The image of Jesus Christ is universally defined by compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love. Yet, scattered throughout the Gospels are statements that challenge this gentle persona, descriptions of humanity that are stark and unflattering. One of the most arresting is found in Matthew 7:11, where Jesus addresses his listeners: “If you then, who are evil (ponēros), know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
This declaration—that ordinary people, good parents even, are fundamentally “evil”—is a theological paradox. It demands an explanation that moves beyond simple damnation and delves into the complexities of human motivation, behavioural flaws, and the very structure of the moral personality. To understand Jesus’s harsh diagnosis, we must analyse it through the lens of modern psychology, recognising that his critique was less about cosmic sin and more about inherent, systemic human failure.
The Spectrum of Self: The Bell Curve of Personality
If we map human personality onto a statistical Bell Curve, we find the majority clustered in the middle—the morally ambiguous average. At one statistical extreme are the outliers of genuine sainthood, characterised by radical altruism and self-sacrifice.
But at the other extreme, we find the statistically rare outliers of severe pathology: the malignant narcissists, the Machiavellian manipulators, and the high-functioning, low-empathy personalities that comprise the Dark Triad.
When Jesus used the term ponēros (often translated as evil, but more accurately conveying malice, malfunction, or low quality), he was not necessarily diagnosing clinical psychopathy. Rather, he was pointing out the inherent potential for that malignant self-interest that exists even in the average individual—the tendency to slide toward the darker end of the spectrum.
The “evil” Jesus identified is the ingrained human inclination toward transactional relationships and fundamentally flawed motivation. The person who is evil is not necessarily a criminal mastermind, but the one whose “good deeds” are structurally unsound—they give to receive, they love conditionally, and their generosity is tainted by expectation or ego.
Behavioural Psychology: The Flawed Operating System
From a behavioural psychology perspective, Jesus’s critique targets the gap between observable action and internal motivation.
Consider the context of Matthew 7:11. Jesus acknowledges that parents (who he labels ‘evil’) still provide for their children. The behaviour (giving a good gift) is positive, but their core operating system is faulty. How is this “faulty”?
Self-Reference Bias: The “evil” person’s frame of reference is fundamentally self-centred. Even acts of love are often subconsciously rooted in maintaining the self-image (“I am a good parent”), securing future compliance, or fulfilling a societal obligation.
Lack of Radical Empathy: The everyday evil Jesus points to is the profound inability to see the world from a truly altruistic perspective. They lack the capacity for the radical disinterest (non-attachment to outcome) that authentic divine love requires.
In essence, Jesus is noting that if even flawed, self-interested, ego-driven humans can manage to perform basic acts of kindness (feeding their children), imagine the quality of love that comes from God—a being wholly unburdened by self-interest, ego, or transactional need. The human operating system is “evil” because its default setting is self-preservation and calculation, not pure grace.
The Jungian Shadow and the Denial of Darkness
Perhaps the most potent psychological framework for understanding Jesus’s accusation is Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow.
The Shadow is the embodiment of all the unrecognised, repressed, and denied aspects of the self—the primitive, animalistic, and socially unacceptable urges (greed, lust, envy, rage). These elements are often projected outward onto others (creating “enemies”) because the individual cannot bear to consciously integrate them.
Jesus’s listeners, particularly the religious authorities he often criticised for hypocrisy, believed themselves to be utterly good. They followed the rules, maintained appearances, and saw their righteousness as a shield.
However, according to Jungian thought, the denial of the Shadow is precisely what creates the greatest moral danger. The person who refuses to acknowledge their capacity for cruelty, manipulation, or selfishness is the person most likely to be unconsciously driven by those very forces.
The “evil” Jesus refers to is not just the active choice to hurt another, but the unconscious denial of one’s own internal capacity for darkness.
The Dark Triad personality types (narcissists and psychopaths) exist at the extreme edge where the Shadow is fully unintegrated and often acted upon with conscious malice.
The “average” evil person exists where the Shadow is perfectly repressed, leading to behaviours like passive aggression, subtle manipulation, and debilitating hypocrisy (saying one thing while acting from the opposite motivation).
Jesus’s call for introspection—”Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)—is a powerful psychological mandate to confront the Shadow. He forces his audience to ask: Do I acknowledge that I, too, am capable of the worst traits I condemn in others?
To call someone evil is thus not a final judgement, but a radical disruption designed to halt self-deception and demand radical self-awareness. It forces the individual off the safe, transactional middle ground of the bell curve and challenges them to strive for the saintly extreme by first acknowledging their own psychological vulnerability to darkness.
Conclusion
Jesus’s use of the term “evil” was a profound psychological insight, recognising that human goodness is almost always diluted by self-regard. It is rooted in structural flaws inherent in our emotional and behavioural operating systems—flaws that lead to transactional relationships and the denial of our repressed psychological Shadow.
His diagnosis was a necessary shock tactic, designed to shatter the illusion of self-righteousness and pave the way for genuine transformation. The truly good person is not the one who denies their darkness, but the one who faces it fully.
In light of this challenging psychology, the pivotal question remains:
Given the inherent tendency toward self-reference, the ubiquity of transactional motivation, and the powerful repression of the Shadow, are we, the everyday people who believe ourselves moral and kind, truly as good as we believe we are?
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