I’m going to start off by saying this. Before I even started writing this post, I already knew that there would be multiple parts to this idea, thus I put in parentheses “pt. 1.” I can’t tell you how many parts there will be to this, but I can tell you, everything I’m about to say, I’m not proclaiming I’m right or wrong, I’m only putting my thoughts into words. If there is any part you may disagree on, please leave a comment, or send me a private message. I’m trying to make this idea as strong as possible, which part of that strength building process involves allowing the criticism to find its weak spots, and then coming back, integrating that critique, and rebuilding it into a much stronger idea. That’s all I have to say, for now, so let’s get started on my thoughts.
I have a co-worker that I speak to quite often. I like talking to him because we always find ourselves talking about a wide variety of topics, which many of them are deep discussions such as philosophical, political, and well, religious ideas. Although we tend to agree on most things, especially in the political sphere, we always seem to steer our conversations into a religious discussion, and I think it’s because we fundamentally disagree on religion in general. Why? Because my co-worker is a self-proclaimed Atheist, and I’m a self-proclaimed Christian. So yeah, you can see why we might disagree.
Although we disagree on several religious points, the one we sort of always get stuck on, as well as almost every other Christian out there is this.
How can a good God allow the suffering of the world?
As far back as there’s been Christianity, there has been this question to criticize it. The thought process is this, if God, the creator of everything, is good, and the world he created is good, then why is there evil in the world? I’ve heard a lot of answers to this question, and the most widely accepted answer seems to be this.
True love (good) for God cannot be achieved without free will, but there cannot be free will without there being a choice, i.e. good or evil. By freely choosing God, who is good, in the face of evil, then that is the ultimate good. So that is why there is evil.
The thing is, that doesn’t answer the question why is there evil? It assumes that evil is already there. If we’re supposed to recognize God created all things, then why can we not assume God created evil as well? Which funny enough, there is a verse, Isaiah 45:7, it says:
“I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I am Jehovah, who does all these things”
– Isaiah 45:7
You can make your own conclusions about that verse, and many preachers have. Usually it is either, the translation is not correct, and it really doesn’t mean evil, or it is referring to the punishment of sinners, meaning, he punishes those who sin, which might be seen as “evil”. I think, no matter what answer you give, it feels like you’re dancing around the true answer, God created evil, and I want to take that idea at face value.
God created evil, but God also created Good.
And here’s a radical idea, and I’m not sure most people will be able to understand it at first. The human understanding of Good and Evil are not the same as God’s definition of Good. Human good and evil are only tools in God’s hierarchy to perform God’s grace, often described as the “greater good”. It’s funny, we still don’t have a very complete definition of what “God’s Grace” actually is, but we talk about it like it’s the easiest thing to understand.
Then you might ask, what is God’s definition of “good”?
That’s what I’m trying to figure out here, but I think it’s this. It’s knowing who we are, and seeing we aren’t good as we can be. And taking that knowledge of all our insufficiencies and working to become someone better. It’s the whole idea of the redeemer. I mean, that’s what Jesus announced himself to be, The Redeemer.
And when you look at many of the religions as a whole, that’s the general theme they seem to share, that you can be redeemed.
I know this is a lot to think about, so I want to end it here. If you have any thoughts on this, I encourage you to voice them in a comment below. It’d help me out.
thanks for reading,
cory
New Age Lessons 
Does God allow suffering or is he responsible for it? Rather than assume that God “allows” evil and is rather impotently standing idly by while people suffer senselessly, let’s take Isaiah’s statement as true.
As you pointed out there are many different ways to translate the word, ra’a from Hebrew, one of which is “moral evil” but considering that it contradicts just about everything else that the Bible reveals about God, let’s assume that Isaiah is saying that God is the author of “calamity” or “disaster” or “distress” or “misery” all of which are acceptable translations and consistent with the rest of scripture’s portrayal of the character of God.
But I will assume that it means the most horrible and deplorable evil possible and address that in the last paragraph.
I’ll be assuming that our free will plays little role in the long run except providing culpability for our rebellion against God’s will since God’s will is much bigger, longer lasting, and more effective than our own.
So we’ve got suffering and evil in the world. The Bible doesn’t really explain where it comes from, it just assumes its presence and then gets to work explaining God’s plan to deal decisively with sin and his creation. People end up naturally suffering the consequences of their willful rebellion against God’s will (sin) .
If every one of us is a sinner (though we may not be honest with ourselves, this is the stance of the Bible), and God is indeed good, then he must act against sin and sinners. In fact, he must hate sin and sinners. And he’s justified in creating infinite calamity for sinners since every sin is committed against his infinite majesty. Mere gossip is treason against the most holy God.
This situation kind of sucks for us. Bummer.
But…
There’s good news: Christ crucified. At the cross, we see both the great wrath of God toward sin (since Jesus took on our infinite punishment in his person on the cross) and God’s great love for the ones for whom he died. Dying, Jesus purchased his elect from the eternal calamity that we all rightfully deserve. Rising, he proved himself the legitimate authority over all creation and life and death. Ascending to heaven, he now intercedes on behalf of his elect before the throne of God’s judgement seat and pleads the merit of his blood (which is completely sufficient). And he promises to come again to redeem and restore his creation from the nasty fallout and consequences of all our cumulative sin since the beginning of creation.
Conclusion:
We are deserving of all the calamity that God issues to us. We’re in no position to argue that our sense of justice is better than God’s since he is the author of goodness and holiness and justice, and not one of us measure up, in fact from the point of conception onward we increase the wrath that we deserve, daily.
Since God is not impotently “allowing evil” but rather omnipotent, his elect can trust his power to deliver his ultimate promise of total deliverance some day. They can be thankful when things go well for them, and patient when calamity strikes because they know that that is not God’s end goal for them.
Jesus’ death “justified” his elect (caused God to declare them righteous since Jesus’ death was substitutionary in nature, his elect can claim his righteousness) and his indwelling Holy Spirit “sanctifies” them (causes them to change and become through various means, that which God has already declared them to be through justification). So while they’ve been declared “good” they remain not completely good while God works on them continually until Christ is formed in them and they resemble that which they’ve already been declared to be. In the mean time, consequences of sin are still lingering. But for God’s elect, they are no longer the stings of death, but the labor pains of new birth.
Who are God’s elect? People, who by no merit of their own, are born again of the Spirit of God and thus believe in the sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ to bring about the salvation promised by God.
As one believing in Jesus’ lordship and sovereignty over my own life, I believe that he demonstrates sovereignty over everything that happens in my life. Since, I know he is always in control, I know that he will ultimately deliver justice. And when all is revealed, and God delivers final judgement, to bring justice for all evil and all good, there will be no one who will be able to argue and say that he didn’t do justice. I believe in the goodness and justice of God, but apart from the gospel of Christ crucified for me, his goodness and justice would terrify me.
Did God create evil? I believe that God created and planned – down to the last detail – the single greatest evil in the history of the world. And he used it for our good. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. And we killed him, the most holy and perfect and innocent man to ever live. And we’d do it again. And again, and again, and again. And he would not hesitate to give himself over to us as many times as necessary. But thanks be to God, it is finished, enemies of God have been reconciled to him through the evil committed against him. And having been reconciled while we were yet enemies, how much more will God give us through him who loved us?
Thank you for posting this thought provoking article and thanks for reading my response.
– kyle
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I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you spent the time and effort to write such a thoughtful response. It’s nice to have people who actually read and properly critique my ideas than just completely dismissing them, which some people have.
So, with that said, I would like to have a chance to respond to your critiques, and I mean “critiques” in the best way possible.
In the beginning, you seem to suggest I was saying God allows evil, which, I could see how you could interpret that, as that was the claim I was putting under analysis. I was more so trying to suggest that the whole idea of “God allowing evil” is the wrong way of putting it, as so many seem to frame the question and their answers based on God allowing evil.
The idea I was trying to explore, and it seems like you might even subtly agree with me, that God doesn’t allow evil, but merely uses it, therefore he created it.
But the problem with that interpretation would be that it makes God evil if he was doing evil acts, and there’s plenty of “evil” acts God has done, especially in the old testament. Then you might say, well, the acts God did, they weren’t evil, it was simply to punish the sinners who deserved it. The only thing that seems a bit contradictory is he seems to be picking and choosing favorites who he decides to punish and decides not to which seems like a malevolent act. If we all really deserve to be punished, then he should punish us all. Then we can keep going and say, well he won’t punish those who accept him as savior… but then I say, look at the story of Job. He accepted God as savior and still brought suffering to his life. Again, you can say, well Jesus hadn’t died for our sins yet, so we all deserve punishment before he died for our sins.
The point is, like I mentioned in my post, it seems as if you go down that route, you’re just bouncing around the idea that God created evil, as the bible suggests. I was saying why don’t we take the idea of “God created evil” at face value, and actually interpret it for what it seems to be implying.
But the only way you can imply a good God created evil, and also performs evil acts, is that the definition of good God uses is outside of what we interpret as evil. That his evil fits in a hierarchy of good. It’s the idea that something can be evil, but nests inside an overall hierarchy of good. And that is a really complicated idea to comprehend I think. How can something be good and evil?
Then you might say, well, I’m dismissing the death of the hundreds of millions of deaths by the hands of tyrannical socialists, fascists, and communists, and those evil acts could never be justified, especially by a good God. But I still believe my definition can justify those evil acts, but maybe due to our human compassion towards others, we couldn’t see how that many deaths and to that degree of evilness could ever be justified. So, I’m still working that out.
The best way I have to describe my idea of God working outside of the human understanding of evil to perform his grace is this. Moses killed a man but did not let that deter him from becoming a better person. Job had just about every wicked thing you can think happen to him, by God’s hand at that, and he still, in the end, continued to be “redeemed” in God before he died.
My point? God’s definition of Good is not the same definition we think of when something is “good” such as “healing the sick” or “donating money to charity”. It’s more like this, it’s the ability to walk with God and make the world a better place, even despite the “evil” from the world, and the catch is, God’s the one who planned and created the evil.
I think as I keep writing, I’ll be able to articulate my idea a bit better, but thanks for the comment. I really appreciate it!
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Well, you’ve certainly helped me to wrestle with God on this matter. Thanks for your efforts. I’ll be looking forward to part II.
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