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Why God Permits Evil
Chapter
3
Justifiably, the question arises: Why has God permitted man to
suffer for thousands of years, and then, only when Christ returns
and establishes his Kingdom is all changed? The question of
suffering and evil has always been an enigma to man. Philosophers of
all times and ages have pondered the question to no avail. But the
Scriptures provide a logical answer to this question which leaves
one in awe.
Webster
defines evil as “that which produces unhappiness; anything which
either directly or remotely causes suffering of any kind.”
God
desires mankind to live in peace, harmony and happiness. He knows
this will only happen as each practices the principles of
righteousness and love. Otherwise evil will result with its
consequences of suffering and unhappiness.
Here we
are faced with what can be referred to as the “dilemma of God”—the
planetary systems move in mechanical obedience; the animal creation
is driven mainly by instinct; but God desired the human race to have
a free will and to “worship him in spirit and in truth.”
(John 4:24) God could have programmed the ideal man, and utopia
would have been inevitable, but man would be no better than a robot,
nor would he be happy. Further, it is impossible to worship only
“in truth,” to obey truth and righteousness for what you can get
out of it without having the “spirit” or appreciation of
righteousness.
Out of sheer appreciation
of the principles of righteousness —worshiping in spirit—God desired
man to live in harmony with both his Creator and fellow man. God
knows it is only as man is fully motivated by the principles of
righteousness, that he can really attain happiness for himself and
be in that attitude of cheerful concern for the happiness of his
fellows.
The problem of free will
has a built-in dilemma. Man can rebel against his Creator. The Lord
was willing to bestow free will, fully cognizant that it would cost
Him dearly before man became fully responsible to this freedom. What
an awesome power! Man can stand in stiff-necked rebellion against
his Creator. He can refuse to submit to God’s authority. He can
refuse to accept God’s favor. He can choose to avert the mercy of
God and adamantly stand upon his decision against God. For by free
will, man is man, created in the image of God, and neither an animal
nor a machine.
Put yourself in God’s
place to appreciate this dilemma. A parent will tell his baby not to
touch the stove because it is hot. But, what does a baby know about
being burned? The anxious parent knows the inevitability of the baby
touching the stove before learning the consequence of heat. A wise
parent will create a controlled experience with heat—lightly and
quickly touching the child’s hand where the heat is not too severe.
And all through life parents will admonish their children, knowing
that they will only learn certain lessons the “hard way”—by
experience.
As our Father, God knew
man would not comprehend His warning about sin, disobedience and
their dire consequences, so God formulated a plan whereby man,
through his own choice, might first experience evil and then
righteousness (in God’s kingdom). This contrasting experience will
demonstrate the beauty and righteousness of God’s law and the dire
consequence of its violation as no other process could.
The recovery from sin is
called redemption in the Bible. Redemption simply means the release
from sin and death through the payment of a price. The thought is
similar to the releasing of a person from prison when a benefactor
pays the fine the prisoner couldn’t afford. This release through the
death of Jesus is often considered as an afterthought of God to
salvage some of the human race. But the depth of God’s wisdom is
shown by His foresight in devising a plan that provides for man’s
free choice and experience with evil, redemption through Christ and
ultimate eternal happiness. Thus Isaiah 46:9-10 speaks of God
knowing and declaring the end from the beginning.
Eden: Actual
History
The third chapter of
Genesis is the divinely provided history of man’s free will choice.
God instructed man that if he practiced righteousness, he would live
forever. If he disobeyed, then “dying he would die.” Death
would be a process of sorrow and suffering culminating with the
grave. Note well that death, not eternal torment, is the penalty for
sin. (Genesis 2:17; Psalms 146:4.) Like the child and heat, man did
not know what suffering and death were. He disobeyed. God is now
giving man a controlled experience with evil. We read in
Ecclesiastes 1:13 and 3:10, “This sore travail hath God given to
man to be exercised therewith.” Man’s travail with evil is for a
purpose, that he might be exercised or taught certain lessons by it.
Some will say, “Don’t
tell me you still believe in original sin! Just because Adam and Eve
were disobedient, the whole human race are sinners?” In I Timothy
2:13,14; I Corinthians 15:21,22; Romans 5:14; and John 8:44, both
Jesus and the apostles refer to the event in Eden as a real
time-space situation. What better proof can we have that the Genesis
account of Eden was actual history?
Unfortunately, the logic
of this concept has been obscured by Dark Age superstitions that
have been attached to it, such as “hell fire,” with a vindictive God
who must be placated. Modern man is rightly repelled by the
superstitions contained in some church theology, but these
superstitions are not taught in the Bible. Shorn of Dark Age
theology, there is no better explanation of man’s miserable plight
than the Scriptural teaching of original sin.
Another Look
at Sin
Not too long ago, sin was
treated lightly. It was called “ignorance,” only a growing pain of
the human race. Give man a bit more education, let him become a
little more civilized and he will evolve out of his sin, leaving
evil behind him. But now we are not so sure.
The heinous events of
World War II (with over 60 million murders—2.5% of the world
population, leveled cities, gas chambers), followed by the
continuing senseless acceleration of war, terrorism, crime and
violence, senseless shootings of civilians, old women molested,
child abductions, and other immoralities, have forced man to take a
second look at the problem of evil.
A fresh look at sin is
pointedly reflected in the words of Dr. Cyril E. M. Joad, a noted
Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of London,
and listed by the editor of The American Weekly as one of the
world’s great scientists. Joad said:
"For years my name
regularly appeared with H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and Aldous
Huxley as a derider of religion.... Then came the war, and the
existence of evil made its impact upon me as a positive and
obtrusive fact. The war opened my eyes to the impossibility of
writing off what I had better call man’s ‘sinfulness’ as a mere
by-product of circumstance. The evil in man was due, I was taught,
either to economic circumstance (because people were poor, their
habits were squalid, their tastes undeveloped, their passions
untamed) or to psychological circumstances. For were not
psychonalysts telling me that all the
regressive, aggressive, or inhibited tendencies of human nature were
due to the unfortunate psychological environment of one’s early
childhood?
“The
implications are obvious; remove the circumstances, entrust children
to psychoanalyzed nurses and teachers, and virtue would reign.
“I
have come flatly to disbelieve all this. I see now that evil is
endemic in man, and that the Christian doctrine of original sin
expresses a deep and essential insight into human nature.”
As Dr.
Joad, society is taking another look at evil. It can no longer be
considered a growing pain. It is too deadly a disease to be
explained away by environment.
Speaking collectively of the human race, the Psalmist said, “In
sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalms 51:5) The Apostle Paul
in Romans 5:12 says, “By one man sin entered the world and death
by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
Since
father Adam sinned, justice required that he die. Before he died,
Adam had children who were born in sin. They inherited Adam’s
imperfections. Thus, the whole human race is born dying. This is how
it is learning the consequences of evil. But the permission of evil
is a brief controlled experience when compared with eternity. And
what are some of the grim lessons? God permits evil to demonstrate
that man without God results in:
Science and possible extinction
through the H-bomb or pollution;
Affluence that spends
$53 billion a year in the U.S. on pets while over 7.6 million humans
starve to death;
Religious Institutions
whose assets total billions of dollars while millions live in
poverty;
Technology
and its deadly tentacles of
pollution encircling the globe;
Towering Cities that
are concrete jungles of crime and violence, filled with faceless
people experiencing life without meaning and terrible loneliness.
God permits evil to prove that man without God can only result in
man’s inhumanity to man. What is this world coming to? It is coming
to an understanding of what results when man is separated from God.
The Problem of
Communication
In our
era of permissiveness, the justice of God seems to be an offense to
the rationalist. But perhaps the problem is one of communication,
which can be shown in the simple illustration of an argument. All of
us at sometime have been engaged in an argument in which we really
never objectively listened to the other party. We were too busy
thinking of our answers to hear their logic.
The
rationalist is carrying on a debate with God. If he would only stop
and listen to what God has explained in the historic account of Eden
(Genesis 3), he would catch a glimpse of the wisdom and justice of
God which becomes man’s guarantee of an eternity of happiness.
Is God’s
Justice Severe?
Some
question the severity of God’s justice in the death penalty. Could
not some other penalty than death have been a just recompense for
Adam’s disobedience?
No
doubt some other penalty would have been just; however, God chose
this penalty because it best suited His overall plan for mankind.
Once Adam was informed that death was the penalty for disobedience,
then the penalty was fair.
A basic
fact to always remember is that God in His foreknowledge knew that
Adam would disobey, therefore, long before the creation of Adam,
God’s wisdom devised a plan of recovery and ultimate happiness for
the human race that would require the death of His only begotten
Son. Thus I Peter 1:19-20 and Ephesians 1:4-7 both speak of the
blood of Christ as foreordained before the world began for the
redemption of mankind.
The
Creator used the time-space situation in Eden to demonstrate the
dependability of His justice. It is vital that man knows that
“justice and judgment [just decisions] are the habitation of
your [God’s] throne.” (Psalms 89:14) Justice is the
foundation of the government of the universe, the basis of all God’s
dealings. Judgment is also spoken of as part of this foundation. The
Hebrew word here means “a just decision.” We can take comfort in the
realization that throughout eternity all of God’s decisions will be
just.
Man was
placed in the Edenic paradise to thoroughly enjoy the love of God.
Suppose that after Adam and Eve had lived obediently for a while,
God changed His mind and chased them out of the garden condition
into the thorns and thistles of the unfinished earth. His love would
be worthless, whimsical, because it was not based on justice. It
would be changeable.
Another
hypothetical situation: If when Adam disobeyed, God said, “Oh, I
will overlook your disobedience this time, I will not punish you as
I promised to do.” Adam might say, “Wonderful! I am surely glad God
is more loving than just.”
Wonderful? No! This would be whimsical, capricious, and arbitrary.
The Creator and Ruler of the universe could never be trusted
throughout eternity. At any time, in any place, with any order of
intelligent creatures, God might at the slightest whim change His
mind and turn on His creatures. Eden proved the unchangeableness of
God’s justice.
God
declares in Malachi 3:6, “I am Jehovah, I change not.” James
1:17 states, “The Father of lights in whom there is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
How
unchangeable is God’s justice? So unyielding that God’s court of
justice required the payment of the costliest fine ever stipulated
in a court of law. What judge has been willing to give up his own
innocent son to death in order to cancel the debt of crime of the
defendant?
Another
Problem of Communication
Our
Creator wants us to know the depths of His love, that He is the
most loving Being in the universe. How can God communicate this
to our finite minds? In human relationships words of love can be
quite meaningless. Actions speak louder than words. How did God
show His love?
With
tender Fatherly emotions of sorrow, God took the dearest treasure of
His heart, His only Begotten Son, and sent Him to earth to suffer
and die at the hands of man. At great cost to Himself, the wisdom of
God formulated a plan which reveals that He is both just (unyielding
justice) and the justifier (benefactor) of mankind. (Romans 3:25-26)
The
simple events of Eden and Calvary tell so much about our God.
Calvary is the greatest manifestation of love and mercy in the
history of the universe. The combination of Eden and Calvary stand
as a pledge throughout eternity that there is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning in God’s justice.
The world is, therefore, by experience coming to an understanding of
God’s ways.
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