S. Michael Houdmann Supporter Got Questions Ministries

God created the universe in six days, but, originally, the universe had no sin-everything He made was "very good" (Genesis 1:31). Sin entered the cosmos due to an act of rebellion against God, not ...

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August 30 2013 • 0 responses • Remove Vote • Share • Report

Michael Owens Supporter

At first it might seem that if God created all things, then evil must have been created by God. However, evil is not a “thing” like a rock or electricity. You cannot have a jar of evil. Evil has no existence of its own; it is really the absence of good. For example, holes are real but they only exist in something else. We call the absence of dirt a hole, but it cannot be separated from the dirt. So when God created, it is true that all He created was good. One of the good things God made was creatures who had the freedom to choose good. In order to have a real choice, God had to allow there to be something besides good to choose. So, God allowed these free angels and humans to choose good or reject good (evil). When a bad relationship exists between two good things we call that evil, but it does not become a “thing” that required God to create it.

Perhaps a further illustration will help. If a person is asked, “Does cold exist?” the answer would likely be “yes.” However, this is incorrect. Cold does not exist. Cold is the absence of heat. Similarly, darkness does not exist; it is the absence of light. Evil is the absence of good, or better, evil is the absence of God. God did not have to create evil, but rather only allow for the absence of good.

God did not create evil, but He does allow evil. If God had not allowed for the possibility of evil, both mankind and angels would be serving God out of obligation, not choice. He did not want “robots” that simply did what He wanted them to do because of their “programming.” God allowed for the possibility of evil so that we could genuinely have a free will and choose whether or not we wanted to serve Him.

As finite human beings, we can never fully understand an infinite God (Romans 11:33-34). Sometimes we think we understand why God is doing something, only to find out later that it was for a different purpose than we originally thought. God looks at things from a holy, eternal perspective. We look at things from a sinful, earthly, and temporal perspective.

December 21 2013 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report

Larry Truelove Supporter

One might as well ask why a builder created the cracks in a house's foundation or the fadedness in the yellowed paint. If the builder built the house perfectly and deficiencies appeared later, they were not created by the builder but by something else.

God did not create sin.

December 21 2013 • 1 response • Vote Up • Share • Report