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[Poll]
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Evil, created by God?
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| God created evil. |
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| God didn't create evil. |
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Total Votes : 40
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(last vote on : 11/20/2008 1:10:23 AM)
(Poll will run till: -- )
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Evil, created by God? - 10/2/2008 9:45:59 PM
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raivyne
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As an offshoot from the "a baby or infant died ,does he will save or not ?" thread in the salvation forum.
What do you think? Did God create evil or did evil originate from another source?
I would have offered more options... but He either created it or He didn't. You may place your caveats in your post. If you've kept up on the original thread you know where I stand (God is the creator of all things, even evil).
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/2/2008 9:52:54 PM
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SovereignIsHe
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To start the ball rolling....
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
Proverbs 16:4 The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?
These are three verses that get tossed around during this debate... And the following to some degree...
Jeremiah 42:6 Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom we send thee; that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.
_____________________________
John
Proverbs 29:12 If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked.
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/3/2008 8:51:12 AM
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SophiesLadder
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I think those verses from Isaiah 45:7 and Proverbs 16:4 speak for themselves. God is the source of all things. I'm wondering if underlying the the question, "Evil, created by God?", is "Evil, is God responsible?" I do not equate creation with responsibility because God also creates free will and choice.
My example would be this. I am the father of my son. My son is 20 years old. Let's say he's driving home, chooses to talk on his cell phone and is distracted, isn't paying attention, runs a red light and causes an accident. In the sense that, my son would not exist if I had not generated him, I have brought this action about. But it was his choices that caused the accident. He is responsible.
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/3/2008 9:32:48 AM
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mvic
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We can all quote verses from the Bible to prove our point. But what are we really trying to say here?
God deliberately created good and evil and then sat back to see who will win?
And eventually He decided to send Jesus to ensure that evil is defeated?
Is this really what we're saying?
I like to believe that having created man God gave him a precious gift. The right to choose good or bad. Without any pressure at all on His (God's) part as to how this choice is made. Some call it free will.
Man chose evil and the rest is history as they say.
This is not meant to be flippant or to denigrate any other comments made. It's just my point of view.
Of course, we could debate whether, having created the angels who then challenged Him and became devils it then follows, logically, that He created the devils and hence He created evil.
But where would that lead us and what would it really prove?
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/3/2008 9:57:17 AM
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MrFribbles
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It's a toughy. God does sometimes use evil men to accomplish His purposes - see: Nation of Assyria conquering Northern Israel, and later Babylon conquering Judah. Evil happened there, and God directed it, as a form of punishment. God was directly responsible.
But does that make the punishment evil? Hitting a child would normally be evil, but if it is a parent performing corrective discipline, out of love, is it still evil? Hm... Good question to bring up. : )
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- Aaron Weiss
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/3/2008 1:35:04 PM
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raivyne
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SophiesLadder
I think those verses from Isaiah 45:7 and Proverbs 16:4 speak for themselves. God is the source of all things. I'm wondering if underlying the the question, "Evil, created by God?", is "Evil, is God responsible?" I do not equate creation with responsibility because God also creates free will and choice.
My example would be this. I am the father of my son. My son is 20 years old. Let's say he's driving home, chooses to talk on his cell phone and is distracted, isn't paying attention, runs a red light and causes an accident. In the sense that, my son would not exist if I had not generated him, I have brought this action about. But it was his choices that caused the accident. He is responsible.
Good points. I especially like:
quote:
I do not equate creation with responsibility because God also creates free will and choice.
_____________________________
God grades on the cross – not on a curve
Good – God = 0
In the dark? Follow the Son!
The Power of a Simple Gift! samaritanspurse.org
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/3/2008 9:27:04 PM
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bob97
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Isaiah 46:9 - 10 (KJV) 9Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 10Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
Of course God created evil…He undoubtedly knew at the moment of creation that evil would evolve. Why can only be a point of speculation in this life.
Bob
_____________________________
The LORD clears the road for me!
The LORD is my high ridge, my stronghold, my deliverer!
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 12:32:17 AM
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bob97
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At the beginning of creation evil did not exist, it was a prefect world. God gave man (Adam) dominion over this prefect creation.
He also gave man the choice to have this dominion under God's guidance and principles or what we might call good, righteousness, wholeness (holiness) or to do so without God's guidance or what we might call rebelliousness, selfishness Godlessness.
Man chose to exercise his authority without God and man was lost to sin…evil came into the world. Man brought evil into this world but at the authority of God.
Man became a prisoner in this world of sin and did not have the ability to return to God…man was dead in sin.
Did God know that man would turn to sin? Of course He did but he allowed it to occur for the very reason that God could extend His grace to man kind and as a result display His glory of redemption.
Bob
_____________________________
The LORD clears the road for me!
The LORD is my high ridge, my stronghold, my deliverer!
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 9:08:07 AM
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URForgiven
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quote:
ORIGINAL: bob97
At the beginning of creation evil did not exist, it was a prefect world. God gave man (Adam) dominion over this prefect creation.
He also gave man the choice to have this dominion under God's guidance and principles or what we might call good, righteousness, wholeness (holiness) or to do so without God's guidance or what we might call rebelliousness, selfishness Godlessness.
Man chose to exercise his authority without God and man was lost to sin…evil came into the world. Man brought evil into this world but at the authority of God.
Man became a prisoner in this world of sin and did not have the ability to return to God…man was dead in sin.
Did God know that man would turn to sin? Of course He did but he allowed it to occur for the very reason that God could extend His grace to man kind and as a result display His glory of redemption.
Bob
While I almost agree with this statement, I totally disagree with your previous statement. As you said here, everything that God created was good. Moral and physical freedom is necessary for a love relationship to exist. Is the allowance for the possibility of evil the same as creating evil?
I disagree that man brought evil into the world, lets not forget that pesky serpent.
Peace
_____________________________
"Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit,
are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" Galatians 3:3
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 10:50:08 AM
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bob97
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Hi UR…
You’re saying that when God created man, God didn’t understand that man would turn to sin?
Bob
_____________________________
The LORD clears the road for me!
The LORD is my high ridge, my stronghold, my deliverer!
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 11:25:08 AM
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URForgiven
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quote:
ORIGINAL: bob97
Hi UR…
You’re saying that when God created man, God didn’t understand that man would turn to sin?
Bob
No, I am not saying that.
_____________________________
"Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit,
are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" Galatians 3:3
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 1:36:35 PM
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GHitch
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SovereignIsHe
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
Proverbs 16:4 The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?
These are three verses that get tossed around during this debate... And the following to some degree...
Jeremiah 42:6 Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom we send thee; that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.
Let's set the record straight : God did not and cannot create evil in the moral sense of wrong, wickedness and sin.
If God creates evil in the sense of sin or wrong action, then he is responsible for it.
The word in the quoted texts is used in many ways in Hebrew. It is like the English word 'bad'. 'Bad' can mean many things: as in 'something bad happened to him', 'he is a bad man', 'bad things happen to good people sometimes', 'he played the song very badly'...
Barnes says, on the Isaiah verse, quote:
The parallelism here shows that this is not to be understood in the sense of all evil, but of that which is the opposite of peace and prosperity. That is, God directs judgments, disappointments, trials, and calamities; he has power to suffer the mad passions of people to rage, and to afflict nations with war; he presides over adverse as well as prosperous events. The passage does not prove that God is the author of moral evil, or sin, and such a sentiment is abhorrent to the general strain of the Bible, and to all just views of the character of a holy God.
The Hebrew word is 'ra' or raah and signifies a whole suite of things as in Brown-Driver-Briggs :
quote:
bad, disagreeable, malignant
1b) bad, unpleasant, evil (giving pain, unhappiness, misery)
1c) evil, displeasing
1d) bad (of its kind - land, water, etc)
1e) bad (of value)
1f) worse than, worst (comparison)
1g) sad, unhappy
1h) evil (hurtful)
1i) bad, unkind (vicious in disposition)
1j) bad, evil, wicked (ethically)
1j1) in general, of persons, of thoughts
1j2) deeds, actions
2) evil, distress, misery, injury, calamity (noun masculine)
2a) evil, distress, adversity
2b) evil, injury, wrong
2c) evil (ethical)
3) evil, misery, distress, injury (noun feminine)
3a) evil, misery, distress
3b) evil, injury, wrong
3c) evil (ethical) or Strong :
quote:
From H7489; bad or (as noun) evil (naturally or morally). This includes the second (feminine) form; as adjective or noun: - adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, + displease (-ure), distress, evil ([-favouredness], man, thing), + exceedingly, X great, grief (-vous), harm, heavy, hurt (-ful), ill (favoured), + mark, mischief, (-vous), misery, naught (-ty), noisome, + not please, sad (-ly), sore, sorrow, trouble, vex, wicked (-ly, -ness, one), worse (-st) wretchedness, wrong.
The word is even used to describe ferocious animals as in the 'evil beast' use in Gen 37:33 (KJV) - translated as 'wild animal', 'fierce animal', 'ferocious beast', etc. in other translations
The Prov 16:4 verse is useless in attempting to blame God for the existence of evil as it clearly does not mean that God created anyone evil or bad but the he created them and they are evil.
Adam Clarkes commentary says,
quote:
Even the wicked for the day of evil - וגם רשע ליום רעה vegam rasha leyom raah. The whole verse is translated by the Chaldee thus: “All the works of the Lord are for those who obey him; and the wicked is reserved for the evil day.” As רעה raah literally signifies to feed, it has been conjectured that the clause might be read, yea, even the wicked he feeds by the day, or daily.
If we take the words as they stand in our present version, they mean no more than what is expressed by the Chaldee and Spriac: and as far as we can learn from their present confused state, by the Septuagint and Arabic, that “the wicked are reserved for the day of punishment.” Coverdale has given, as he generally does, a good sense: “The Lorde dotll all thinges for his owne sake; yea, and when he kepeth the ungodly for the daye of wrath.” He does not make the wicked or ungodly man; but when man has made himself such, even then God bears with him. But if he repent not, when the measure of his iniquity is filled up, he shall fall under the wrath of God his Maker.
The Amo 3:6 text is "If a ram's horn is blown in a city, will the people not also tremble? If there is a calamity in a city, has Jehovah not also done it?" in the modern KJV.
So no, God does not create evil in the sense of morally wrong, but rather evil in the sense of bad things, calamities etc.
It is evil to charge God himself with creating evil in the moral sense.
Indeed, evil, as a moral wrong, cannot be created per se except through the act of choice and action. Evil in the moral sense is not something physical that can be created it is a state, choice or act of rebellion.
Also we see that "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." Ecc 7:29 KJV
Or, as the GW translation puts in, "I have found only this: God made people decent, but they looked for many ways to avoid being decent."
C.S. Lewis notes: "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." --The Problem of Pain
"If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying." --Mere Christianity
When we read the bible we must not make it contradict itself. This is what we do when we use verses out of the global biblical context to make God himself the author of evil (moral wrongness). We must always remember the other verses like Hab 1:13 "Your eyes are too pure to look at evil. You can't watch wickedness." - how much less to create it himself!!?
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"The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order." Sir F. Hoyle
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 1:46:08 PM
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steve7150
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quote:
What do you think? Did God create evil or did evil originate from another source?
I don't think evil is a creation , it may be something that is born out of an absense of good. Almost like a spiritual 2nd law of thermodynamics therefore God of course knew evil would manifest itself from the lack of good but then he uses it for his purposes.
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 2:12:13 PM
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bob97
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When Adam sinned God allowed entropy to enter the picture…the state of all things going from a state of usefulness (good) to a state of non usefulness (bad).
Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope,
the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Rom 8:20-22
Does not the bible tell us that God cursed His creation?
Bob
_____________________________
The LORD clears the road for me!
The LORD is my high ridge, my stronghold, my deliverer!
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/4/2008 4:10:02 PM
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1love1God1way
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GHitch,
I like what you said. I just talked about that this morning with someone about how the word "evil" as we seen in the OT was used in a different sense than we think of it now.
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/6/2008 1:44:00 PM
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DeafAlien
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SophiesLadder
My example would be this. I am the father of my son. My son is 20 years old. Let's say he's driving home, chooses to talk on his cell phone and is distracted, isn't paying attention, runs a red light and causes an accident. In the sense that, my son would not exist if I had not generated him, I have brought this action about. But it was his choices that caused the accident. He is responsible.
The problem here is that you had no foreknowledge of what your son would do. If you had, would you have brought him into the world?
Better yet, if you had the foreknowledge that your son would become a mass murder, would you still bring him into the world?
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/6/2008 9:10:54 PM
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lbangotti
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" God is in control of everything-that includes evil.
A more fascinating discussion would have been WHY."
I believe that once you begin to understand what is going to happen in the end...then you will really begin to see why God allowed things to happen the way they did. Yes, sin did enter into the world. He KNEW that man would turn from him and He knew us before the world was even created. He loved us even then but the way I see it...and from studying the scriptures myself...in the end HE gets the glory. Satan WILL bow down to Him bow to him. He knows his time is short!! Satan tries his very best to destroy everything that God has done but he has lost out on that so far. Satan thought he beat God when Christ was nailed to the cross but when Christ arose and defeated death so that you and I so that we wouldn't have to pay the sin debt that we owe sinners, Satan knew he had lost. He is still doing everything in his power to take the human race with him to hell.
My beloved brother posted before me..*deaf alien* and I am sure he is anxious for my reply but here is the thing..even though God had foreknowlede of us being lost in sin..doesn't mean that He didn't want to fellowship with us. He did but we have a choice. He gives us a choice rather or not to accept what He did on the cross and have a new beginning with him in our lives.
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/7/2008 3:32:02 PM
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dyluck
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I can't remember where I heard this but i think it is really interesting example of why God allowed Evil or sin to befall creation (including angels)
I think the easiest answer is: so it will never happen again. I honestly think it is for lack of better words one big lesson to creation.
God seems to not want to create drones that worship him because thats what he created them to do, but have them worship and love and follow him of their own choice.
Yes God already know what will happen, but he does it allows it anyway because it must come to pass... He knows who will go to heaven or hell, but it must come to pass, otherwise God wouldn't be omniciant in foreknowledge, nor would we exist because there wouldn't have been the foreknowledge of God for us.
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/9/2008 10:14:07 AM
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steve7150
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quote:
Does not the bible tell us that God cursed His creation?
I don't think this means something like a witch putting a curse on someone but more like God removing his divine protection.
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/9/2008 10:42:00 AM
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bob97
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quote:
I don't think this means something like a witch putting a curse on someone but more like God removing his divine protection.
God turned the universe from a state of order to disorder. If you don’t understand entropy study the concept. I would call this a curse. As an example…without the effects of entropy man would live forever.
Bob
_____________________________
The LORD clears the road for me!
The LORD is my high ridge, my stronghold, my deliverer!
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/9/2008 9:06:01 PM
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Ezra
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The minute you say or suggest that God created evil, you accuse Him of being evil.
The truth is that because of the freedom to choose between good and evil, evil was and is allowed to exist in this universe for a *limited* time. There will come a day when sin and evil will be totally eradicated from the earth and the universe. That day may not be far away.
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And whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely. Revelation 22:17
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/11/2008 1:59:10 AM
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ManimalX
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One thing I would like to introduce into the discussion: is our definition of "evil" really a correct definition? A lot of people see suffering of any kind as "evil", but biblically suffering is not evil. A lot of people see all pain as evil, but biblically pain is not exactly evil. I would even go so far as to say that even though death was brought about by sin, it is itself not always evil.
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"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed." - 2nd Peter 3:10
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RE: Evil, created by God? - 10/11/2008 10:16:20 AM
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Mannamuncher
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quote:
ORIGINAL: lbangotti
quote:
mannamuncher: God is in control of everything-that includes evil.
A more fascinating discussion would have been WHY."
I believe that once you begin to understand what is going to happen in the end...then you will really begin to see why God allowed things to happen the way they did.
Yes, all for God's glory, honor, and praise !
Few have commented on this truth.
We are getting bogged down in definition,
rather than the Sovereign purpose of Holy God.
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Coincidentally...both Obama & Oprah begin with a zero...
Yes, I have stolen your scissors...it's for your own good really. My loving action will prevent you from deleting those Bible passages that you find repugnant...
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