Did God create evil?
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Did God create evil? How did evil come into existence if God did not create it?
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- Did God create evil? At first, it might seem that if God created all things, then evil must have been created by God.
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- However, evil is not a thing like a rock or electricity. You cannot have a jar of evil.
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- Evil has no existence of its own. It's really the absence of good. For example, holes are real, but they only exist in something else.
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- We call the absence of dirt a hole, but it cannot be separated from the dirt. So when
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- God created, it is true that all He created was good. One of the good things God made was creatures who had the freedom to choose good.
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- In order to have a real choice, God had to allow there to be something besides good to choose. So, God allowed these free angels and humans to choose good or reject good, evil.
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- When a bad relationship exists between two good things, we call that evil. But it does not become a thing that required
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- God to create it. Perhaps a further illustration will help. If a person is asked, does cold exist?
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- The answer would likely be yes. However, this is incorrect. Cold does not exist.
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- Cold is the absence of heat. Similarly, darkness does not exist. It is the absence of light.
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- Evil is the absence of good, or better, evil is the absence of God. God did not have to create evil, but rather only allow for the absence of good.
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- God did not create evil, but He does allow evil. If God had not allowed for the possibility of evil, both mankind and angels would be serving
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- God out of obligation, not choice. He did not want robots that simply did what
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- He wanted them to do because of their programming. God allowed for the possibility of evil so that we could genuinely have a free will and choose whether or not we wanted to serve
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- Him. As finite human beings, we can never fully understand an infinite
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- God. Sometimes, we think we understand why God is doing something, only to find out later that it was for a different purpose than we had originally thought.
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- God looks at things from a holy, eternal perspective. We look at things from a sinful, earthly, and temporal perspective.
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- Why did God put man on earth knowing that Adam and Eve would sin and therefore bring evil, death, and suffering on all mankind?
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- Why didn't He just create us all and leave us in heaven where we would be perfect and without suffering?
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- These questions cannot be adequately answered this side of eternity. What we can know is whatever
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- God does is holy and perfect and ultimately will glorify Him. God allowed for the possibility of evil in order to give us a true choice in regards to whether we worship
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- Him. God did not create evil, but He allowed it. If He had not allowed evil, we would be worshiping
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- Him out of obligation, not by a choice of our own will. Got questions?