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Author
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Topic: Does God create the evil
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Brother Paul
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Member # 7959
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posted
My dear sister, realizing there is no direct or complete explanation in the Scriptures, some have speculated. It is mostly a consensus that ha'Satan loved YHVH so much and had set it in His heart to only serve Him that when it was revealed that the angels (including him) should serve man and minister unto those who would be saved and that these would be exalted to a place where they would take part in ruling and reigning and even judging angels, he refused. At first it was not from disobedience but absulte love and devotion to YHVH alone but then when refusing to obey (in his free will) this was in fact ultimately showing his preference to be his own lord (his taking the place of God in his life)
Now not the word of God but an interesting thought...
Paul
Posts: 235 | From: Cambridge, MA | Registered: Dec 2009
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Carol Swenson
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Member # 6929
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posted
Bless you dear Brother Paul! I thank the Lord that in His wisdom He gave us teachers as gifts, (Ephesians 4:11), and He inspired so many of His people to write. I just share what I read. ![[type]](graemlins/type.gif)
What I wonder, and have never found an answer to, is why Lucifer went bad. He was created to be wise and beautiful and perfect. He lived with God Who is GOOD. There was no evil anywhere. There was no one to tempt him or deceive him. But Lucifer became proud and etc. Why?
Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007
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Brother Paul
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Member # 7959
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posted
I stand corrected, pridefilled rebellious disobedience to God is evil. But that is because we remove Him from the equation and act as our own god in place of the real one (which of course we can never really replace...it is a delusion of the propagator of this thinking...ha'Satan...) It was he who introduced sin, sickness, and death, therefore evil has a source and has effect therefore it is...I was off base here, no doubt. Thanks you Lord for my sister Carol, I feel sharper already!
Paul
Posts: 235 | From: Cambridge, MA | Registered: Dec 2009
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Carol Swenson
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Member # 6929
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posted
Great topic Brother Paul! ![[thumbsup2]](graemlins/thumbsup2.gif)
I have a question about this idea though. Lucifer, then Eve then Adam, did not just not obey God. They actively disobeyed Him. So seen this way, evil is not just a lack of good, but it is an active force. In fact, Satan is not just the absence of God, but he is a real being who is active in doing evil. Did Christ go to the cross because of an absence of God? Did He gain victory over absence?
quote:
So it is not that He created "evil", because evil is not a thing in and of itself, it is simply the absence of all good (ultimately Him), just as cold does not really exist save as the absence of all heat, and the gross darkness as the absence of light. Do you understand? I hope so.
Anyway, here's some more for your great topic.
Is God the Author of Evil?
(Isaiah 45:7)
The assertion in this passage is so bold that Marcion, an early Christian heretic, used this text to prove that the God of the Old Testament was a different being from the God of the New. Thus the nature of this hard saying is simply this: Is God the author of evil?
Numerous texts flatly declare that God is not, and could not be, the author of evil. For example, Deuteronomy 32:4 declares that “his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. [He is] a faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” Similarly, Psalm 5:4 notes, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil.” If we read the Bible in its total canonical setting, it would seem that God is without evil or any pretense of evil.
The text in question refers to physical evil. As does Lamentations 3:38, it contrasts prosperity and adversity. Thus the good is physical goodness and happiness, while the evil is physical distress, misfortune, calamity and natural evil, such as storms, earthquakes and other disasters.
Even though much of the physical evil often comes through the hand of wicked men and women, ultimately God permits it. Thus, according to the Hebrew way of speaking, which ignores secondary causation in a way Western thought would never do, whatever God permits may be directly attributed to him, often without noting that secondary and sinful parties were the immediate causes of the disaster.
The evil spoken of in this text and similar passages (such as Jer 18:11; Lam 3:38 and Amos 3:6) refers to natural evil and not moral evil. Natural evil is seen in a volcanic eruption, plague, earthquake and destructive fire. It is God who must allow (and that is the proper term) these calamities to come. But, one could ask, isn’t a God who allows natural disasters thereby morally evil?
To pose the question in this manner is to ask for the origins of evil. Christianity has more than answered the problem of the presence of evil (for that is the whole message of the cross) and the problem of the outcome of evil (for Christ’s resurrection demonstrates that God can beat out even the last enemy and greatest evil, death itself). But Christianity’s most difficult question is the origin of evil. Why did God ever allow “that stuff” in the first place?
Augustine taught that evil is not a substance. It is, as it were, a byproduct of our freedom, and especially of our sin. The effects of that sin did not fall solely on the world of humans. Its debilitating effects hit the whole natural world as well. Nevertheless, it is not as if God can do nothing or that he is just as surprised as we are by natural evil. Any disaster must fall within the sovereign will of God, even though God is not the sponsor or author of that evil. When we attempt to harmonize these statements we begin to invade the realms of divine mystery.
What we can be sure of, however, is the fact that God is never, ever, the originator and author of evil. It would be contrary to his whole nature and being as consistently revealed in Scripture.
(Hard Sayings of the Bible)
Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007
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Brother Paul
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Isaiah 45:7 (King James) says, I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Now all the subsequent translations follow suit fairly closely, but what is meant by this. Perhaps a more careful exegesis will allow us to extrapolate more accurately.
When a volcano erupts and kills 1,000 people or so, and everyone is running about and there is much destruction, we call it chaos and judge this event as something evil but is it really? Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and the like are simply something natural that God made possible in the world so that the planet would function in such a way as to optimize the best conditions fit for life to benefit the maximum number of persons. The confusing qurestion I always arrive at is "why do people always go and rebuild cities at the feet of volcanoes? Why do we build huge mega-cities along fault lines?" Sometimes I cannot figure that one out. Anyway, the point is that what we may call evil, God might call good, because if there were no volcanoes or plate shifts relieving the building presdsures deep within the earth, the whole planet could explode, and then we all would be dead. Sometimes He sees a much bigger and far reaching purpose or consequences that was taken into account of what He allows to occur. Even the closest of us to Him are still but human. His ways are indeed higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts.
So that being said, let us take a brief look at the context of Isaiah 45:7, and then try to clarify a couple of the words that are used. Chapter 45 of Isaiah is speaking about the saving and restoration of both Judah and Israel. He wants Judah to know that despite what they are about to endure He is with them, cleaning out the dross as a silversmith purifies his product. A silversmith puts the product through the fire but he watches most carefully. At the exact moment when he can see his image in the reflection, the work is finished. So it shall be for the idolatrous people of the Southern Kingdom, just as it was at this time for the people of the Kingdom of Israel from the north (also referred to as Ephraim), that He has warned over and over and who has killed His many messengers. Jeremiah 25 tells us more close to the event about the coming 70 year captivity under Babylonian rule which to them will seem disasterous and send them frantically into panic, chaos, and hopefully into God fearing remorse.
The children of the Kingdom of Judah, the community of the Temple of God, will have to pay one year for each of the 70 Sabbath years they ignored during the 490 years of idolatrous Kings. Isaiah here alludes to this captivity and then tells us that when the time is right, the Lord would raise up Cyrus the Persian (even naming him 200 years before he was born) to rescue them and send them back to the land. Verses 7-9 is actually describing the fact that the Lord is going to engineer all these circumstances from inviting Nebuchednezzar to his defeat under Cyrus and all this shall be for His purpose (Isaiah 45:13) in bringing them back.
Now for the words that are used in this verse.
The the KJV uses the word "create", but this is not actually correct. To create is the Hebrew word "bara" (to call forth from nothingness), and the word interpreted create here in this passage is the word "yatzar" or "to make" (to form or give form to...see Genesis 2 as opposed to Genesis 1), and so what it is saying is that the Lord, from the circumstances and according to the personalities of these people and these two men (Nebi and Cyrus), will bring His final intent to pass. He actually is working all things together for the good of those who love Him, and He continually had warned them that the wages due for sin is death, so they should in no wise be surprized. For example, if you jump off a skyscrapper without a net, violating the immutable law of gravity, will you surely plummet downward into sidewalk splat? Sin, or transgression of the law, is like the consequence of transgressing gravity. WE have violated immutable laws as permenantly fixed as the law of gravity. You know you should not do it, and lovingly someone has surely warned you "Thou shalt not jump off the skyscrapper" but in our self will, we will not have anyone telling us what to do, and so we jump anyhoo!
So the children of Irsrael and now Judah, had transgressed the law (just as immutable as gravity) and their demise was inevitable. Nebi was going crazy to take over the world anyway. Only this time the Lord was not going to intervene to protect them as He had done earlier with Sennacherib. In fact He encourages Nebi to conquer them, using those circumstances and conditions which were already present.
Next, the word for "evil" here, is actually not speaking of moral or spiritual evil (and most translations bear this out...especially the Masoretic), it is speaking of sorrow and disaster as opposed to shalom or peaceful wellbeing. Some translators rightly interpret this as calamity. These rebellious idolatrous children would simply recieve the natural consequence of their willful actions in violation of God's immutable laws. See the warning of love detailed as far back as Deuteronomy 28. So God is not saying here that He is the originator of evil, He is merely causing the calamity by allowing the disaster that is about to come upon them anyway and by simply not doing anything to stop it. He will not look upon them, after all this time (many centuries of undeserved grace), with mercy and grace. In Jeremiah, He tells the sad and depressed prophet to not even pray for this people because He will not listen. He has given them grace on top of grace over and over and they mocked all His effort to bless, and took all the glory to themselves and lived a life of spiritual adultery and sensual debauchery. These types of events witness "the arm of the Lord" we do not want to experience. Our God is an awe-invoking God, Holy and full of love, willing to forgive and restore, but He is also just, and when a person or country insists on going its own way even after His many chances, eventually He has to let them go their own way. He lifts His protective hand for but a moment. For a time He removes the hedge. He lets them go through the fires of adversity they have chosen for themselves, but in the end this will cause them to return unto Him and seek Him, and then, He will save them.
So it is not that He created "evil", because evil is not a thing in and of itself, it is simply the absence of all good (ultimately Him), just as cold does not really exist save as the absence of all heat, and the gross darkness as the absence of light. Do you understand? I hope so.
Now let me warn you beloved to be careful reading the foolishness of the Skeptics, most of their hogwash are logic games, strawmen arguments, immoral moral judgments, and taking scriptures from totally different books written 100's of years apart and inappropriately comparing them, and so on. I know you. You are the children of faith by grace. Beware of the common calamities that are about to fall, you are in His hand. Believe God to the saving of your household...nothing else matters in life. Christ died for your sins....at one time or other you all as I have jumped off the skyscrapper and the Lord is offering the only net that can save...Christ Jesus. It is His free gift of love (John 3:16; Romans 6:23; Acts 2:38). We need to share it with as many as we can before it is too late for them. Behold the day of the Lord is luking in the close shadow and soon will come to light. The shalom of the Lord be with you all. Shalom!
Posts: 235 | From: Cambridge, MA | Registered: Dec 2009
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