I had someone ask me this question and I just want to make sure I answered this well…My response was basically that God didn’t create evil but He did allow it to exist. We have free will and so the lack of good things is evil, things that separate us from Him. Bad things happen but God’s character is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere). So for those characteristics to be trustworthy then no God did not orchestrate the creation of evil, he allowed it to “be” those things that contradict His Will.
God did create difficulties for us particularly after the floos, both environmental and biological. This was not to punish us but to limit the harm our selvish natures can inflict on ourselves and each other. True evil results from the freer will choices we make and that Satan and his angels make.
God knew that this would result from giving us free will. However, he is looking to harvest a crop of those who in spite of all these difficulties still seek truth and salvation.
Evil is the absence or rejection of good.
God did not create that absence but he did allow Adam and Eve to be able to choose between good and evil.
Without that option they would have had no ability to choose.
The follow on good is not so etching God has chosen, rather God is Good and goodness is an attribute of God’s character ultimately if one does not know God one cannot be good.
In popular culture we tend toward a semi-dualistic view of good and evil. To unpack that a bit: Dualism (in this context) refers to a belief that there are two equal but opposing cosmic forces: Good and Evil. This was a view many ancient people, and many ancient religions, had. In Zoroastrianism, for example, there was the supreme and good god Ahura Mazda (“Wise Lord”), and then there was the personification of cosmic evil in the form of Angra Mainyu (literally “Evil Spirit”)–human beings here on earth are caught between this cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, and while ultimately Good will triumph over Evil in Zoroastrian eschatology, this world was viewed as the stage or battleground in which this conflict occurs.
However, biblically, and historic orthodox Christian teaching rejects this way of looking at good and evil. Good exists, because God is good. And all that He is, and all that He does, and all that He makes is good. When we read in Genesis 1 that God looked and saw everything He had made He proclaimed it “very good”. So everything that exists, everything that was made, is by virtue of it being created by the Good Creator God itself good.
Evil, therefore, is not a cosmic force in opposition to Good; evil is what happens when the Good is lessened, weakened, or misshapen, twisted, or perverted. Evil is the absence of Good, it is the malformation of Good. In the same way that darkness is the absence of light; one can’t produce or create darkness per se–but one can turn a light off, one can cover up a light, one can dim a light, etc. Darkness is absence, evil is absence.
God did not create evil, nor was anything that He made evil. But creatures, capable of choice with moral agency, by abandoning God and turning away from God became evil. When Adam sinned, he introduced something new into the human experience–sin, evil, and the whole litany of suffering that follows and in which each of us now suffers and labors. Likewise, the devil is not a cosmic principle of evil, a kind of “evil god” that is God’s counterpart. The devil is just a creature, an angel that sinned, rebelled, fell away. Angels, like human beings, were created as moral creatures–to serve and worship God as they were created to do or, as the devil and the demons did, rebel and turn away from God.
So evil exists in the same way that a cancerous growth exists–a malformation. Evil exists in the same way that darkness exists, as absence or emptiness. Without God, there is darkness, there is death. That’s the present condition of the world: A world suffering under death and sin. St. Paul tells us that all creation groans longing for redemption and healing, because the very universe, the very dirt under our feet, is suffering–because it was created Good, but now suffers and labors under the tyranny of sin and death.
So while in our popular imagination we often view the world as a cosmic struggle between the forces of good and forces of evil; where these two are equal-opposites. This is not the biblical view, it’s not the historic Christian view either. Evil is real, because God’s good creatures act in selfish and destructive ways, because we are out of alignment, without communion with God our Creator who made us in His Image. And so we need to be restored, healed, redeemed–saved. And this healing and redemption and salvation isn’t just for us as individual humans, it’s God’s intended goal for all of creation–to bring the whole of creation back into good order and restore it to flourishing. That’s why we look forward to the resurrection of the body and the life of the Age to Come, i.e. new heavens and new earth. When God makes all things new.
2 Likes