The bombers at the Boston Marathon got me thinking about something I read recently about evil and the universality of sin. It is indisputable that all are sinners and it has been estimated that some 40 billion human beings have lived (or are living) on this earth since God created Adam, the first human. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that perhaps one third of these 40 billion people lost their lives at the hand of another human being. So then, hundreds of millions of living flesh and blood creatures (people) have been stabbed, shot, stoned, strangled, gassed, bombed, burned, buried alive, hung, drowned and yes, blown up by other living flesh and blood creatures. (people) Each person has been given a sin-gauge at birth which is called a conscience. Unfortunately some gauges only have faulty operation and the voice of conscience is defiled. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) The exceeding wickedness of sin is unfathomable. We can expect more to continue because the world has rejected the preventive actions of the Word of God, the Son of God and the Spirit of God. Gird your loin’s people for the battle is raging on.
So why has God allowed sin and evil? Couldn’t he have stopped it?
Simply put it is because God created man with a free will. When he created Adam and then Eve he created them with a high reasoning capacity and the ability to make choices. It was obviously the choice of God not to create humans as robotic and controlled. He wanted to give the humans he created in his own image some real freedom. He offered Adam and Eve a multitude of choices among lots of perfect and good things but he also offered them the choice of an evil thing.
God did not create sin or evil, however he did create the potential for sin by creating the tree of good and evil. He declared that tree off limits and it was the choice of Adam to go against his creator that has allowed sin to permeate the world. The day that Adam made that choice he made it for all of mankind. Sin was immediately imputed to the human race, you and I and all the rest of humanity. God had the ability to create a world where there was no sin and no human suffering. He chose not to restrict our freedom. God created both angels and men as intelligent creatures possessing moral natures that could determine and choose between right and wrong. What if God had stopped Lucifer (Satan), and Adam one second before they sinned. If that happened He would have, in effect, have violated their moral natures and reduce them to mere walking robots. That is how I see it. There is another suggestion some scholars present.
Actually he did create everything perfect and without evil. It says in the beginning of Genesis that all of His creation was good. In verse 6 it says that “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” Then something terrible happened. An extremely damaging thing happened to all of creation at that first sin. The Bible says in Romans 8:22 that “… all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Adam and eve wanted space and control and they got it. Along with it came the sin, death and evil that permeated the world.
The question many ask is, “why did God let anything like that happen?” After all, He is God!
God could have prevented sin but he chose not to. He did it for the same reason that we all move ahead to have children. He did it out of love. It was likely a desire to have a relationship with a being created in His image, much like we want to have a relationship with our children in our own image. (But now, who can know the mind of God? No one can.) God made the choice to bring Adam and Eve into the world with the risk of choice and we choose to bring children in the world when they have choice. And our children often make choices that pain our hearts in unimaginable ways. Love is always the most costly of any actions that anyone can take.
God created the potential for sin because it was the only way he could create humans with the potential to love and the potential to produce goodness. He had to offer the bad with the good. Or the good with the bad, if you will. But it was not God that made sin a reality. It was man. Satan introduced sin into the universe but it was man that introduced it to our world.
There is one other suggestion that some scholars give for the allowance of sin. That God allowed man to sin so that he might display His awesome grace. Before Adam was created God was already exhibiting his omnipresence (in being everywhere at once), his omnipotence (in setting the galaxies into motion), and his omniscience (in creating angels). However, there was one attribute that was closer to his heart than any other. It was his grace. Where there is no sin there is no need of grace. So that is why some think it was allowed. As Paul wrote, “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20b).
I don’t think I can accept that one because of the price. My goodness… take a look what God had to do to correct the situation. He had to give His only begotten son to pay the price and to free us from eternal punishment due to what was started by Adam. Love is always the most costly of any actions that anyone can take.
Have a Godly day,
“The Tubthumper”