Definitions matter.
Give me a minute to explain.
In Daniel Mahoney’s book The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, his introduction minces no words:
The Ideological Lie, as Solzhenitsyn calls it, was born when modern revolutionaries turned the age-old distinction between good and evil upside down. In the name of progress, evil was called goodness, and goodness in the form of wise restraint was labeled evil, backward, racist, colonialist, and sexist. Marxism, Socialism, Progressivism, and wokeism have all repeated this central conceit. Their adherents were preoccupied with being on the side of “progress.
Genesis three is correct. When substitutes are made for the poles of “good” and “evil” humans can define both the standard of “good” and the sin of “evil.” We now usurp God’s place. The snake was right about this, “we would become like God,” taking His place.
Thanks for spending this minute with me, Dr. Mark Eckel.
Mark Eckel (MA English, ThM Old Testament, PhD Social Science Research) is Vice-Provost of Biblical Integration | Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration, Liberty University.