Looking at the world today, we see a lot of pain and suffering, not in our own lives but in those around us. I think we have all wondered why evil is allowed to continue if God is good. Why can’t He stop it?
It’s a reasonable question. As believers, we should think through why things happen to the best of our finite minds will give us the capability.
A lot of times, it can baffle us. What we know about God and His nature, we can’t seem to comprehend why.
Thankfully, God has given us His Word to help us understand better the world around us, even if we don’t understand it fully.
God, who He is
We first need to understand the nature and character of God. God has many attributes that tell us who he is. The ones that stick out to me are His aseity (self-existence), His goodness, His being the creator, and His sovereignty.
God has always existed—eternity past. God was before he created the heavens and the earth. No one created God. He has been, is, and will be. God is good.
He is the standard for what is good. This is where our idea of good originates. The standard of what is right and wrong comes from God. He is the highest authority of goodness. He is the creator of the universe. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God had a sovereign plan in creating the universe and knew what would happen to the people in the world He created.
Origin of Evil
Genesis 3. The fall.
It tells us the account of how Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of Good and Evil.
“When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. dam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” Romans 5:12 NLT
This is how sin entered the world. We see evil in a couple of forms—natural and human evil. Earthquakes, floods, disease, and disabilities are just a few of the natural evils we encounter today. Murder, lies, human cruelty, hatred, and stealing are evils that humans perpetrate on their fellow humans.
Evil is a corruption of good. There would be no evil without good. God created good, and we know how that good got corrupted.
Free Will
“The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. f you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”
Genesis 2:16-17 NLT
Free will is the ability to choose. In Genesis 2, God sets His standard and gives freedom to act in specific ways.
Free will takes a broad perspective in our everyday life. This freedom gives us the ability not only to choose right from wrong but also give us the ability to love and be loved.
Sin has messed this world up. We live in a fallen world where every human has free will; not everyone will choose goodness equivalent to God’s goodness. The standard of goodness varies among people.
People who do bad things feel like they are doing good. Hitler thought he was doing good, but he was not. Free will offers good and evil; humanity has the autonomy to choose either.
God uses evil for His greater good
God is not blind to the evil of this world. He was there when it entered the world. Yet, as believers, we should remember that this world is a temporary stop to eternity, where God defeats evil and makes everything new.
While everything is messed up on this earth, God can use the evil in the world until His plan is fulfilled.
When we have pain in our physical bodies, it’s usually an indication that something is wrong. Pain and lead us to find out the cause so we can try to fix it.
That’s a simple example, but other evils that naturally happen or other people inflict on others, we don’t necessarily know why God allows it to happen unless He shows us later down the line in life.
We have a promise, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” Romans 8:28 NLT.
Think back in your life…what situation have you had that was bad, but God used the situation for a greater and better purpose?
References
The Harvest Handbook of Apologetics What Is Truth? By Richard G. Howe (2018)
The Bible’s answers To 100 of Life’s biggest Questions By Norman L. Geisler and Jason Jimenez (2011)
Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith by Douglas Groothuis
This was good.