Well Satan may have contributed to evil in some way, but it would appear that he was not the main reason for their being evil in our world. Man has a sinful nature and the sinful nature is ‘against’ God.
- ‘Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned’.(Romans 5:12 )‘.
- ‘Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’.(Gen 6:5).
- ‘What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.’ (Mark 7:20)
- ‘Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish’ (Gal 5:16)
- ‘Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.’ (Jam 1:13)
- ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked‘(Jer 17:9)
So if God made everything, ‘In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth’ (Gen 1), and God made the first man; does Paul’s scripture mean that God also made Evil?
‘Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned’.(Romans 5:12 )‘.
How could this be if God is Holy? (Which he is!)
Duality
Our world is full of examples of ‘Duality’, which means that there is a contrast between something; an opposite. You will be familiar with a magnet, which we know has two poles, a south pole and a north pole. Our earth has a gigantic north-south magnetic field surrounding it, which protects the planet from cosmic radiation. Now there is no such thing as a ‘south only’ magnet or a ‘north only’ magnet. By definition, for a magnet to exist, it must have two opposite poles.
Take a piece of paper. It has a front side and a backside. You cannot make a piece of paper that has no ‘back’, so by definition if you make the front side of a piece of paper then you automatically make a backside.
Consider thunder and lightning. Thunder is produced by the lightning bolt ‘ripping’ through the air around it and heating it to extremely high temperatures. The air expands rapidly, then cools rapidly thus creating a very loud powerful sound wave, which we call ‘thunder’. Thunder and lightning illustrate another example of ‘duality’ in which one thing ‘makes’ the other thing automatically.
We all know that an atom, (apart from all of the sub-particle’s :quarks, bosons, etc.), basically consists of protons and neutrons in the center, with electrons flying around the outside. If you ‘remove’ the electrons, then technically you don’t have an atom. However, scientists do call a Helium atom with its electron removed in a high-speed particle accelerator, an ‘alpha particle’. But, the ‘natural’ form of an atom is to have 2 ‘parts’, a nucleus and electrons.
So, can we similarly view good and evil as a form of duality?
Most people agree that the opposite of Evil is Good and the opposite of Good is Evil. Can we have Good without having Evil? Are they not just the extreme ends of some sort of ‘scale’? Does this mean that when God made ‘Good’ it automatically made ‘Evil’? In the same way, when God made the south pole of a magnet, he automatically made the north pole of that magnet.
Well, if this is in fact true, would it not be reasonable to assume that a kind loving God would have made some sort of provision for us, so that we could have the ‘good’ part rather than the ‘bad’ part?
‘I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;’ (Deu 30:19).
So how do we choose life?
‘Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.’ (Prov 18:21)
Is that what free will is?
The question of Free Will
The question as to whether man has free will or everything is predestinated by God has been discussed since man started questioning his existence. Technically we can say that everyone has free will, hence they can choose to do good or they can choose to do evil. The problem with this viewpoint is that, assuming we are sane and rational; we would consider the consequences of our actions.
I can exercise my free will by driving my car at high speed, on the wrong side of the road and not wear a seat belt. However, I will probably be arrested and might inflict suffering and damage by crashing into other cars or pedestrians. Society has made up ‘rules’ that allow us to live in some sort of relative safety and harmony. So many times, we use a ‘consensus model’ whereby some people’s free will is restricted for ‘the good’ of the majority.
Around 400AD a famous theologian Saint Augustine of Hippo (Hippo is in Northern Africa) wrote many papers on a wide range of Christian ideas and concepts; including free will. He was then and still is today, highly regarded because his wide range of writings helped form the basis of both Catholic and Protestant views on the Christian faith and religion. One of the criticisms during Augustine’s time was that free will didn’t exist as everything was predetermined by God. God knew what we were going to do in the future; therefore, we didn’t actually have a choice in making the decision because God had predestined it.
Augustine believed that a person had free will. If the person suddenly changed their mind and did something different, God, who can see into our futures, would note that the person suddenly changed their mind and did something different. The person used their free will. They were not ’forced’ to do it just because God could see it happening in the future.
Therefore, if we do in fact have free will and as a consequence can make good or bad choices, a question that is often asked is ‘Why did God make it that way? God can do anything, so why not make the ‘good/evil’ scale go from ‘Good..quite good.. up to amazingly good?” and leave the evil part out altogether? Well because both evil and good are dualities of each other, so making one automatically makes the other.
The Bible isn’t clear on the subject of Angels having free will; there is no mention of it. Some scholars have speculated that they have no free will but instead just perform tasks that God has set them, whilst other scholars suggest that they do have free will but choose to ‘choose good’, just Like Jesus did. So does the good and bad in life come down to choices?
Chocolate Cake Metaphor
Imagine that a parent made a rich chocolate cake with many layers of cake and cream, and covered it with rich chocolate icing. Then the parent cut the cake up into small slices and gave each child in the family a piece each. The parent explained that as the cake was ‘very rich’ they could only have a small piece once a day.
Imagine that later that day one of the children took the cake out of the refrigerator and ate a large amount of it. As a consequence, they got a stomach ache and felt sick.
Now who is to blame for the child feeling sick? The child, because they ignored the advice of their parent and were in fact disobedient? Or was the parent at fault for making the cake in the first place knowing that their children might be tempted to eat too much? Or maybe the parent should have made a very small cake so that once initially divided, there would be none left to ‘tempt’ anyone? On the surface, the parent and all of the children exercised their free will. Did one child choose ’evil’ while the other children chose ‘good’?
Augustine, when confronted with similar scenarios about choice explained that whilst we have free will, our decisions are ‘shaped’ by our environment, our life experiences and other external forces. For example, in the cake scenario above, did the children who didn’t eat any more cake do so because, in the past, they too had chosen to eat more and then gotten sick? So they knew the consequences of doing ‘wrong’. Or was the parent extremely strict and so the children knew that they would be punished for being disobedient? Perhaps the child who ate more cake and got sick was the youngest and so had a special status in the family, e.g. the only daughter in a family of boys? All these scenarios therefore make our free will susceptible to many other factors.
Who can we blame?
Many people find it hard to accept blame for the bad decisions they have made. When people believed in many Gods it was easy to blame their actions and resulting misfortunes on ‘the one god who ‘tricked’ them and ‘led them astray’. When monotheism came along people didn’t want to ‘blame God’ so the idea of a ‘fight between good and evil forces’ gained more favor and was used to explain people’s misfortunes. The ‘’Devil’ became a good scapegoat and so people could claim ‘The Devil made me do it”.
The Triumph of Good
Free will has allowed mankind to improve people’s lives for when the ‘good’ is chosen, we can see a huge number of benefits to civilization. Free will has allowed artists of every type to use their skills and imaginations to create amazing paintings, sculptures, music, buildings, landscapes, gardens, engineering wonders and technological marvels. This is just a small list.
If these people and those like them had no choice as to what they could do. i.e. no free will, then I believe none of these things would have been created.
Additionally, there are so many examples of people who help others. Simple acts like opening a door for someone, mowing an elderly neighbor’s lawn, through to rescuing people from dangerous situations, such as firemen and women, paramedics, ambulance drivers, nurses, people in the military and police officers. Many of these people plus so many others, have chosen to go into dangerous situations to help their fellow human beings.
There are a huge number of volunteers in our society who give their time, friendship, love, care and money to help ‘their fellow men and women’. A list of all the possible volunteers would be extremely long, suffice it to say that without ‘volunteers our society would most likely ‘grind to a halt’.
It could be said that they have chosen ‘good’
Choosing Evil
There are so many examples of people choosing evil over good that a list would take many books. I will give one example that struck a chord with me.
A journalist was reporting from Central Africa about a major famine that was widespread in the region. Aid to the area was impacted by a civil war between the government and ‘rebel’ forces. Additionally, many of the ‘aid’ trucks were being hijacked so aid wasn’t getting to those who desperately needed it.
The journalist further reported that both the government and the rebel forces were regularly ‘hijacking’ the aid convoys. Each side wanted to prevent aid from getting to their ‘enemies’ plus much of the aid was sold to purchase weapons and other military equipment. The famine was also exacerbated by the farmlands being abandoned, mainly because government and rebel forces had ‘forced’ some men to join ‘their’ side and fight for them. Consequently, most men left the farms and fled to neighboring countries along with their families. So, no new crops were planted.
Amid all this ‘evil’ we can still see ‘good’ operating as the aid workers were choosing to do ‘good’, often putting their own lives at risk.
It is interesting to note that if one were to ask one of the rebel or government soldiers why they had chosen ‘evil’ they might have replied ‘The devil made me do it’.
If one asked the aid workers why they chose ‘good’, I doubt any of them would have said that ‘God or Jesus made me do it’. They would likely have expressed their love and compassion for their suffering ‘brethren’.
We can say that there is a lot of evil in this world, and there is, but we can also say that there is a lot of good in this world also. Maybe God knew that eventually ‘good’ would ‘be greater than ‘evil’. Maybe that is why he sent the Holy Spirit to live in his children. When we make a choice to receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will work with us to help us grow into better humans who regularly choose ‘good’ over ‘evil’.
‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness’. (Gal 5:22)
Leave a Reply