Long ago, twin brothers Rhian and Rafal founded the School for Good and Evil, created to groom fairy tale heroes (called “Evers”) and villains (called “Nevers”). Dissatisfied with evil’s constant submission to good, Rafal attacks Rhian using blood magic. There is a twist at the end (and I won’t spoil it for you) but this premise forms the foundation for Netflix’s latest production – The School for Good and Evil
Despite enduring mixed reviews from professional critics, the movie is rich with narrative subtext and for those with Judeo-Christian upbringing, an immediate allegory for brothers Rhian and Rafal mirroring the Bible’s Book of Genesis- Cain and Abel. And if one extends this analogy further, a microcosm for the metaphysical realities of good versus evil.
Centuries later, this motif of duality repeats itself in the village of Gavaldon where best friends Sophie and Agatha learn about the legendary school from a bookshop owner. Sophie has spent her formative years “training” to be an “Ever”, she’s portrayed as your stereotypical Disney princess in the beginning while Agatha has no such lofty aspirations, longing to live an ordinary life. One night, a magical creature uproots them from their homes and to their joint dismay, Sophie is delivered to the School for Evil to her chagrin while Agatha, despite having no such calling (or ignorant of it) is dropped at the School for Good. Needless to say, both struggle in their respective classes, Sophie having trained all her life to be good, is ill prepared in the ways of evil; Agatha, having lived a life of simplicity, is flummoxed by the strict rules (Torah observant Jews will recognise the symbology of the 613 Laws in this) and both are outcast by their peers. This is where it gets interesting because the movie is a fantastic pop-cultural study on “the simple nature of right and wrong”.
A moral choice is not a choice between good and bad. A moral choice is a moral quandary between bad and worse and having the wisdom to choose the more righteous path.
– Jonathan
As Bruce Wayne discovers in Batman Begins, “Is it morally right to steal food to feed oneself or one’s family in a time of extreme poverty?” or are we complicit in their actions for not obeying Luke 3:11 – “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry”? How is it that our ancestors having partaken of the tree of good and evil and sending us into exile, we are still so inept at making good moral choices?
If Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, why are we are so crap at knowing the difference (and choosing good)?
“And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Now in the Garden of Eden there were two trees standing in the midst of it. One was the Tree Of Life, the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man was to live by the Tree Of Life; but he was not to touch the other tree or he would die. But man did partake of the other tree, and when he did, death entered into him by his sin, and he became separated from God.
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
Genesis 3:6
The Hebrew wording in Genesis 2:15 and 17 is important here. “Then Yahweh God took the human, put him into the garden of Eden to avad or (work) it and to shamar or (keep) it.” The avad and shamar are job descriptions mirroring one other place in the Bible – Levites working in the temple. Therefore, Adam and Eve are royal priests working in the Holy of Holies, with God present.
What did God actually command about the eating from the trees?
In verse 16, “Yahweh God commanded the human saying, ‘From all the trees of the garden you may surely eat but from the tree of knowing good and bad you shall not eat because in the day you eat from that tree you will surely die” – in the Hebrew, there’s a double emphasis on eat aka “eat eat” – because it is His will that we have life and multiply. The first command doesn’t place the tree of life off-limits, and it is when you obey this command, that you get the tree of life. However, eating from the tree of knowing good and bad will result in forfeiting the eternal life that was already yours. In the Hebrew, there’s also a double emphasis on die aka “die die”. This isn’t a warning as many misunderstand, that “if you eat from the trees of knowing good and bad God will kill you.”
The wage of death comes not from God but rather from a human who’s taken the knowledge of good and bad into their own hands. God exiles them from the garden so that they can’t eat from the tree of life which means that they’ll eventually die and it’s a consequence of our disobedience for taking without being given (remember Abraham because he will become relevant later in this read). And it’s the taking that leads us to the situation that Cain and Abel encounter resulting in the first death – a murder. Cain obviously knows murder is evil, when he attempts to hide the fact from God with “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
God knew, and Cain also knew that God knew, yet chose to lie and the rhetoric was not just an instrument to expose Cain’s guilt but also a chance for Cain to confess and seek forgiveness but having knowledge of good and evil still did not give Cain the necessary wisdom to know how to choose righteously or morally.
Adam and Eve lived in a state of moral immaturity. We can infer from the Lord’s command that humanity was in an infant state and that growing wise was not something to be grasped and known just by eating of the fruit but rather, something to be learned. God wants to shelter and protect Adam and Eve from good and bad until they can learn wisdom from Him to become wise rulers over the garden. And so the question is, how are you going to get wisdom?
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
2 Corinthians 11:14
“Good becomes evil, evil becomes good”
Good and evil: A mirror for our reality
God gives us the gift of life and then when we start ruling the world as stewards, we start introducing new variables into the world: how do you quantify and reward contribution? how do you equitably apportion time off work? What is fair? Who arbitrates? Every good thing in our lives is also matched by an equal or greater number of opportunities to ruin it by taking our own knowledge of good and bad because we start to see the world through our own perspectives rather than the Father’s.
Slippery slopes and the “simple” nature of right and wrong
How many of you are familiar with this feeling? “I work harder than my rivals, I deserve more money, I deserve more time off.” Sooner or later, we start making justifications for decisions that seem good in our eyes. Through these justifications, we start redefining evil as good, neglecting our perceived competitor’s wellbeing as much as we care about our’s. Suddenly, we are eating from the wrong tree and it seems like the right thing to do.
In the Bible, the serpent is described in Hebrew as “more arum than any beast of the field” or “more shrewd”. In the book of Proverbs, to be arum is a positive trait of the righteous: It’s the ability to consider all the factors involved, find the solution and be able to creatively use wisdom to move forward in righteousness.
Living by the Torah, the Pharisees were often quite wise and were very holy people but what Jesus did not appreciate was how the Word of God was weaponised by some Pharisees who used knowledge of the Laws to oppress those they viewed as “less holy” than they were. In Matthew 12:12, Pharisees attempted to trick Jesus. They ask if it’s lawful to heal on the Sabbath, since healing is “work,” and the Law supposedly forbids it. In other words, One can be wise to good ends or ill.
“Once upon a time good was real and true. Now we are in an age of self-centred perfectionism!”
Professor Clarissa Dovey, School of Good and Evil
Jesus however, bearing the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, turns it back on them: “Who would not lift one of their sheep from a pit if it fell in on the Sabbath?” Jesus’ question assumes that most everyone would choose to show mercy to the sheep instead of woodenly following the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it – Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Contrary to common perception, Jesus is not teaching that observing the Sabbath is wrong. Nor is He suggesting that the literal meaning of any law is unimportant but rather that the Sabbath was one of God’s gifts to Israel. The requirement not to work was intended to bring God’s people rest – just like God Himself rested on the 7th day – not to add to their burden. Jesus is objecting to how the Pharisees have twisted God’s commands. Jesus shows that the Pharisees don’t understand that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 12:7). It is a fundamental example of “knowing good and evil” still does not equip you with functional wisdom to know the difference and choose/act accordingly.
Indeed, in this age of “wokism” represented with self-centred perfectionism, we have become obsessed with virtue signalling and turned “good” into a weapon of attack.
“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good but God“
Luke 18:19
Like the Father, Our Lord continues to prompt us to consider who deserves to be called “good.” The Lord’s fundamental lesson here is that goodness flows not from simply following a rule book and doing good deeds, but rather from God Himself. Jesus invites us to carry our cross (fundamental to us not redefining good and evil in our own eyes because when we take on our shoulder despite what we perceive to be “unfair”, we are in essence trusting God to do right by us) and to follow Him, the only means of doing good by God’s benchmark standard.
“The humans become like one of us knowing good and bad because they took from that tree. So Let’s send them out so they don’t take from the tree of life and eat and live forever.”
Genesis 3:22
God wants His people to have the knowledge of good and evil, but it has to be matched with the ability to listen to God’s voice first: Proverbs 1:7 – The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The serpent weaponises his wisdom through lies between truths “you will be like Elohim” (and indeed we became like Him but without His understanding), manipulated Adam and Eve to “take” wisdom on their own terms. When that happened, God had to cast us out for our own eventual salvation and safety. Else, we would be like the morningstar, knowing good and evil, and damned for eternity for rebellion.
The human condition: Are we currently equipped with wisdom to properly steward the garden?
The Bible shows a repeated narrative of humans failing their tests and then learning wisdom through faith and trust in God. If, Abraham did nothing to gain a son for himself but just trusted God, there would be no Ishmael only Isaac (and not to mention none of the sin and evil for casting Hagar and her baby out into the desert). More importantly, Abraham took responsibility in contrast to Adam’s “Eve gave it to me to eat” and Eve’s “the serpent made me do it”. That in itself was the beginning of wisdom.
Abraham’s repeated pattern of obedience from honouring all the requirements that God made, including male circumcision, to obeying God’s call to leave Mesopotamia, and to travel to the land of Canaan with Sarah, his nephew Lot, and their entire possessions, proved that he was worthy of becoming the “father of many nations”. By Genesis 22, Abraham’s first great failure in the taking of a son instead of waiting for the one God promised is mirrored in a great test of obedience when he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command.
Our time here in exile, like our fathers, is indeed our own graduate course in the School of Good and Evil. We are being groomed to rule beside our Lord in the garden and we need God’s Holy Spirit for wisdom, it is not something we can merely take for ourselves.
Ora et Labora, my brothers and sisters.
