As I was perusing the movies and shows available for instant viewing on Netflix, I noticed that the second season of Showtime’s serial-killer drama Dexter had been added.  I’d seen the first season and a few episodes of the second with one of my roommates in college, but hadn’t finished it.  So I’d been catching up over the last week and ended up spending the better part of my day off today finishing them.

Ok, I also got a haircut, signed an apartment lease, crashed a sale on cleaning supplies at Ace hardware (thanks to a tip from my current roommate), and cooked an egg with onions and mushrooms with my new Calphalon One Infused Anodized frying pan (factory second on sale at the outlet store) and one of the ridiculously sharp knives in the J.A. Henckels set I just received from Amazon (also on sale).  And started putting together the website for my video production hobby/business.  So my day wasn’t completely spent vegging out in front of my computer screen.

But the reason for this blog post is in fact the show Dexter, and the last line from the awesome season 2 finale.  Dexter, an emotionally-deprived police blood splatter expert with a traumatic past who moonlights as a serial criminal-killer, spends a lot of time trying to figure out who he is and whether he is good or evil.  His conclusion at the end of the final episode?  “Am I evil?  Am I good?  I’m done asking those questions.  I don’t have the answers.  Does anyone?”

A thought-provoking question, and one of the reasons I like the show.  As I thought about it, I realized how often the world asks that question and comes to the conclusion that we’re all a little of both.  Nobody’s completely good, but nobody’s completely bad.  We’re all a mixture, something in between.  Our best hope is to try to make the good outweigh the bad so the “universe” smiles upon us, or whatever.  That cliched answer to the hypothetical question “if you die today, do you think you’ll get to heaven?” – “I hope so, I’m a pretty good person.”

There’s only one worldview that I can think of that does have the answer to the question of whether we’re good or evil, and which doesn’t cop out with some ambiguous compromise.  Christianity adamantly rejects the idea that we are a mix of good and evil.  Our lives and the world may be full of shades of gray, but our righteousness before God is black and white.  We are fallen and incapable of doing anything that would come close to making up for the sins we commit daily.  We’re hopelessly in the red when it comes to “balancing out” the evil we do and think.  But God offers a solution, and one far more compelling and satisfying than just trying to tip the scale in favor of the good and hoping that’s enough.  He crushes the scale entirely by introducing a perfect man, Jesus, who vouches for us before His Heavenly Father.  God doesn’t determine salvation and damnation based on how many good vs. evil things we’ve done.  It’s determined entirely by whether His Son’s blood has covered our sins, leaving only the good visible in His eyes.  And the only way to get there is to accept the sacrifice Jesus already made for us.  Christ’s sacrifice was one of love and requires no “good work” on our part to receive it.  All He asks is that we accept the gift already given on that cross 2000 years ago.

Christianity is alone in the way it keeps good and evil as diametrically opposed and irreconcilable forces.  We don’t conquer evil by trying to outdo it with good – the evil is still there, strong as ever.  We trump the whole comparison by appearing righteous before God through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  The only way to be good enough for God is to accept that we can’t be – that we are utterly dependent upon His merciful gift of salvation.  Without that, our good deeds have no meaning, and our evil ones simply illustrate what’s already clear: we are broken and unable to fix ourselves.