The Problem of Evil
Evil in this world is the result of man’s
choice to disobey God from the beginning. To the critic of Christianity, it is
easy to deduce that God is unable to rid the earth of evil and if He can and
obviously has not, then He cannot be a good God. This is faulty thinking.
It was necessary for humans to exercise free will. The end
game was that humans would glorify Him in both choices and actions. “For humans
to be genuinely free, there had to be an option. The choice is to obey or to
disobey God”[1].
We see this playing out in the Genesis account of creation: “The Lord God planted a garden toward the
east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed… the tree of life
also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you
may eat freely; but from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not [n]eat, for in the day that you eat
from it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:8,9,16,17). God set the stage. He
provided everything man needed in the garden, but He also provided options –
choice, freewill. If man chose to disobey God, then the result was sin, and a “distorted
and twisted relationship with God”[2].
This was His plan before time. The angels in heaven were
given the same opportunity (Isaiah 14: 12-14). The predictable result (just
like humans) was a choice not to give glory to God, leading to sin. Satan and
one third of the angels took the bait and were banished from heaven. To the
earth realm they came with Satan assuming the role of accuser in chief (1 Peter
5:8; Revelation 12:10). Satan and his fallen angels are now part of the
spiritual battle to deny God His Glory. They are part of the strategy to provide
humans with options, which if taken leads to sin. “God therefore, did not create
sin[3].
Humans act on their desires and compulsions, even with good options, resulting in sin.
It is very important that we understand this big picture. It
started in heaven with the angels, then with Adam and Eve in the garden
(Genesis 3). Since then “death came upon humanity, God pronounced a curse upon
humanity and creation”[4]
and we have been living in a fallen world ever since. The curse upon humanity and
the world results in both natural and moral evils. It’s become commonplace to
place the blame on God, but “the exercise of sinful choices by sinful
individuals”[5] is
the source of much of the evil we experience. Left to itself, this world would
be chaotic. It is the sustaining power of God that keeps back the full force of
evil. Aside from natural evils manifesting
in diseases, natural disasters etc., mankind must realize that a choice to
disobey God results in consequences. We reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-8). The
fact that we live in a fallen world means evil will continue till Christ returns and makes everything as it was again -
new (Revelation 21:3-5).
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