Did God create evil?

[Les Brewer]

This is one of the most common throw backs the world (non believers) challenge christians with. If God is the creator of everything then he must be the creator of evil! If you were challenged with this question, what would your answer be?

[gator]

That is a tough question. And, I believe, it is one that has been asked for thousands of years as well. Personally, I believe that it is an oxymoron along the same lines as:

Can God build a fence so high that He can't jump over it?

or

Can God make a rock that is so heavy that He can't lift it?

These are questions that cannot be answered of course but they are designed to side track any argument explaining God's perfection.

My logic is as follows: In order for someone to create something, a small spark of that something has to be in the person to begin with. Master musicians cannot create wonderful music unless they have that tiny spark to begin with. Master woodworkers such as the Shakers couldn't do a thing without the drive and determination to set a goal in that direction.
In order for God to create evil, He must have evil contained within Himself. As God is defined as being the perfect Creator, evil cannot be contained within God.

But evil exists - and lots of it these days. So how do we explain that in relation to God? I believe that if God were just to snap His fingers and make evil disappear, that would remove our free choice in life. In effect, it would turn us into unthinking robots who only do as the master programmer desires. I truly believe that God allows evil to exist for two reasons. The first is to allow us the free choice to accept the salvation of His Savior Jesus Christ. The second concerns the end times ( whenever they will be ). God did say that He will turn all nations against Israel in the end times. How can this be done if any of the nations will accept Israel?

That's my opinion anyway.

gator

[Les Brewer]

A brilliant answer and like you said a difficult one to come through with. As we live in a challenging world, the non believers out there love to come up with these questions and we must, how ever difficult they are, must find away to answer them.....

My answer would said something like this-

Did God create evil~ Well for starters evil is not a “thing” like a rock or electricity. You cannot have a jar of evil. Evil has no existence of its own; it is really the absence of good. For example, holes are real but they only exist in something else. We call the absence of dirt a hole, but it cannot be separated from the dirt. So when 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. 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). When a bad relationship exists between two good things we call that evil, but it does not become a “thing” that required God to create it.

Perhaps a further illustration will help. If a person is asked, “Does cold exist?” the answer would likely be “yes.” However, this is incorrect. Cold does not exist. Cold is the absence of heat. Similarly, darkness does not exist; it is the absence of light. 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.

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 God out of obligation, not choice. He did not want “robots” that simply did what 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 Him.

As finite human beings, we can never fully understand an infinite God (Romans 11:33-34). Sometimes we think we understand why God is doing something, only to find out later that it was for a different purpose than we originally thought. God looks at things from a holy, eternal perspective. We look at things from a sinful, earthly, and temporal perspective. Why did God put man on earth knowing that Adam and Eve would sin and therefore bring evil, death, and suffering on all mankind? Why didn’t He just create us all and leave us in heaven where we would be perfect and without suffering? These questions cannot be adequately answered this side of eternity. What we can know is whatever 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 Him. God did not create evil, but He allowed it. If He had not allowed evil, we would be worshipping Him out of obligation, not by a choice of our own will.