THE PROBLEM OF GOODNESS

'Perhaps goodness is invisible because we expect it to be there. We expect the world to be good and our lives to be rewarding. It is only when something interferes with the goodness that we are startled into noticing. Evil is an intrusion into the normal. When something intrudes, we want to know why. When nothing intrudes, we do not ask questions about why things are the way they are,. It is not until the normal is disturbed that we begin looking for explanations.

The expectation that things will be good makes it easy for us to forget that we ought to seek an account for the existence of goodness as well as evil.'

Gregory E Canssle, Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations, p.54.

EVIL IS A PARASITE

'...badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. We call sadism a sexual perversion; but you must have first had the idea of a normal sexuality before you talk of its being perverted...'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.44.