There exists a perennial struggle in the minds of men how the Christian can claim that he believes in a God who is good and righteous and yet allows evil activity to prevail on the earth. In God's defense, the Christian replies that God is not responsible for the evil activity that transpires. His retractor retorts that if God will eliminate evil activity eventually, why can't He do it now, or why hasn't He done it already? The solution to this question will be the heart of this paper. The intent of this thesis is to answer three questions: 1. What does "evil" include? 2. How did evil activity come to exist? 3. Why does evil activity continue to exist?
Despite the fact that Christianity is characterized by its metaphysical beliefs, "evil" should not be thought to represent an entity in and of itself but only a quality of the ethical variety. It is always an adjective, though sometimes it appears as a substantive, and never a noun; it does not represent a force. Since it is ethical in nature, it is also not inherent in any action but is instead the expression of a judgment of the mind based on a moral standard.
Since it is the intention of the writer to strongly emphasize the tenants of Christianity in evaluating the difficulty of evil activity in the world, the moral standard mentioned previously will be God's standard as it appears in the Bible. Also, since no one is capable of keeping His standard perfectly and few if any know every aspect of that standard, it is necessary, in order to define "evil," to define it from God's perspective. This is the most significant perspective; all human ideas about what may be called "evil" are only cut-and-paste copies of God's judgments. It is obvious from Genesis 3:22 that human ideas about evil activity are the same as God's ideas, and those ideas that have been invented by men, which fall under legalism, are false ideas about what is evil.
In the English language, "evil" carries the connotation of an action that is heinously wrong or a person who aggressively seeks to do wrong. The Scriptures do not uphold this strict interpretation, however. Mark 7:21-23 brings under the umbrella of "evil things" (ponhra) murder, theft, and adultery as well as greed, envy, slander, and arrogance. The same Greek word used here is also used to describe the devil, fathers, thoughts, spirits, the present age, and suspicions. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus equates murder with outbursts of anger and adultery with coveting.
"Evil" therefore must describe far more than just egregious sins. It includes both breaking those commandments that have potentially the most severe consequences and harboring thoughts and attitudes that may have no earthly consequences but are equally in violation of God's moral standard. This interpretation of God's moral standard is demonstrated by Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:5 where, as a tactic of spiritual warfare, he says that he makes every thought obedient to Christ. If this were unnecessary, Paul certainly would not put forth the effort either to write it or to do it, but his emphasis in the passage on thoughts only further contends for the all-pervasiveness of God's moral standard.
Because both deeds and thoughts can rightly be described as evil, and because God requires all people to be completely void of both evil actions and evil thoughts, making a violation of His moral standard an act of disobedience, "evil" is best understood as disobedience to the authority imposing the moral standard. Jesus summarized the entire Old Testament Law with the two simple commands to love God and love one's neighbor; violation of either of these commands would constitute an evil deed. (Love for God is obedience {1 John 5:3}, and love for one's fellowman is summarized by the golden rule {Matthew 7:12}.) For instance, committing a crime against one's neighbor, such as theft, would not be loving him, and by the same token, maintaining a prejudice attitude toward a particular culture or race would not be loving one's neighbor.
Having defined "evil" as disobedience to God, it is now the task of this paper to uncover the origin of this disobedience. It may be counted as obvious to the average Christian that the devil Satan was the original instigator of sin and continues to be, but this fact has not been so apparent to the world throughout history. James Mill was proclaiming in the early 19th century that lack of education was the greatest (perhaps only) obstacle to social justice (Anderson 98). Gnostics held that a world filled with evil activity could not have been created by God, and therefore a demiurge, which became evil, broke away from God's being and created the material world.
One more historical example shall do justice to the sensibility of Christianity. In Greek mythology, the gods were primarily made out to be the bad guys (and they were the gods!), and the humans were the heroes. Each of the gods probably had his or her own pet vice, some of which were more outstanding than others. One such outstanding vice was an insatiable lust for women possessed by none other than the king of the gods, Zeus. Of the twelve who dwelt on Mount Olympus, Zeus fathered as many as seven. He was also guilty of many affairs with mortals producing half-breeds such as Hercules. This was not his only vice, just the most dominant one. The Greeks must have thought that evil activity was a natural part of the universe!
It is unnecessary to examine all of the other religions in order only to find refinements of what Greek mythology proposes. For the most part, the false religions follow the dualistic assertion that "good" and "evil" are two forces that are constantly struggling against one another.
Let the reader recall that it was previously stated concerning "evil" that it does not represent a force. Since this is so, "evil" cannot be said to have come into existence. It is as old as the knowledge of good deeds and evil deeds. God declared His own knowledge of what is evil in Genesis 3:22; if He had this knowledge before any evil deed had been done, then He had it for an indefinite period of time before the creation of the world. (Note that on the third day God declares the condition of His creation to be "good".) Whether one believes that God knows the future or simply plans for it, He must have been at least able to plan for the disobedient action taken by Adam and Eve, and this would require knowledge. Since there is nothing in the Biblical account (apart from the fall of Lucifer which will be addressed later) that would cause God to gain the knowledge of what is evil, here assuming that He already knew what was good or that He had never needed to make the distinction, It is allowable to assume that God has always had this knowledge.
God's knowledge of what is evil does not, however, demand the presence of evil activity. Though there is no record of God's actions before the creation of the world, there is a specific account of how evil activity came to exist on two plains: the spiritual and the earthly. In the writer's estimation, these events occurred simultaneously, though they need not to have. If they did not, they at least both occurred after the creation of the world and by the time the earthly one had taken place.
The first of these perimeters is derived from the opening verse of Genesis. It states that God created the heaven(s), but later in the chapter God creates the sky and the sun, moon, and stars. The reader should assume, then, that verse 1 is specifically mentioning God's abode and (since they are not mentioned elsewhere) all of the angels. This would include all of the fallen angels, mentioned in Jude 6 and Revelation 12:7-9, and Satan himself, who was called Lucifer.
The fall of Lucifer as recorded in Ezekiel 28:12-17 is connected to the fall of Adam and Eve in only two ways: Ezekiel mentions "Eden, the garden of God," and the serpent in Genesis 3 is renamed "Satan" in Revelation 20:2, whom Jesus claims to have seen falling from heaven in Luke 10:18, which parallels Ezekiel's comment in verse 17, "'So I threw you to the earth.'" The name "Lucifer" comes from Isaiah 14:12 where another similar statement is made: "How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star (Lucifer), son of the dawn!" (Smith 366).
The sin of Lucifer that Ezekiel mentions is pride, which C. S. Lewis contends is the most foundational vice (109). If it is true that this vice leads to all other sins, then Lucifer's specific sin could be anything, like undermining God's authority or deceiving Eve. It is also noteworthy that the serpent appears to take the blame for Satan's work and that all of the participants besides the devil are explicitly judged in Genesis 3.
The sin of Adam seems to look much more like disobedience than an act of evil, but the second must be true according to the definition set forth above. Apparently this is the only way in which Adam was capable of disobeying God, since it is implicit that he had no knowledge of either what is good or what is evil before eating the fruit. Since this knowledge of what is evil was not present to lead him to disobey God, his disobedience can only be the result of the serpent's deception of Eve and Eve's offer to Adam.
If this were the only reason for Adam's sin, then there would be no explanation for Lucifer's sin, because a good God created a "very good" world, and one cannot allow God to be blamed for evil acts. However, there is one other variable that does make Lucifer's fall possible. Man was created with the capability to make moral choices, a luxury that God Himself does not have, and therefore it could not be what is meant by "the image of God." If this is true, then this quality of man could have been shared with the angels, making the fall of some of them possible. It is unlikely that angels would continue to fall periodically since they would all remember what Lucifer's punishment was and because they all see the face of God and dwell in His presence. This is ultimately the only biblical way of averting the blame from God to the individual responsible, regardless of one's views on predestination and omniscience.
To summarize, evil activity began with the pride of the angel Lucifer who deceived Eve in the garden of God, and then Eve took from the forbidden tree and offered to Adam to eat, which he did in disobedience to God's command. From that point on, Satan (Lucifer) has been deceiving the nations, and men have continued to act disobediently toward God. The goal of this third section will be to answer the question, "Why does evil activity continue to exist?" from the human perspective and then from the divine perspective.
Man's propensity toward what is evil can be explained by characteristics inherent in both man and sin. First, sin provides immediate momentary benefit to the sinner. While the angels see the immediate consequences of disobedience as far to severe for what little momentary benefit they might individually reap from disobeying, men see the immediate benefit of acting sinfully as worth the risk of the possible consequences. Second, having head knowledge of what is evil, and being the curious creature that man is, he would desire to have experiential knowledge even at the cost of undesirable consequences.
A third explanation benefits from the support of the previous two, but is not dependent upon them, nor is it as hypothetical or idealistic. When Adam disobeyed, something metaphysical happened to him and his wife-they died. As a result, they could no longer choose to do good by their own power. This metaphysical condition was passed on to their offspring, and it continues to exist today. John Stott wrote concerning Romans 5:12-21, "Paul is not concerned with the origin of evil in general, but only with how it invaded the world of human beings. It entered through one man, that is, through his disobedience" (150). It is clear from Romans 5 that all men share Adam's condition and have all derived it from Adam.
The apostle Paul's comments in the latter part of Romans 7 further illustrate man's spiritual condition. Though he knows what is good, he is yet unable to do it. Instead, he persists in doing what is evil as if he cannot resist. Galatians 5:17 shows conclusively that this is a spiritual problem, not a problem of knowledge or will power or anything else.
What of the good deeds that people do? To begin with, no one does a completely selfless deed in his own power. Even if the deed itself is generally considered to be a "good" deed (bearing in mind that deeds are not inherently good or evil), it may be done with a motivation that disqualifies its goodness. Jesus pronounced a woe on the Pharisees in Matthew 23:23 for neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness, though they tithed with special care. The motivation is the deciding factor in God's judgment; this is why it says in 1 Corinthians 4:5 that the motives of men's hearts will be revealed when the Lord judges.
Finally, the anticipated portion of this thesis has arrived. For what cause would God allow something so completely contrary to His character, His will for mankind, His authority and His right to be worshipped to carry on? While Revelation testifies that all evil activity will one day be stopped, why would God postpone this purification to a date so far away from the inception of what is evil into the world?
After men had lived on the earth for ten generations, their wickedness had become so great that God was grieved that He had created them. Allen Ross understated the fact when he wrote that the Bible "hardly" makes any other statement about sin as strong as that found in Genesis 6:5 (37). The biblical account says that every plan of their minds was only evil. Because of the extreme degree to which men's disobedience had attained, God was prepared to destroy the earth by a great flood. However, He spared one family that had trusted in Him.
Ten more generations passed until the time when Abram and Lot parted ways, and Lot traveled to the plain of the Jordan. Lot came to dwell in a city called Sodom whose men were sinning greatly against the Lord. After a time the outcries against the wickedness of that city were so great that the Lord intended to destroy it by fire. So He sent for Lot and his family by means of two angels, who dragged them out of the city and commanded them to flee. God destroyed both Sodom and Gomorrah and their surrounding plains because of their people's disobedience.
It is evident from these two examples that eliminating evil activity means eliminating the creation-man. As long as there is hope for mankind, God has not seen it fit to destroy His creation. The apostle Peter wrote in his second letter that God does not desire for anyone to perish, especially if he might repent and be saved.
From the beginning it appears that God had a purpose for that which is evil. Why else would He place a tree in the garden of Eden that could endow whoever ate from it with the knowledge of what is good and what is evil? Before Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they could choose to eat or not to eat (though they were probably not aware of this choice before Satan deceived Eve); afterwards, in order to maintain this freedom of choice, something was needed to replace the previous option of the tree. So God had foreordained that all manner of evil activity would replace the tree as man's option apart from obedience to God. Based on this paper's definition, it is the obvious and only option; even the first sin was disobedience.
Why would God desire to preserve man's free choice at the risk of so much rejection? God created man with free choice so that man would be able to choose to praise God, a praise which is more glorious than that which is demanded as an obligation. To say that God created man in order to have a relationship with him is nearly the same thing; a robot may be smart, but it cannot reproduce humanness.
This does not ultimately explain why Adam and Eve were not immediately physically put to death for their deed, since God could have easily started over with two more innocent humans. Two familiar passages will help to clarify God's motive. John 3:16 reveals that God loves this disobedient world to the point that He would send Himself to it for its own sake. For what other reason could God be grieved over His creation than if He loved it completely? Romans 5:8 extends His love one step further when it contrasts man's yet sinful condition with Christ's loving sacrifice. God has gone to all of the trouble of redeeming mankind because of His great love for His creation!
To conclude, "evil" means anything that is disobedient to God's moral standard, evil activity came to be on two plains as the result of the free choice of angels and man, and evil activity continues to exist because of man's propensity for it and because God deeply loves His creation. What, then, should the Christian's reaction to this love? Jesus spoke one of the greatest religious mores in Matthew 7:12, and this should be the aspiration of every believer: "'So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."
I relate well to the statement that people tend to see the benefits of sin as possibly worthwhile in light of sin's consequences, which are thought to be only potential and not eminent. I take God's love for granted every day, not realizing that my disobedience affects Him deeply. If only we could grasp the reality of the spiritual world, we would not even conceive of doing many of the things we do now.
