If there is good to be found in everything, is there also evil? Are sin and evil the same thing? Matthew 7:11 “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” We tend to gloss over the, “though you are evil” part, but it actually speaks to us even more deeply about the need to seek and do good. There exists in every opportunity, in every choice the ability within our freewill that we have been given to choose evil, to choose good or to remain neutral and allow others and circumstance to choose for us. The fall of humankind in stories from all over the world is most often the result of the inability to resist temptation. That doesn’t always mean to choose evil, but in the case of the Biblical story it is actually the giving in to temptation which leads to the knowledge of what is good and what is evil and ultimately to the choice which would have to made from that point forward.
The other side of a sermon on being holy
The giving in to temptation, eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, is considered to be the original sin. According to Augustine and what followed from him as the doctrine of “Original Sin,” every human inherits this sin and is therefore born sinful. In the Genesis story it builds until the time of Noah when, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Gen. 6:5 God started over with the flood, but people constantly forget the good and chose evil instead and so we remain in need of redemption and of something to hold onto which reminds of the good. To sin is to turn away from God, or as it is often defined, “that which separates us from God.” The struggle is and will always be to choose good over evil, to rise above our temptations. The inherent sinfulness or propensity for evil within us does not deny that at the same time there exists also within us inherent good and a desire to do good, but instead it places the duality of our inward nature at odds with itself and forces us to constantly choose and to be what we hope to be rather than what we could become if we give in to the constant temptations which surround us.
Tripping the Light Fantastic 