So Where the Hell did Evil Come From?
Genesis 1:31 says that the original creation was “very good”. This means, that there was:
Yet, all we need to do is look around, and see for ourselves, that the World is up to its teeth in sin, evil, pain and death. How could this be? What could have happened to turn the paradise of Eden into this cesspool of remorse and regret, where even so many Christians wallow in self-loathing and worse? Did God go wrong somewhere along the way? What kind of God is this?
Scripture is very clear about all of this. God gave man and woman the opportunity to trust and obey Him, but they decided that God was not sufficient enough for them, and so they sided with the devil, whom, at least at that time of testing, they perceived to be far superior to their own Creator.
Two things immediately come to my mind…
First of all, God never intended to create automatons that would sing His praises from a mindless symphony of empty hero worshippers. He created Man to have the capacity of free choice and with the capacity to love freely. In other words, God did not want to create a doll, for instance, that when He pulled its string was only capable of relying, “I love you… I love you… I love you….” What’s that value in this, especially when God was looking for voluntary love in His creation?
Love cannot be programmed – it must be freely expressed! God wanted Adam – the MAN created in His own image – to have the capacity of expressing love to God through the free expression of it. This is why God had to give Adam a free will. Forced love is rape, and God is not a rapist – God will do nothing to force or coerce a decision from His creation. However, a FREE choice, leaves the possibility of a WRONG choice, doesn’t it?
Like satan, like his demons, like the woman that he almost effortlessly persuaded to disobey God, we must conclude that the potential of evil, when bestowed upon humans, exposes the freedom of choice – but the actual origin of evil came as a result of a MAN who directed his will away from God and toward his own sinful desires. God made evil possible, but it was man who made evil ACTUAL.
Ever since Adam and Eve made evil actual in that Garden, a sin nature has passed onto every human ever born from them (take a look at Romans 5:12 and First Corinthians 15:22).
Living in a fallen world, where tornadoes, tsunami’s, earthquakes, floods, etc. are normal, all of this, together with all of our other miseries, are rooted in our wrong use of free choice. If only our original parents had not yielded to the dragon’s fantasies dripping like honey from that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that terrible day in the Garden, then we would not today be subject to the disasters of this fallen world, which include such pain, the wasting away of our youth, and ultimately our death.
The Garden of Eden had no natural disasters or death until after the sin of Adam and the woman (see Genesis 1-3). There will be no natural disasters or death in the new Heaven and earth when our Lord finally puts an end to evil once and for all (Revelations 21:4). Though we live with great disappointment in others (hopefully, mostly in ourselves), along with growing old and becoming insignificant, to the point of being forgotten in the grave, we still have our inheritance as heirs in the Kingdom of God. We are short-lived as travelers on this planet, but we do not make our home here, do we? We must try to live in a way that will make our resettlement from this life into the next almost flawless. If this is not the case, well then, we still have time on our side to meet such a worthwhile objective, don’t we J
Be Blessed,
Brett (for Camp Shiloh)