God and Evil - II
By: Navin (June 7th, 2010)Hi Abhishek,
I got your response to my last mail but I was unable to respond on time as I was travelling for some seminars. But now I am back home and things are back to normal after some hectic weeks of travelling. However I am glad that my last letter helped you to dig deeper in to this issue of evil and the existence of God. You came up with some important points in your last mail. You asked me that, wouldn’t it have been good for God to curtail some of our freedom to make this world a better place.
Well let me tell you that all my students who were copied on your mail were really confused by your argument because it all sounded so reasonable. If God had proposed a curtailing of free will to keep the evil in check wouldn’t we all have gladly agreed to it? We would all give up some of our freedom in order to protect the spreading of AIDS, killing of innocent foetuses and the killing of innocent people in the name of wars and Holy wars.
Yes, it sounds so good. But just imagine a world where God would have curtailed our freedom to use a handgun to murder a human being. Meaning it would fire at dogs and cats but not at human beings. But if that is the case then you will not be able to protect yourself from somebody who is trying to attack you. Secondly God might allow the handgun to fire if the intention of the person was to ‘kill you’ and it would not fire if the ‘intention is not to kill you’. Then you would have to keep pulling the trigger at every person attacking you not knowing in which case the handgun would go off. Imagine living in such a world were all your acts are controlled by a supreme being from outside of this world.
Secondly, if God had cut off the evil at a certain point then certainly the ‘big evils’ of this world would be restricted but still allowing those ‘petty evils’ to continue. Would that be a better world? Just imagine a situation where I think that since I am not the tallest man in my college I begin to kill the tallest man around. So after I kill the tallest man there is always another person who is taller than me and hence I will have to keep killing till I come to myself. Is that an ideal situation? May be for me it is but for people who are shorter than me would like to eliminate me too. Similarly if God would have eliminated all evils till a certain level where a ‘paper cut’ is the worst evil, then there would always be a set of people asking if there can be a God who allows ‘paper cuts’!
And finally your proposition of God making such a world where every act that we would do would bring about an equal or greater good or prevent an equal or greater evil. Meaning a world where it would be impossible to do a truly evil act which has no redeeming value (acts which can set off the damage that has been caused). I have this habit of helping hitchhikers on lonely roads. But if this is the type of world that I would be living in then I would like to bump in to these hitchhikers using my jeep and see how far the impact would throw them knowing fully that God would not allow any hurt or pain to them. I can do whatever I want and it won’t hurt anyone because God is going to work it all out. What motivation would I then have of doing morally good acts of helping someone in need? You see, there must be the possibility of doing gratuitous evil because if I can’t then my moral obligation and moral motivation to do good are removed. It undercuts morality.
But to conclude this let me tell you that there are no complete answers to the problem of evil because it is a reality that we all face in our lives, there are no exceptions. That is why Solzhenitsyn said “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.”
Often in the mysteries of evil I don’t get the answer to the ‘why’ but rather the answer lies in the ‘who’. God ‘who’ is above all my problems and pains. And therefore I am able to respond to every evil with a calm assurance that comes from HIM. Would you also like to do the same? In the light of all I have explained in these last two mails, you can either choose to reject HIM or believe the One who created you and me.
After all the same sun melts the butter but hardens the clay!
Love and prayers,
Prof. Reese
June 13th, 2010 at 1:14 am
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June 13th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
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Armida Scrichfield
June 15th, 2010 at 11:04 am
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June 20th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
A great post indeed! I have read part 1 of this blog too. Its great how you have simplified a lot of things in both your posts.
yes, limited freedom is no freedom at all. Just think about it. Either you are free or you are not. You can’t be free and still be restricted. When I read this statement from your post - “Imagine living in such a world were all your acts are controlled by a supreme being from outside of this world.”…it reminded me of the film - ‘The Truman Show’. When I saw that movie, I thought to myself, how terrible it is to have all your actions controlled. It actually is so tragic! It finally brings such a joy and relief when Truman finds out the door to freedom from that artificial world.
Well, free will is a gift of God. He has given us a choice to love Him or reject Him. He obviously does not want to force us into loving Him because forced love is not love, its molestation!
Evil and pain raise questions in life but faith brings the answer. If we choose to have faith in the JUST, FAITHFUL and LOVING character of God, we will find solace, peace and hope in Him.
December 27th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Enjoying the post and have a few concepts to throw in the mix…
1) We talk about God as being all powerful, but a clearer definition is that God is simply an expression of His will. More precisely, EVERYTHING that God says, does, or creates is simply an expression of His nature. God cannot say or do anything that contradicts His nature (i.e. God cannot lie, because lying is contrary to who He is). I guess one can then say that God is indeed limited by His very nature.
2) What is good/evil? A simple definition is that anything that reflects the nature of God is good, while something contrary to the nature of God is evil. During the creation account in Genesis, we see that everything that God created was good. Man, being the crown of His creation, was in fact very good! The latter indicates that the more a thing reflects the nature of God, the “gooder” (if I can use this word) the thing is.
With the above explanations, I’d like to go back to the original question of why did (does) God allow evil to exist?
As Navin already stated, this is a consequence of God’s will. The bible declares that Adam/Eve were made in the image of God, created in the likeness of God. Adam was called the Son of God. Sonship is a term to denote the earthly manifestation of a heavenly Father. Said another way, man’s dominion over the earth is simply a consequence of our Father’s dominion in heaven. Adam was created in His Father’s image, thus must posess those attributes of the Father, one of which being dominion. So God could not create man in His own image, without actually giving him dominion over the earth.
Sidetrack #1: The only attribute of God that was NOT given to man was that attribute that allows man to determine good from evil (forbidden fruit). Only God can accurately express that which reflects His nature. But because this is needed for man to properly rule the land, God put His spirit in our spirit to guide us. In the last days, He has also given us the Holy Scriptures. But these “tools for guidance” require man to submit his understanding of truth to what God has declared. This is why the bible says that without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Okay, so the reason for man’s free will is established, but lets go back to evil… Man has the propensity to commit evil, because we have free will. Although God has provided guidance for us to rule the land correctly, we still have dominion to rule the way we see fit. Thus when we rule in a way that is contrary to God’s nature, evil is the consequence.
Sidetrack #2… Althought the original creation (Adam) was very good, it did lack one very important provision — that is, a provision for evil. Because God’s nature is contrary to evil, He cannot dwell within the midst of it. His word (His nature) requires that evil be eradicated (punished). This may sound bad, but in reality, it is very good, as it is the only way for God to dwell amongst His people. Dealing with evil is simply an expression of God’s love for us — His desire to be with us. So Adam’s transgression (eating the forbidden fruit) had to be dealt with. This is precisely why Christ came to earth to suffer for the sins of mankind. This beautiful work fulfilled the requirement that sin be punished, so God could reconnect with mankind.
Summarizing the point… Evil will exist in the earth until mankind receives a full revelation of God’s nature. It is this revelation of truth that allows us to do only what we see our Father do (in heaven). In this day, evil will no longer exist in the world. I continue to pray… “May thy will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven…”