to refer not to Satan, but to historic kings who sought to exalt themselves despite the position of privilege God had given to them. We can draw a few biblical strands together to offer a basic explanation of sin’s origins in a good world.5 First, sin is a defect rather than a thing in itself; sin or evil is not created by God. Sin or evil is a kind of absence of what ought to be there; it is a corruption of God’s originally good creation. It’s like a pothole in a road: the pothole is the absence