Two trees...could it be that simple?

The classic struggle between good and evil captivates us in literature, movies, even in world events. We love to see good triumph over evil, to see justice prevail, to see the right win the day.

Curious that we as Christians are so prone to jump in and choose sides in this struggle, when the very thing that caused our initial downfall was a tree called "the knowledge of good and evil," not just the tree of evil. Are good and evil really polar opposites, or are they fraternal twins, opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin?

In his final book, "Ethics," written from a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out that our real choice as humans is not between good and evil, but between relationship to God and submission to logical morality. He observed that the church of his era (1930's Nazi Germany) had been lulled into complacency by their culture of religious rationalization, leaving them void of the conviction as a whole to fight or even speak against the Nazi regime. He held that they, both individually and collectively, had learned to operate under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life, or relationship to God, and therefore had substituted their intellectual reasoning powers for the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.

Heavy example, but a good reminder. We are not on the side of good or right or justice per se, but rather on the side of life. Remember that it was the ultimate alliance of good and evil that crucified Jesus, and it was not evil that He conquered when He rose, but sin and death. How much more effective are we when we listen to God's voice, live out of love for Him, instead of trying to follow the rules, or worse, trying to get everyone else to?