In this lecture, we explored the reasons for why a good God would allow bad things to happen. If He is all powerful, why can’t He stop the evil in this world? Why do we have to not just tolerate, but struggle to live life as we know it?

Let’s be clear, this is a loaded topic, and one that will take more than a few hundred words to explain. But the Bible gives us a bigger picture, another dimension to examine when we discuss at length. As with all of our other blog posts we will provide a synopsis for you here.

In Genesis 1 and 2 a pattern comes to light regarding Creation. At the end of each day God saw that His work was good. Each day He was pleased with His Creation. At the end of the sixth day, after God created humans (the kind that may irritate you from time to time), God looked upon His creation and saw that it was very good.

At the end of the Bible, in Revelation 21 and 22, we see God creating “a new heaven and a new earth.” The chapters illuminate the perfection and grandeur of God’s re-creation. We can see that the Bible emphasizes God’s creation as good. God created good things. Nothing less than good is created by God.

But how does one reconcile a God that creates good in a world full of evil and corruption. Surely, if God is all powerful, He would eliminate evil as soon as it appeared, guaranteeing a utopian future for generations to come.

There is perhaps one parable that sheds more light on the big picture. You can read about it in Matthew 13:24-30. To summarize, a good man sowed good seed in his field. But one night an enemy came in and sowed weeds among the good seed. As the young shoots sprang up the men questioned their good master why he sowed bad seeds in his otherwise good field. He informed them that an enemy was responsible for the bad seed. Eager to cleanse the field, the men asked if they could pull up the bad seeds. The good master replied that doing so immediately would risk pulling up the good seeds. Instead, he informed them to wait for the harvest season when it would become clear which would be good and which would be bad.

With the knowledge that God created only good things, the enemy in this case is the devil. He is responsible for the bad things that happen in this world. Revelation 12 reveals that there was a war in heaven between Jesus and Satan. Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 reveal that Satan (then Lucifer) was filled with pride and wanted to be the highest. He caused dissension in heaven using manipulative methods and pulled 1/3 of them to his side.

Reading the story of Job we see there is another dimension to good and bad with the council in heaven. Satan desires to inflict harm on Job’s family (and eventually Job) to prove that humanity only serves God when times are easy.

The question is raised, “Well, isn’t God indirectly responsible, because He allowed Satan to inflict harm instead of stopping him?” That’s a valid and loaded question.

Love is a choice. God could have made all of us robots to be programmed to love him. However, would that really be love if we had no choice? No. This is why a test was given to Adam and Eve in the garden, to choose good or evil. The devil claimed that God forced His will on all of His subjects, but that is not the case. We all have a choice to love God, He will not force us to love Him.

But He loves us, and he revealed that love by dying on the cross so that we could have a way out of this mess! God is waiting to come back to make sure everyone has had an opportunity to choose whether they will follow Jesus or Satan (Matthew 24:14). He desires not to risk pulling up the wheat with the tares while they are still indistinguishable. He wants as many people possible to choose Him of their own accord.

Yes, God will one day put an end to all the evil that we have so long endured. He will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4) and restore the Earth to the good that it was in Creation. The day is near, as we have already studied. The question is, who will you choose to love?

There is no middle ground. No choice is a choice against God. What is your choice today, and every day until He comes?