Faith First Media

The Problem of Evil

by Matthew Elton

copyright 2009 Matthew Elton

matt@faithfirstmedia.com

How could a loving God allow evil to exist?

Evil was brought into the world through sin (disobedience to God) not by God’s will, but by human decision.

Why didn’t God stop Adam and Eve from sinning?

Because he gave them free will.  God wants us to choose to obey him out of our own free will, not compulsion.  This requires that we are able to obey or to disobey God.  Adam and Eve chose to disobey, and every human since has also disobeyed, except the Lord Jesus Christ.  Disobedience to God is obedience to the devil.  It has given the devil free reign over the Earth until the day when the devil’s reign over the Earth will be brought to and end - when "the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21).

If God didn’t want Adam and Eve to sin, why did he give them the ability to sin?

If God so chose, he could have created robots that had no free will but followed set and predetermined laws instead of making their own choices.

Oh wait, God already did that.  They’re called rocks.  Some of them can fit in the palm of your hand.  Others are quite large, like Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Luna.  All of them follow set and predetermined laws that govern all of their movements (i.e. laws of physics such as gravity, inertia, etc.).  God gave us free will because the alternative would be a universe of nothing but rocks.

A universe with nothing but rocks would be just plain boring.  Rocks follow God's commands blindly, like robots.  God created living intelligent humans so we could follow him from our own free will.  Giving us free will requires giving us the ability to reject God and bring sin (and it's brothers evil and death) into the world.  Having "free will" but not being able to disobey and only being able to obey is hardly free will at all, because obedience would not be a choice, it would be a compulsion.  God already created plenty of rocks that follow the laws he set for them out of compulsion.  He wanted something more - living, breathing, intelligent beings who are able to obey or disobey, but choose obedience out of free will.

Why did God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil into the Garden of Eden to begin with, if he didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat from it?

He didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat from it, but he put it there to give them the choice between obedience and disobedience.  If the tree wasn’t there, then Adam and Eve would have no way of disobeying God, and therefore their “obedience” might not be from their heart.  Having "free will" but not being able to disobey is hardly free will at all.  God wants us to be able to choose between obedience and disobedience, and to choose from our own free will obedience.  In order to have that choice, we need to have the ability to disobey, and many have (indeed, all except for Jesus) have sinned, thus bringing evil and death into the world.  The consequences have been devastating.

Why do good things happen to bad people, and why do bad things happen to good people?  Why does it seem like evil dictators are rewarded while other people seem to be punished for no apparent reason?

If every good action immediately generated a reward, and every evil action immediately generated a punishment, then people would choose good actions out of a selfish desire for immediate gratification.  But God wants us to chose good over evil regardless of whether we receive a reward or not.  We should do good because of the goodness of good itself - or to put it simply, because it's the right thing to do.  Choosing good in order to receive a reward or escape a punishment is the wrong motive, but this is precisely what people would logically do if the ramifications of our actions operated according to a perfect system in which good actions immediately produce good rewards, and evil actions immediately produce evil rewards.  In such a world, everyone would logically choose good actions over evil ones, in order to receive rewards and escape punishment.  But their actions would have the wrong motive!  To teach us to pursue righteousness for its own sake rather than for selfish gain, God created a world in which good actions are not always immediately rewarded, and evil actions are not always immediately punished.  In the end, perfect justice will be established, but for now, there are many who suffer for doing right.  They choose to pursue righteousness because it's the right thing to do (which is a pure motive), not because it makes their life any easier (which would be a selfish motive).  This pleases God, who will richly reward them in the age to come.

If sin has caused so much evil, why doesn’t God do something about it?

The good news of the Gospel is that God made atonement for our sins by offering his son Jesus on the cross as a sacrifice, to pay the price for the sins of mankind.  Jesus willingly took the punishment we deserve for our sins upon himself, so we don't need to be punished if we follow him.

Jesus commands us to "be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect."  Have you ever lied, stolen something (even something small), used God's name in vain, gotten angry at someone else, failed to forgive someone who wronged you, or looked at a woman with lust?  Even these "small" sins make us guilty before God.  To deserve eternal life in the paradise of the Kingdom of God (also known as the Kingdom of Heaven, see Matthew 19:23-24) you have to be perfect.  Eternal life is an infinite reward, and therefore it's only fair that only the infinitely good should receive it.  Even the smallest sins make us ineligible.  But the good news of the Gospel is that God understands that we have all sinned - I've sinned, you've sinned, etc.  God wants us to enter the Kingdom of God, which is why Jesus took the punishment that we deserve for our sins, and he placed it upon himself.  The punishment has been served.

Imagine being found guilty in a courtroom, and being sentenced to death, but then Jesus walks in and agrees to die in your place so that you can live and be forgiven instead of punished.  If we accept that he is the Son of God and follow him as Lord, we can receive the forgiveness that he paid the price for.  Following Jesus as Lord means following his teachings to love one another, even to love our enemies, and not to ever seek revenge, but to always forgive.  If we live this way, showing love to everyone and forgiving one another, God will forgive us, and we'll be greatly rewarded in the Kingdom of God.

There will come a time when God will restore the world the world to perfection and destroy the devil.  This will occur when Jesus returns to Earth to judge the living and the dead.  All who have ever lived will be judged - the righteous who follow Christ will receive eternal life in the Kingdom of God on a new and perfect earth.

It's been almost two millennia and Jesus hasn't returned.  What's taking so long?

To put it simply, he's waiting for you.  God wants you to be saved.  By putting off the Final Judgement a little bit longer, he gives you a chance to accept Jesus as Lord and be saved, before it’s too late.  It is out of God's longsuffering and compassion that he has held off the Final Judgement this long.

Why didn’t God destroy the devil in the beginning, instead of allowing him to reign terror on the Earth for thousands of years?

Remember the “free will” issue discussed earlier?  Consider this, for a moment: if God erased the devil immediately, don’t you think a new one would rise up to take its place?  The devil was originally an angel of light, who rebelled against God (thus demonstrating that angels have free will too).  God could have stopped the rebellion 0.001 seconds after it started, but instead he allowed evil to exist, in order for the world to understand just how horrible evil really is.  This ensures that no more angels will ever rebel against God.  They’ve seen and continue to see the terrible destruction it’s caused, and how Lucifer, who used to be an angel, is now forced to crawl around on his belly and eat dust.  It serves as an example, something that we can witness and see the effects of what evil really is. Some people are enticed by it, and some are revolted by it. If we really have a choice, don’t you think it’s fair to know something about what we’re choosing?

But if God is good, why has he allowed evil to exist for even one second, let alone thousands of years?

All the millennia of human history are a mere fraction of a second in comparison to the eternity that the followers of Jesus will enjoy in the Kingdom of God.  It is well known that any finite number appears to be infinitely small when compared to infinity.  Imagine looking at the 6000 years of human history on a timeline, then “zooming out” and watching that period of 6000 years appear to be smaller and smaller and smaller in comparison to the much larger scale of the timeline around it.  What if you zoomed out for all eternity?  Eventually the period of 6000 years would be lost in the world of the infinitesimal; it would seem to not even exist at all.

Anyone who has handled higher level mathematics should understand that even 6000 years becomes nothing when compared to infinity.  Being forced to wait for ten minutes seems like an eon when we’re young children, and when we’re older months seem to roll by in the blink of an eye.  How long to you think a 70 year lifespan will seem if you’ve lived 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years?

Why would a good God allow evil to exist for even one second?  The answer is simple.  God has not allowed evil to exist for even one second, if we measure “seconds” from God’s eternal, infinite point of view.

In the grand scheme of things, evil (and death, which is its natural result) is going to be destroyed pretty soon.  But for the moment, it’s still here.