If God is Good, Why did He Create Evil?

FAITH AND REASON

If God is Good, Why did He Create Evil?

Couldn’t he have just forgiven us?

Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash

This is a question I’ve heard quite a bit in my life, from both Christians and non-believers. The answers I’ve seen in response range from thoughtfully reasoned to carelessly tossed around.

It’s a question I’ve wrestled with myself over the years, and I have prayed about it, searched Scripture and listened to people smarter than me give their best explanations.

One thing I’ve learned is that this question isn’t simple, but rather ventures out into deep theological waters, and the way a person reasons their way through it reveals a lot about their heart towards God and how they view themselves.

It’s like when you pull on a string in a knit blanket, thinking it’ll come right out, but when you pull it, you see that it’s actually attached to other threads to form one long strand running the entire length of the blanket.

Let’s pull some threads

I went through the question, “How could a good God allow evil?” in this article, but I think it’s important to also look at why evil exists in the first place. Because if God created everything, doesn’t that mean He also created evil?

Here’s what Scripture says.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. — Genesis 1:31a

After God created everything, humans included, He saw that His creation was good. It wasn’t lacking, defective, or in need of any repair. It was beautiful and complete as is. So, where did evil enter the picture? For that, let’s mosey further along in the Old Testament.

How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! — Isaiah 14:12

The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” — Job 1:7

Satan, sometimes referred to as “the god of this age,” was one of God’s created angels, whose pride caused him to be cast out of heaven. God allows His angels to choose whether they’ll serve Him, and some chose not to.

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. — 2 Corinthians 4:4

The question still remains, though — why would God have created Satan in the first place if he knew he’d be evil?

C.S. Lewis says it well in his book, Mere Christianity:

Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

Without evil, we’d have no framework with which to experience goodness.

As I mentioned in the article dealing with God’s allowance of evil, if parents never allowed their children the chance to disobey, they’d never be able to make any choices for themselves. Sure, they’d be “perfect” children, but what kind of life would that be? Would they truly love their parents?

I think not.

God allows us, by His gracious design, the opportunity to choose whether we’ll serve Him. After the Israelites had been in the Promised Land for some time, Joshua (Moses’ successor) reminded the people of all the Lord had done for them in bringing them out of Egypt, and gave them this charge:

Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

But if serving the Lord seems undesireable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.

But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. — Joshua 24:14–16

However, just because we choose to serve the Lord doesn’t mean we won’t mess it up. Paul mentions spiritual warfare in several of his letters, and the difficulty we experience when we try to serve the Lord rather than our flesh.

The Israelites weren’t able to do it perfectly, and we aren’t either.

Enter: Jesus.

Why did he have to die?

I recently heard the argument that “God could have just forgiven us all if He wanted to. Jesus didn’t have to die.”

What fascinates me about this belief is that it completely overlooks God’s love for us. It disregards His holiness and goodness and makes the Lord out to be an angry kid on an ant hill with a magnifying glass, looking to smite us all for His pleasure.

That couldn’t be more wrong.

When we look back at the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, we read about the sacrificial system God put in place to provide payment for the people’s wrongdoings, also known as atonement for sins.

Under this system, the Israelites would bring animals to the priest so he could sacrifice them on their behalf as payment for the ways they disobeyed the Lord. The priest did this on their behalf because the people couldn’t enter into God’s presence. He is completely pure, and his radiance alone would have destroyed them if they had ventured near.

However, this system was flawed. Not because the Lord is flawed, but because we are.

Hebrews tells us:

For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said:

‘The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. — Hebrews 8:7–9

Jesus sacrificed himself for us, and in doing so became our Savior and High Priest. His payment for our sin covers us and allows us to boldly approach the throne of God our Father.

I often wonder what the Israelites would think about us having that kind of access to God. It’s something we often take for granted.

There does have to be payment for sin, but Jesus took it on for us. Without Jesus’ sacrifice, we wouldn’t be able to approach God. We wouldn’t have hope.

His death on the cross established a new covenant with us. This new covenant is one of hope and lasting relationship. Rather than a system of rules to follow and the constant fear of slipping up, we can live in complete freedom through Christ.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. — Galatians 5:1a

What a beautiful gift.

However, because we’re free in Christ, it means we’re free to sin. If God were to stop every evil act before it happens, the world would be unrecognizable, and not in a good way.

We’d have no freedom, no choices, no voice. God didn’t want that for us! He is so creative, and as His image bearers, humanity has done some incredible things because we’re creative too.

Unfortunately, because we’re broken, we’ve also used that creativity to do wicked, despicable things.

But no matter how awful things get, we can rest in the hope that God will restore all things someday. Restoration sometimes happens this side of heaven, but some things won’t be made right until Jesus returns.

Either way, we can trust that God will do what He has promised.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

God didn’t create evil. He didn’t want robots to serve him. He wanted relationship. Unfortunately some don’t want to be in relationship with Him, and we live in a lost and hurting world as a result.

Thanks for reading! My heart is truly to see others dive deeper into Scripture and reason through things biblically. These are wild times, but together we can chase clarity in a confused world!

If that sounds like something you want to do, please consider following Rooted in Reason so you’ll be notified when there’s a new post.

Press on, friends. 🫶🏻

Other posts you don’t want to miss:

[embed]Rethinking Jesus’ Teachings Should we follow them if he was just a good teacher?medium.com

[embed]Critically Thinking through The Bible Does it hold up to scrutiny?medium.com