After publishing my last essay, Twittering on the Divine, on another website, a reader named John responded with a pointed assertion. I responded and off we went, on a fascinating and, I believe, important debate on the nature of evil.
What do you think of the points each of us raised? Post your own thoughts below and let’s have a conversation.
John
True, it doesn’t make sense to blame God when someone uses their freewill to commit murders. But then it would be incorrect to thank God when governments and aid groups use their freewill to help starving people. So then God isn’t helping at all.
Frank
John, anyone who believes God is not good and doesn’t care about us will find your mindset quite valid. I prefer not to have such a hopeless perspective and my viewpoint is backed up by the fact that God gave every single person in this broken world a gift – Jesus.
My attitude toward God is also framed by this passage I found in the Bible: “First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.” For me, Jesus is proof of that love and I respond in kind.
John
I can see how the gift of Jesus could account for God’s creation of evil, that is to say God created evil in humans, but he also gave us Jesus so we can redeem ourselves. But I fail to see how that can account for the existence of evils not caused by humans, such as natural disasters or diseases. A father who gives his children expensive gifts is not necessary a good father.
Frank
Thank you for continuing this conversation, John. I’m enjoying the exchange of viewpoints. A couple of things:
1. Did God create evil? As with my last comment, anyone who doesn’t believe God is good and doesn’t believe He cares about us might lean towards that position, but I do not. And the reason can be found in my previous comment.
2. Biblical Christianity – which I accept as true – states we cannot use Jesus to redeem ourselves. Jesus’s death and resurrection redeems anyone who believes in Him and follows Him. Jesus does the redeeming (the ‘heavy lifting’); our obligation is to believe and trust. The difference might be subtle to some, but it is significant.
3. While I cannot explain diseases (if I could, I would be God and that responsibility is a little big for my shoulders), but as for disasters, we humans only call them that because we are in the way when they happen. If nobody is killed and no property/infrastructure is destroyed by an earthquake, do we still call it a disaster?
John
Since evil exists, wouldn’t it have had to been created by something? If God exists and created all, then he would have had to create evil, for if he did not then whence came evil?
Frank
I did some research on your question about God creating evil, so I could answer it credibly. The website gotquestions.org asserts that God did not create evil – it is not a ‘thing’, after all – and evil is simply the absence of good, just as cold is the absence of hot and darkness is the absence of light.
Obviously, God allows evil behaviour to exist and even to flourish. Why? Because if He didn’t, then He would be snatching back His gift of free will. It’s that simple.
In the end, if you want to think about evil being a ‘created’ thing, then it is created by us – you and me, John, when we drop the ball, when we miss the mark of what God created us to be and when we ignore opportunities to do good.
John
I think the analogy between light/dark and good/evil is a flawed one. Darkness is certainly the absence of light, that’s easy. Suppose you put yourself in a windowless room without any light sources, then certainly the room is dark. Darkness is then our zero point, our natural state of the universe.
Now put yourself in the same room and ask yourself: are you doing any good? If you say no, then by your analogy you are doing evil, since it is your zero point evil is the natural state of the universe. I fail to see how sitting alone in a dark room can be evil. I would suggest the zero point is simply neutral, doing no good and no evil, with evil below it and good above it. Hence God created good and evil.
You could say that sitting in the room is doing good since you’re doing no evil. But then we would have to consider good as our natural state and your analogy becomes reversed. Now evil is simply the absence of good, and good was never created, but evil was.
Frank
Let’s consider the light/dark analogy from this perspective, John: evil is the absence of God.
Where God is not acknowledged, where His will for humanity is ignored, where His love for every single person who ever lived – stretching from Osama Bin Laden to Mother Teresa and *proven* through His gift of Jesus Christ – is ridiculed, then evil is the inevitable consequence.
Sometimes, that evil comes from what you’ve referred to as the neutral of simply sitting in darkness. Does that sitting in darkness include the neutrality of doing nothing to stop someone from getting hit by a car? After all, you’re not driving the car and you’re not the dope who stepped on the road in front of it, so you haven’t done anything wrong (or right) by simply letting events unfold, correct?
But our exchange of views is getting very esoteric, John. The bottom line that I was making in the blog was we have been given two extraordinary and costly (for the giver) gifts: free will and Jesus Christ.
We’re free to spit on those gifts through our actions (and inactions), through our stubborn rejection of all that Jesus has done for every single person who decides to believe in and follow Him. Where do you stand on those gifts, John?
John
There’s no doubt that evil CAN come from what seems to be a neutral state, but there’s no doubt that there is a neutral state like sitting in the doctor’s office.
As for now changing the question from good-evil to acknowledging God-evil. Acknowledging God is simply respecting what God has given everyone ie. life, freewill. Now you’re sitting alone in the doctor’s waiting room, you’re certainly respecting everything God has given you. So the absence of evil is acknowledging Gods will, so evil is again shown to have been created.
The bottom line that I’m making in this debate is that if you want to believe in God, you must accept that he created evil. The only way to believe that He did not create evil, is to not believe in God. Which is one of the many reasons I chose a life without a god.
Frank
John, I simply can not and do not agree with your premise. As far as I’m concerned – and I’ve thought a lot about this, and read lots of books & blogs about this – free will is God’s invention and evil is humanity’s “invention”.
If I believed God “invented” evil (rather than allowing it – a significant difference), my life would become superficial and hope-less. That’s the kind of life I see lived by so many people who have no faith and unknowingly follow all the marketing and lifestyle mantras our society pushes on us.
I was fortunate in that I came to see and embrace the gift of free will, and the gift of Jesus Christ, without some sort of huge, often negative event forcing me to re-examine my life. Will that be what it takes for you to do that re-examining? I deeply and sincerely hope not.
John
I have argued well enough to show that if you believe in God, you must accept that He created evil. I can accept that evil is humanity’s creation because I’ve rejected the idea of any god.
If you insist of believing in God, then you must believe he created evil. Which really is a contradiction to your beliefs so, of course, your life would be hopeless since you’re living a lie. That’s the kind of life I see lived by so many people who have faith and unknowingly follow all the ignorant ideals and beliefs religion pushes on us.
Frank
Well, John, I guess we’re going to agree to disagree. I believe we’ve debated well; my hope and prayer is anyone reading these comments will connect with the hope-filled, positive viewpoint.
I hope readers will also recognize that with some spiritual things, there are no absolutely definitive answers. We can know many things about God (thanks to the Bible), but in some ways, He has been – and will always be – a mystery, whether we like it or not. Rather than frustrating me, I find this mystery is an important reminder that God is God and I am NOT.
In the meantime, John, I hope you don’t mind if I pray for you.
Frank's Cottage 
I’m not sure i understand. If I am sitting in a room by myself all alone in the dark the absence of God in my life can cause me to commit evil to myself, I mean the acceptance of a thought can be evil. So I fail to see how it would be a neutral state of evil or, no good no evil. If I’m sitting in a room not harming myself then that’s GOOD!!!!!! Unless perhaps you feel it’s not possible to do harm to ones self.
Thanks for your comment, Ash. I’m not quite sure what your main point is, but I’m glad you found the debate thought-provoking.
My main point is that our neutral or natural state is always good. Evil is a phenomenon, or has no being in an of itself, it’s just an experience manifested in an act contrary to neutral or nature.
I think that the real underlying problem is that people can not understand why God created any beings knowing that they would act contrary to nature. If God wanted to prevent evil, He simply should not have created the angels who would turn corrupt. I cannot reconcile this myself, it requires a pure act of faith and trust that God knows what he is doing.
Ash, it’s your opinion (not a fact) that our “neutral” state is always good. For one thing, what is good? And how good is good enough?
On your other point – “If God wanted to prevent evil, He simply should not have created the angels who would turn corrupt” – you mean creating beings without free will?
God is directly quoted as saying he created evil in the Bible:
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 KJV
Newer translations change the translation of the Hebrew word for evil (ra) to “calamity”, but it is the same word used in Genesis 2:9 in “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” In any case, even the “calamity” redefinition would seem to refute your point.
Thanks for pointing this out, Haywood. If folks want to go with the ancient King James translation of the Bible (dating back more than 400 years and written in Shakespearean English), that’s certainly their prerogative.
I’m going with newer translations because I find them far more trustworthy.
Here’s the ERV translation:
“I made the light and the darkness. I bring peace, and I cause trouble. I, the Lord, do all these things.”
The Message translation:
I form light and create darkness, I make harmonies and create discords. I, God, do all these things.
The NIV translation:
I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.
The New Century translation:
I made the light and the darkness. I bring peace, and I cause troubles. I, the Lord, do all these things.
The NLT translation:
I create the light and make the darkness; I send good times and bad times. I, the Lord, am the one who does these things.
God creates discords? Troubles? Absolutely. Creates disaster? No problem ’cause I see that as disaster for evildoers or disaster to create good. Sends bad times? Sure! Again, those bad times are for people who oppose him or to bring a straying Christ follower back on track.
Good observations, Haywood.
Keep in mind that language is fluid. If I use the word “run”, I can apply it in different ways. I can run in a marathon; I can run copies on a copy machine; I can “run to the store”; I can run a computer program. The list goes on.
All these use the same word, but the definition applied varies depending on context. Most terms have the same sort of spectrum.
In the case of Isaiah 45:7, we see a list of contrasts. Light contrasting with dark, and then ‘ra’ contrasting with ‘shalom’ – essentially, peace. This contrast makes a good case for the choice to translate ‘ra’ in terms of calamity rather than evil, both of which are possible choices. Essentially, it is peace and “not-peace,” the latter of which would be better understood in terms of disaster or calamity than it would in terms of evil.
You can use any translation you like, but the fact remains that the word is the same word used for “evil” in “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. And if God creates “discord” and “disaster” and sends bad times, then we agree God creates evil.
On the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry website, there is an extensive entry on this question.
1. “The Hebrew word for evil, ‘rah,’ is used in many different ways in the Bible. In the KJV Bible it occurs 663 times. 431 times it is translated as ‘evil’. The other 232 times it is translated as ‘wicked,’ ‘bad,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘harm,’ ‘ill,’ ‘sorrow,’ ‘mischief,’ ‘displeased,’ ‘adversity,’ ‘affliction,’ ‘trouble,’ ‘calamity,’ ‘grievous,’ ‘misery,’ and ‘trouble.’ So we can see that the word does not require that it be translated as ‘evil.’ This is why different Bibles translate this verse differently.”
2. The entry concludes: “We can see that the Bible teaches that God is pure and does not approve of evil, that the word “rah” (evil) in Hebrew can mean many things, and that contextually the verse is speaking of calamity and distress. Therefore, God does not create evil in the moral sense, but in the sense of disaster or calamity.”
If you’d like to read the entry, here is the link: http://carm.org/does-god-create-evil
Oh, one other thing: where, in the entire New Testament, is God referred to as a creator of evil? Serious Christians believe the coming of Jesus brought a new “covenant” between God and humanity. Where do you stand on this?
It seems revisionist to me; the word was clearly translated as “evil” before, but that created problems for modern Christians, and so it is now translated as another meaning of “evil”. The list you posted from Strong’s looks like the dictionary entry for “evil”.
I am not aware of the New Testament commenting on God creating evil. Do you reject the Old Testament? I think the “new covenant” is often used an excuse to cherry-pick the OT. Jesus is very clear in Matthew 5:18 & Luke 16:17 that the old law still applies. The arguments I have seen against that are very weak in my opinion, requiring Jesus to mean the exact opposite of what he says, and/or using Paul’s words to override Jesus.
The OT creates a challenge for Christians, since they can’t reject it completely, but many would probably prefer to reject large parts of it.
At this point, we appear to be debating points of view on Hebrew translations. And rejecting the Old Testament? Not at all. But the coming of Jesus heralds a new covenant – there’s no denying that. And, whether Jewish people reject it or not, that new covenant supercedes the old. And upholding Jewish law? Certainly. But who says Isaiah 45:7 qualifies as “Jewish law”?
I am not debating Hebrew translation. I simply pointed out the it says that God created evil, which was the topic of your post.
I also didn’t say Isaiah 45 qualified as Jewish law. You asked me where I stood on the “new covenant” and I answered you. I inferred from your question about NT claims on God creating evil that you meant that the OT claim was not relevant. If that wasn’t your meaning, why did you bring it up?
Thanks for continuing this fascinating conversation. I appreciate it!
I brought up the New Testament because, like “an eye for an eye” being superceded by “turn the other cheek”, any notion of God inventing “evil” is superceded by Him loving humanity so much, He sent His son to live, die and be resurrected for us. That’s the cornerstone of the entire Christian faith. 🙂
You seem to be saying that it used to be that God made evil, but now he didn’t. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Hi Haywood: Interesting comment. I guess what I’m trying to say is the Bible is a story…God’s story and our story. If I stop somewhere part way through (say, Isaiah 45…) and figure I’ve read all I need to read, then I won’t have the full picture. Does that make sense?
Not really. I see a two basic possibilities:
1) the Isaiah verse is true; God created evil. This disproves an omnibenevolent god.
2) the Isaiah verse is false; God didn’t create evil. This means the whole of the Bible is not true, therefore it is not reasonable to believe that it is the work of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god. An omniscient god would know the truth, and omnipotent god could accurately convey the truth, and an omnibenevolent god would want to convey the truth.
You seem to be trying for some middle ground, which requires that the verse be neither quite true nor completely false, which you would have to explain more fully for me to understand your idea.
I don’t know your views on the Bible, but most Christians believe it is divinely inspired, so if it claims God said he created evil, then they would have to accept that he did. I have read the whole Bible, and my view is that it is a collection of stories & myths, so it is not a problem for me when one part contradicts another.
If you’re saying the Bible is a story, and individual parts may not be true, then I don’t see how the Bible is useful at all. Not only does that claim refute divine authorship/inspiration, but is also leaves it up to the reader which parts to accept as truth and which to ignore/reject/claim were meant metaphorically/etc, which is where I believe most Christians are.
Sorry if I seem to be putting words in your mouth; your objection is not very specific so I am trying to guess at your thinking on why the OT quote isn’t literally true.
I should have been more specific on my last comment, Haywood. When I said the Bible is God’s story and our story, I didn’t mean a fictional story.
As for the passage you’re mentioning in Isaiah 45, I believe my comment referencing the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry website covers that ground.
Beyond these points, I can say this with absolute confidence: I don’t understand all the Bible. I don’t know a single Christian, Jew or atheist who can credibly claim they do (and prove it). What does this mean? It means something very comforting to me: God is God. And I am NOT.
When I’m done with this life, I imagine I’ll have the chance to ask God about the things I can’t comprehend. But as I grow older, I’m coming to this realization: when I’m living in eternity with Christ, all these things that I don’t understand simply won’t matter. They’ll be absolutely irrelevant.
I don’t see what the CARM statement says that I didn’t say in my original post. God is quoted saying he creates “ra”, which is the Hebrew word for “evil”. “Ra” can be translated as the traditional meaning of “evil”, or as “calamity”, or other words that are all alternate meanings of the English word “evil”. Their claims about context are false. The passage is clearly making the point that God created everything there is: light/dark, good/bad, prosperity/poverty, etc.
I think the author meant “good and evil”, but even if I grant that it meant “trouble”, “disaster”, or “calamity”, it still refutes your initial point. You are basically saying (in your 1st response to me) that if God creates a natural disaster that kills 1000’s of innocent children to bring about some good, it’s not evil. I disagree; that’s still immoral, even if the net end result is positive. (Please don’t attempt to remove meaning from the word “immoral” by telling me whatever God does is by definition moral.) Welcome to the Problem of Evil, probably the strongest objection to theism.
I don’t claim to understand all of the Bible, but I have it easier than Christians do, because they have the added burden of having to accept that all of the Bible is divinely inspired. With that burden removed, I can see the Bible as a collection of works by different people with different views, so contradictions and factual errors (light created before stars, flat circular earth, rabbits chewing cud, etc.) make perfect sense. When you believe in divine inspiration, you are forced to come up with explanations for why those things aren’t wrong.
If the Bible appears contradictory, you say that’s not important because you’ll still go to Heaven. That is missing the point: the fact that the Bible contradicts itself makes it unlikely to be true, therefore unlikely that Heaven exists. It is not sufficient (to me) to just invoke “mysterious ways” to explain God’s inability or unwillingness to give clear direction in his book. It’s basically like saying “I can’t show why you’re wrong, Haywood, but I know you are anyway.” You are welcome to believe that of course, but it isn’t helpful in a debate context.
I think John pretty soundly refuted your dark/light analogy and showed that to believe in God you must believe he created evil. Given that the Bible explicitly claims he did, I don’t think one can rationally reject that and claim otherwise.
Hi Haywood: I didn’t write that the Bible appears contradictory. I wrote that I don’t understand it all.
And I guess we’re going to agree to disagree about the God “creating” evil. I think we’ve stated our points of view very well and to go much further is to beat a dead horse. Thanks for reading and debating. It’s been an excellent exercise that I hope others will read and consider. 🙂
God creates and man invents. Man uses the good matter and uses it for evil purposes. And, death is not evil in itself. It is only horrible if you died without Jesus.
If John made a knife and gave to one of his sons to cut an apple and the the son uses it to cut the throat of his brother, would John be accountable for the evil that has happened?
God neither created good or bad. He just said “it is good” or “it is not good”. As Frank said, evil or good are not matter. It the standard God sets for actions. God decides what is good and what is evil, not man. HE sets rule and man has to follow.
About the natural disasters, part of it caused by man. That is evil. But, when God lets it happen, who are you to set standards for God? Does God have to obey by His rules? Does the teacher write exams just because he commanded the student to do so?
God knows whats best.
Some great points, Prem. Thanks for contributing to the debate. 🙂
C.S. Lewis made some good points here:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet.
Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too–for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist–in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality–namely my idea of justice–was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.
[…]
A universe that contains much that is obviously bad and apparently meaningless, but containing creatures like ourselves who know that it is bad and meaningless. There are only two views that face all the facts. One is the Christian view that this is a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been.
The other is the view called Dualism. Dualism means the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of every thing, one of them good and the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight out an endless war. I personally think that next to Christianity Dualism is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market. But it has a catch in it.
The two powers, or spirits, or gods–the good one and the bad one–are supposed to be quite independent. They both existed from all eternity. Neither of them made the other, neither of them has any more right than the other to call itself God. Each presumably thinks it is good and thinks the other bad. One of them likes hatred and cruelty, the other likes love and mercy, and each backs its own view. Now what do we mean when we call one of them the Good Power and the other the Bad Power?
Either we are merely saying that we happen to prefer the one to the other–like preferring beer to cider–or else we are saying that, whatever the two powers think about it, and whichever we humans, at the moment, happen to like, one of them is actually wrong, actually mistaken, in regarding itself as good. Now if we mean merely that we happen to prefer the first, then we must give up talking about good and evil at all. For good means what you ought to prefer quite regardless of what you happen to like at any given moment.
If ‘being good’ meant simply joining the side you happened to fancy, for no real reason, then good would not deserve to be called good. So we must mean that one of the two powers is actually wrong and the other actually right.
But the moment you say that, you are putting into the universe a third thing in addition to the two Powers: some law or standard or rule of good which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform to. But since the two powers are judged by this standard, then this standard, or the Being who made this standard, is farther back and higher up–than either of them, and He will be the real God.
In fact, what we meant by calling them good and bad turns out to be that one of them is in a right relation to the real ultimate God and the other in a wrong relation to Him.
The same point can be made in a different way. If Dualism is true, then the bad Power must be a being who likes badness for its own sake. But in reality we have no experience of anyone liking badness just because it is bad. The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are cruel for one of two reasons–either because they are sadists, that is, because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual pleasure to them, or else for the sake of something they are going to get out of it–money, or power, or safety.
But pleasure, money, power, and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much. I do not mean, of course, that the people who do this are not desperately wicked. I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong, way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness.
You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong–only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. In other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good.
Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. We called sadism a sexual perversion; but you must first have the idea of a normal sexuality before you can talk of its being perverted; and you can see which is the perversion, because you can explain the perverted from the normal, and cannot explain the normal from the perverted.
It follows that this Bad Power, who is supposed to be on an equal footing with the Good Power, and to love badness in the same way as the Good Power loves goodness, is a mere bogy. In order to be bad he must have good things to want and then to pursue in the wrong way: he must have impulses which were originally good in order to be able to pervert them.
But if he is bad, he cannot supply himself either with good things to desire or with good impulses to pervert. He must be getting both from the Good Power. And if so, then he is not independent. He is part of the Good Power’s world. he was made either by the Good Power or by some power above them both.
Put it more simply still. To be bad, he must exist and have intelligence and will. But existence, intelligence and will are in themselves good. Therefore he must be getting them from the Good Power: even to be bad he must borrow or steal from his opponent. And do you now beg to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel? That is not a mere story for the children. It is a real recognition of the fact that evil is a parasite, not an original thing.
The powers which enable evil to carry on are powers given it by goodness. All the things which enable a bad man to be effectively bad are in themselves good things-resolution, cleverness, good looks, existence itself. That is why Dualism, in a strict sense, will not work.
But I freely admit that real Christianity (as distinct from Christianity-and-water) goes much nearer to Dualism than people think. One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe–a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin.
The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.
God always was. He has no beginning, and while much is debatable about what was going on in “eternity past” it important I believe to note that there are not two Gods, one good and one bad. There is only one God, and He is good,
Darkness is only evil to those who have eyes to see, since the eyes require light in order to be able to identify what is present, so a person sitting in a dark room who could see the darkness could be said to be experiencing evil. Othe flip side, a person who was born blind and never having seen light does not know that he is in a dark room, there for it can not be said of the blind man that he is experiencing evil, since a dark room and one with the lights on are both alike to him. It would only be evil to those who having experienced light because of eyes that see, knowing the blind man was in darkness and considering it to be just as evil to the blind man as it is to those who formerly saw light. That is why Jesus told the Pharisees in John 9:41 “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.”
Darkness does not originate with God because the scripture says in 1 John 1:5 “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.” Darkness however is the natural state of the “void” we call the universe. Therefore God is not contained in the universe like every other created thing. God spills out of it, and spoke His Word into it and made everything we see. It is said of God by Solomon at the declaration of the first temple in Jerusalem in 1 Kings 8:27 “But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” Also God says of Himself in Isaiah 66:1 “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me, and where is the place of My rest?”
The place where God is from. The fountain where His Word springs forth from is altogether separate from the firmament which we peer out into with Hubble telescopes and optical devices, and wherever that place is, is where all light is born and where all spirit is given birth to. The light of stars and the sun solves the problem of darkness in the “void”, a place God created to house all His creation..
What do we say then? Only that with evil, it is not this way for “sin” is shall I be so bold as to say “one track minded”. It’s desire is to oppose all that is God. Therefore sin has nothing to do, nothing to be unless God says something. Therefore Paul says in Romans 7:7-8 “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”, but sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.” See also the rest of Romans 7.
We see then that evil is shown to be what it really is when God makes any type of declaration. Sin receives life and strength from the commandment of God. You might say that evil sits around and waits for a call to action when God speaks what is right, true, and good, that it might be shown that itself is wrong, false, and exceedingly bad.
This is the power that Satan has to tempt and deceive mankind because he was the first sinner, and became sins chief workman in must the same way the Word of God (Jesus) does all the will of God, and contains all the power of God. Satan exists to do the will of sin, and holds all it’s power to oppose all that is God.
This is why Satan is the “second opinion” that is not needed and should not be listened to because snares and traps fly from his mouth. The devil deceived Eve in this way. You can follow the conversation between Eve and the serpent in Genesis 3, and see that sin was already working to gain a foothold in the earth by lifting itself up in opposition to the only commandment of God for us in the beginning, to abstain from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” There is also an inherent irony in the name given to that tree.
Holy shmoker, Clay! Thanks for all the time and thought you put into this comment. I’m kinda speechless! 🙂
I think we can all agree that it is not possible to describe a thing without using words, and unless words are used to make the description, how would one be able to make the distinction between what is and what is not? In as much as the word “good ” describes all that can be considered pleasant, acceptable, noteworthy, excellent, and many other such adjectives of a goodly descriptiveness. In much the same way “evil” has to describe that which is exactly opposite of that which is good,
Which brings us to God. The bible says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, He was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1-3 What does the apostle mean when he says, the Word was God? Is it not that the word “God” is the first word God used to describe Himself, and that under the description of God contains all the divine attributes that make God who He is.
Furthermore, since God described Himself audibly as God, when this description went forth from His mouth Christ the Word of God was brought forth forever proclaiming God descriptively, and if you are going to receive a Speaker, it is of necessity that you also receive the things that He says, for how can one say they receive anyone, but does not believe the things He says or the testimonies that He gives of Himself.
If there is going to be an “is” there of necessity again must be an “is not”, and the word God used to describe everything that He Himself is not is “sin” and when God audibly described Himself as God and all the divine attributes owed to that moniker, the exact opposite was also brought forth that it might be known what is God and what is separate from Him.
You want to know where evil comes from? It is birthed every time a good is born. For every right spoken, there is a wrong created. For everything named a virtue by God, there of necessity must be a folly created. For everything that light exposes, there must of necessity be that which darkness tries to cover up.
Like fraternal twins born from the same source but not divided from the same cell as identical twins, so good and evil though they are born at the same time, do not resemble one another.
Fascinating thoughts, John. Not sure if I agree with your main points, but I appreciate your contribution to the discussion. 🙂
Reblogged this on Jordan Moody and commented:
Light/Dark analogy is useful
God Created Good and bad in every individual, to know which of you is best in conduct.
If morality is relative, then evil should also be relative. If morality is absolute, then evil should be a necessary consequence of God, if not an invention.
Just my two bits.