. And that is not that that shouldn't be self-evident to us. Lewis confronts that idea that that there's not just different that there is better and worse. So it actually reorganizes all our thoughts and our value judgments a little bit where we say there is hierarchy. There is hierarchy. There are things that are better and worse. And you not all change is better and not all changes worse. We actually have to compare. And so again, we've already brought up Star Wars a couple of times in this, this conversation Jordan, but I was really thinking about how Star Wars has changed from like the late 70s till now and the dualism even there and how again, not to get too niche and nerdy, but there's like more and more kind of Star Wars content that's created where they're looking for quote gray Jedi, meaning that they're Jedi who would use a little bit of the dark side and a little bit of the light and how like it's only in the extreme allegiance to only light or only dark, how the Jedi are wrong, you know, and how how the Jedi are just, what's the way to go ahead? That's interesting. Yeah, and that's changed. It's changed over the years where people are looking for gray characters. And I you don't just have to be a Star Wars fan to see that. I think about like Batman and how you know the dark night and how it's like we're looking for anti heroes. You know, we're now making movies where the Joker is the hero. And why is that? And I think that there is a whole bunch of different things that play that Lewis is talking about in this essay, but one of them is where he says, Hey, if there's no, we're only calling it if it's dualistic in nature, there's light and there's dark, there's good and there's evil. And we are calling good, good, simply because that's the thing we prefer. But actually the ones who are evil might actually be right. You know, we've misunderstood this whole time. So I see that kind of playing out in our world that way. Okay. So Jordan, we've had a pretty, well, I would say more than usual high level conversation that's more abstract. And we have done it in the most unprofessional way possible. But in all honesty, for you, what does this really mean for your life? Like as you consider this essay, what Lewis is saying about evil and good, do you have any personal takeaway? For me, it just reaffirms the first couple of sentences of the creed that I believe in God. So that's the ground of being. There is, I don't believe in two forces. I don't believe in a good God. And then there's also this bad God. I believe in God. He is almighty, which means he is over everything. It's not that he has some might. And then there's this evil God with equal might. I believe in God almighty. He is the creator of heaven and earth of everything that is. And it reminds me of the Genesis story there where he created all things good. And so goodness is at the core of creation. And yes, there is evil, but it's not this other being that entered the world. It's, it's deprivations of the good and twisting of the good. And I guess how there comes home to me is just to remind myself that whatever evil I'm up against is not equal to the God who is for me. Yeah, I love that. I love that. That makes me, I'm glad you actually brought up the creed because earlier I was when you were talking about the basics of Christianity and how Lewis just says it's so important to know them. I was also just thinking, man, isn't that interesting how central the repetition of the basics of Christianity is in most Christian traditions and how even today in Christian traditions that don't have or don't give much weight to creeds because they're not written in scripture, how some of those basics get missed. And it does it grounds you so much that, you know, every time I think about a Catholic picking up the rosary, the first thing that they do when they grab that crucifix is recite the Apostles Creed like you were just began doing. So that's really powerful. I would agree. I would agree. For me, I was really challenged by how this essay confronted my, the way that I relate to my own preferences, to be honest, because dualism, as we've already teased out here a bit, allows me to have allegiance to whoever and whatever I want. And that appeals to the consumeristic 21st century Westerner in me. It says consumerist experience says, pick the neighborhood that you want, pick the job that you want, pick the hobby that you want, pick the church that you want, pick the wife that you want. We do have freedom to choose those things. But if this is true and there's an ultimate good, there's better and worse decisions there. There's times when me picking how I'm going to spend my free time actually doesn't look like me indulging my preferences and consuming what I want to. It looks like me choosing the better good, which, which could be actually really uncomfortable for me. And so that it, I felt like this essay in a roundabout way kind of de-throwing the God of comfort in my life a little bit, that the consumerism that works on that mechanistic level that Lewis just talks about very briefly at the beginning of the essay, you know, cause an effect made me do it. My father was an alcoholic, so I'm an alcoholic and you know, cause an effect made me do it. It challenges that and it challenges the dualism as well. Where it says, well, there's forces at play that I can't fully understand, but I need to balance them. And I like this one, but not that one. Those attitudes don't work if there is an ultimate good by which all my decisions and behaviors will be judged. So it made me feel like, hey, things really matter and I want to look for the good in my life and help my kids, my students and my friends find that good too. Well, thanks everyone for joining us again. Our next episode will be on an article called Answers to Questions on Christianity. And it's exactly how it sounds. Thank you so much to our patrons. Sarah, Moe, Tom, Jared, Kelsey, David, Daniel, Megan, we appreciate your support so much. If you enjoyed the episode today and want to be updated when another episode comes out, follow us on Instagram or Facebook or hit the subscribe button on your podcast app. We'd love to hear from you in the meantime. So send us a message at lesser known Lewis at gmail.com. And until next time, we pray that this lesser known Lewis work has helped to make Jesus more well known to you. [BLANK_AUDIO]