— Write some ways you would complete this sentence: “Good people are good because they…”
… can (i) wrangle other people’s aggressions with creative dexterity and (ii) reject the excuses people regularly make when they want to vent their frustrations on another. I think the Bible calls the first one grace and the second one mercy.
— Why might God want to gift us with some revisions to our current story of goodness?
If we confused good and evil, we’ll end up hurting someone. Eve was indignant we she “learned” that God had pulled one over on her and Adam. Of course she didn’t actually learn any such thing; she merely believed this subtle accusation when it was presented to her by the serpent. Acting on this falsity, she decided to eat from tree. She knew it was “bad” to eat from the tree, but on this occasion it would be “good” for something, viz. showing God that nobody—not even God—was going to get the best of her. Knowing how to make a bad thing good for something will—left unchecked—lead to a death. If our understanding of goodness were one that led to death, a god of life would want to revise it.