First, for the 10 million people that belong to the “School of Thought” that does not support the idea of “Freewill”… the answer for you is simply, “Yes”. I understand your point of view, and there are completely different apologetics out there for you. But for the other 2.1 Billion of us in the world… this blog may help with your questions.
You remember when you were growing up and your parents or teachers told you to not blame others for your problems? Well there is a lot of wisdom in that. It seems we all have a natural tendency to blame others and God for our problems, and we do this because it’s the easy way out and immediately puts the blame on someone else so we don’t have to deal with our faults, ourselves.
Bad things happen to us. Children die. Millions of innocent lives are taken by murder. Christians are still murdered today just for being a Christian. Yes, it’s all evil. Many people ask why doesn’t God stop it all, why does God LET it all happen, and some get to point of saying that God must be evil or have created evil to be letting evil destroy the world like it seems sometimes. So is this true? Did God really create evil? Does he let evil things happen to us? Or even worse… is God partly evil Himself?
Evil is not matter. It does not have mass. It is not created from energy. Evil is simply a product of freewill given to humanity. Evil is a choice. Even Satan… he chose to rebel against God. So God “separated” himself from evil by casting Satan out of heaven. We tend to think because God is the ultimate creator that he created EVERYTHING. This just isn’t true. People have created many things that God did not create… like the light blub and the car. See what I mean? Humanity does have the ability to create. Evil is a product of our freewill. God is pure love and perfection, but the absence of Him, His love, His glory, leaves a void where the creation of evil can take place. We see this in simple principles of science all the time. Take heat and cold for example. Cold is not created. There is no compound, or equation for the creation of “cold”, but there is for “heat”. Heat is basically created when particles speed up and move together faster and faster and faster and faster, and so on. So when these particles start slowing down, there is less and less heat. Finally when the particles stop moving (which is currently impossible), or when there are no particles moving at all, then that leaves an absence of heat which is called cold. But cold was never created- heat was only taken away.
God is here to provide comfort, not to stop all bad things from happening. God has given us freewill to make our choices and to chose to love him and love others. So when others choose to separate themselves from love and choose to do evil, then that’s when we call on God to send His Holy Spirit to comfort us and help us get through our struggles, not blame Him for what has happened. Another fault that we have as humans is that we think we deserve for God to not let anything bad happen to us. Sometimes we forget that “His Grace is Sufficient” (2 Corinthians 12:9), and we already have all we need from Him.
I could type thousands of more words on this, but then it wouldn’t be called a blog and probably would’t be read. Just know that God is not evil, he did not create evil, he doesn’t make bad things happen, and he doesn’t like it when evil things happen to us. And God doesn’t really “permit” or “allow” evil to happen, but He does permit us to have a choice which can be to act in evil ways. Evil is simply created by us when we choose not to follow God. But God forgives us of our evil and will provide comfort when evil rises up against us. Two verses for thought:
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12:21
“The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.” – Psalm 121:7
Loved this.
Aaron’s right in that evil is not created and that the Hebrew word has more than one meaning. I believe the reason God said that he created “evil” or whatever word you want to put in there is the fact that the point he is making is there is no other god. Was very common for other religions to have several gods, each one responsible for the cause of something. But God’s point in Isaiah is that HE is the cause of all that is good and all that is bad. In other words, no room for other gods. Also, Aaron mentioned in his blog how some wonder why God doesn’t do something about evil. This seems to be the argument of most nonbelivers. I guess the question would be, if God is holy, then where does he start in doing away with evil? In his eyes we are all evil, since we are sinful. So if he were to do away with evil, wouldn’t he have to eliminate everyone? Just some thoughts!!! I enjoy the blog Aaron!!!
Thanks for reading…. cool point!
I dont know much but in my point of view He did create eveil and lets evil happen because He gives us a chioice. if it was only good we would be puppets not people. it wouldnt be real, we wouldnt need to choose God ’cause we would alreay have chose. Probably doesnt make sense but thats what I think