The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

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We may be hard-pressed to come up with a universally accepted definition of evil, but most of us know evil when we see it – or at least we think we do. For example, most (but not all) would say the gas chambers of Auschwitz were evil, as were the U.S. institution of chattel slavery, the serial murders of Ted Bundy, the packaged explosives of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and the domestic terror of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.  

God has placed in every human heart a conscience, which not only helps us discern right from wrong but universally testifies of a divine moral law giver (Rom. 2:14-16). And so, we know intuitively what evil is, and therefore we know who ultimately judges us for it. Or we should. The problem is, sin has knocked every human being’s moral compass off magnetic north.

Evil is not so much the opposite of good as it is the absence of good, or the perversion of good. Just as darkness may only be described in contrast to light, evil is only understood in relation to good. And that’s the rub, because all human beings, though made in the image of God, are evil. We all sin, and our sin separates us from an eternally and unequivocally good creator (Rom. 3:10, 23; 6:23). 

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