Did God Create Evil?

It has been suggested that God created Evil.  A seemingly heretical idea, but perhaps useful to explore.

1.

John 1:3

New International Version (NIV)

³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

This suggests that if Evil was made, God made it.

2.

We also can note that God created the Devil, that is, Lucifer.  An omniscient and omnipotent god would of course know what this Devil would eventually do.  Is the “parent” responsible for the broken plate glass window of the child’s baseball playing?  Perhaps a weak analogy, but a suggestion of one reason why it might be said God created evil.

3.

In the Garden of Eden, the snake (the devil), also a creation of God, manipulates Eve into eating the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The snake God made; the snake does evil.  By syllogism is not the evil made by God?

4.

Answer to Job:

Carl Jung introduced this idea of God creating Evil in his book of the above name.

As we know, the snake, the Devil is allowed to treat Job in a very bad way.  The Accuser, as Lucifer was called then, wants to prove God wrong that Job is purely god-fearing and not due to good fortune.

God, again being omniscient and omnipotent, knows what is going to happen.  Who then is God really trying to demonstrate Job’s righteousness to?  God doesn’t need to see it.  Is He trying to impress Lucifer?  What “insecurity” would God be demonstrating that He concerns Himself with what an angel thinks of Him?  But, God allows Lucifer to rake Job very seriously over the coals.

Job loses his family, his riches, his health.  God then rails against Job and his friends on the theme of who are they to second guess God, and who of them can do any of the incredible works God has done.  God then restores Job.

However, God considers what he allowed to happen to Job and decides that the human condition, the sinning state in which man lives, is partly His responsibility.  God made us the creatures that were susceptible to the snake’s wiles in the Garden of Eden and the resultant life outside of Eden traces to what He made us to be.  God made the very snake that tempted Eve.

Genesis 1:31

New International Version (NIV)
³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

God was initially very happy with what He had made, but by the time of Noah He had changed his mind.  The God who would eventually preach “love your enemy” was antithetically harsh in treating those humans who failed His standards.  And He drowned the whole world except for Noah.

But, God is a complicated person, to say the least, and this act he decided He wouldn’t do again, and he so promised.

Genesis 9:11-13

New International Version (NIV)

¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

One could say that against Job and against all the world inhabitants except Noah quite a bit of evil was done.  Who did it?  Of course, God did.  Not simply did he allow it, as is usually said about God’s position about evil in the world, but He did it—especially in the case of The Flood.  Did man deserve it?  Again, the Jungian idea is that Man was God’s creation; and Man would do what he was given the character, by God, to do.

5.

By the time of the New Testament era, God has determined it is time to send Jesus down to earth as a man to pay for mankind’s sins.  God still has a dark side, in the sense that he wants punishment for misbehaving, for sinning.  But, God also has a light side, as evidenced by Jesus Christ, the second person of the same god.  Jesus who tells people to turn the other cheek, and to forgive not just seven times, but seven times seventy times, is different from God, who notwithstanding that exhortation, wants a sacrifice for the sins of man.  And it is Jesus who will pay it.

This doesn’t change this fact of scripture:

John 3:16

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

But, this idea of God’s sacrifice of Jesus makes more sense to me if God created evil.  God wants payment for all of man’s sinning; but He knows that doing evil and succumbing to evil is partly a facet of man as he made him.  So, though still requiring payment, he gives man a pass from another Flood or other such destruction, and puts Jesus Christ in man’s place.

This makes more sense to me than the idea that man’s sins on earth God had nothing at all to do with occurring, but he put his own Son in our place of punishment anyway.

The fire and brimstone preachers LOVE the idea that God had nothing to do with man’s sinning situation.  They paint quite extremely that we are all just a bunch of scum and we should be thankful that God chose to give us an out through Jesus Christ—which we don’t deserve at all!  This seems contradictory to the fact that God did like us at one time: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

Of course, God can do what he wants.  The Jungian idea is quite noble that He acknowledged some role in how man is a sinner; and had Jesus take full punishment.  And it is even nobler the traditional idea that He had Jesus take full punishment when man’s sinfulness is purely his own and in no way traces to God’s recipe of man.

6.

Jesus himself says when asked how we should pray, that we should address God in the following way:

Matthew 6:13

New International Version (NIV)
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,

This is a direct prayer to God.  Jesus knows his Father.  And Jesus is implying that God is a complicated person who has in the past and may well still lead us human beings into temptation.  Jesus tells us to pray to God to please don’t, “but deliver us from evil.”

7.

For what it’s worth, let us remember again Lucifer, the Devil, that Snake in the Garden of Eden.  He is a doer of evil.  God knows it; God knew it.  God knew he would be.  But, did you notice that God never eliminated Lucifer?  He let him live all through the Old Testament, the New Testament, all the way into Revelation’s prognosis and even after the first rapture and the 1,000 years of peace, God still lets Lucifer live.  He doesn’t consign him to eternal Hell until after the last fight with the Devil and his minions; and even then, God does not destroy Lucifer.

An omnipotent God could have destroyed the Devil/Evil, but God didn’t.  God is a complicated person.  How can we with our tiny minds even comprehend a mite of what He is doing?  But, it seems that God has a purpose for evil lest why would he keep it around?  Perhaps God created evil for us to overcome it–for us, by His grace, which He said is enough for us, to overcome evil and become perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect.

If God keeps evil around, that He has a purpose for it, is it too much of a stretch that He created it?

Conclusion:

In any case, this heretical idea that God created evil probably doesn’t really amount to much, except make it a little easier to understand why God would give his only begotten Son to us.  But the key thing doesn’t change at all.  Our salvation depends on only one thing, and that’s amazing:

John 6:28-29

New International Version (NIV)

²⁸ Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

²⁹ Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Of course, there are aspects that then build up from there, works, and loving thy neighbor and enemies etc. etc.  But there you have it—the only requirement.

Another Proof of God

The question  as to whether God exists has been approached ad nauseum, however, as I have not read this particular demonstration, I will provide it.  I think it is really quite sound, though it will take a leap of understanding on the reader’s part as it is somewhat ineffable.  I hope I can facilitate that leap.

Simply enough, take note of your own looking out of your very own eyes.  This is an amazing experience when one considers it.  In the whole history of mankind and the billions of people living just today, you looking through a set of eyes has occurred only this instant.  And, it is critical that you, the you that exists and is self-conscious of looking out these eyes, is doing so.

In a way, if you did not exist, had never been born, then this proof would not exist.  In a way for you, God would then not exist.  If you don’t exist, despite the existence of billions of people today and through time, then God does not exist–for you– and for that matter in general.

But, in opposition to this, you do exist and you–the unique conscious, self-conscious you–born of a glob of organic protoplasm, see out of these particular and no other set of eyes.  You were not Ceasar or Einstein or the next person you meet.  You were and are this particular person, with this consciousness and self-consciousness, looking out of these particular eyes.

Billions of people ever existing before or today could exist without your consciousness of it ever occurring, but this is not a general exercise as to whether conscious people ever existed.  This is a focus on your specific conscious existing–out of nothing–and looking out onto a world of conscious people–of which you would not comprehend if it weren’t for you out of nothing having the self-consciousness out of that set of eyes to do so.

It is God, a conscious all powerful being, who must be behind your very ability to do so.

Faith versus Reason

At the beginning of the 21st century, the belief that reason has superseded faith seems so prominent that for many it now seems a foregone conclusion–not worth mentioning.  To be clear, by faith I mean religion, spirituality, Judeo-Christian values etc.  By reason I mean science, math, technology etc.  However, I know that reason and faith are not mutually exclusive, and they do not have to beat one another in a zero sum game.  In fact, attempting to operate by either one to the exclusion of the other leads to disaster.

The symbiosis of faith and reason has been described for many years, including the work of  St. Thomas Aquinas who pointed out the consistency of Eternal (Faith) Law and Natural (Reason) Law over 700 years ago (Treatise on Law).  Works such as this are considered “classic” because they have lasting significance or worth.  There are works before and since that show the importance of a thoughtful integration of faith and reason, including The Folks At Home by Margaret Halsey.  My  contemporary effort to do the same is explained at least in part by a quotation from the end of chapter one of her book:

But my guiding star is a not uncheerful line from the Talmud–”It is not upon thee to finish the work; neither art thou free to abstain from it.”