WHY DOES GOD ALLOW EVIL?

Fantasywriter | 9/17/01 | Pastor Rick Warren/Saddleback Church

[RnMomof7]

This is posted at the request of Fantasywriter

May God bless this article and use it as a springboard that we all might know Him better!

[RnMomof7]

bump to you for your article!

[RnMomof7]

bump to you for your article!

[AppyPappy]

Why do WE allow evil?

[RnMomof7]

Bump for discussion

[vmatt]

Isaiah 45 7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

[BrainiusMaximus]

Simple. God allows evil so that people may see that they require his grace, and will return to Him.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"God could have eliminated all evil from our world by simply removing our ability to choose it." That's false. That doesn't even get the contours of the problem right. There are all kinds of "bad" things God allows that are not the product of free will gone awry. Examples: natural disasters that kill babies, diseases that kill babies, etc. Moreover, presumably Jesus has free will and Jesus never sins. So it's logically possible for one to have a free will and not sin. And since God can do anything that's logically possible, God could have created us such that we have free will and never sin. Yet God failed to do so.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

The why so much evil? How many had to die in the Holocaust to get the same "payoff" in increased devotion, worship, faith, etc? Are you saying that if some baby gassed by the Nazi's had felt just the least little bit less pain, somehow people wouldn't be quite so devoted to God? So even if that response had the right sort of structure, it would fail to pass any kind of proportionality test.

[RnMomof7]

Please note I posted this at the request of another..I have a different opinion that Rick Warren on most things..I will comment on this in a while..but I wanted to let the thread get started

[ArGee]

Examples: natural disasters that kill babies, diseases that kill babies, etc.

According to The Bible, these are also the result of human sin. When Adam fell the Universe fell with him. If you don't like the notion of sin, think of it rather that Adam broke the Universe. It was clean, now it's dirty. It was straight, now it's twisted. It was right, now it's broken.

We broke creation, and all of creation groans for the completion of the redemption begun at the cross.

Shalom.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

Then the question just morphs: Why does God blame little babies for something someone else did 10,000 (?) years ago that they had no control over? Same lump. Different swatch of the carpet.

[VRW Conspirator]

We broke creation, and all of creation groans for the completion of the redemption begun at the cross. Shalom.

FWIW, I believe covetness was the first sin. It is the primary reason for all other sins. The shoe fits.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

PS: or coherent principle of That sort of gambit also faces problems accounting for any plausible principle of fairness, since on your view all babies are equally deserving of the most painful possible death by natural disaster, yet God selects only some to die this way. And since there is no moral basis to select between them, as on your view they are all equally guilty for something they didn't do, God's choice would be morally arbitrary.

[meandog]

I believe it goes back to the beginning (and we were all there, perhaps as infintesimal atomic matter, but there nonetheless). God told us (our original evolutionary/biblical parents) that we could have a life of obedient Edenistic paradise, if we did not choose knowledge. He also warned us that the other way was death and a life fraught with woe. But we chose knowledge anyway because we were tempted by the one who represents evil that if we chose knowledge we could one day "be like God." So, WE are the ones allowing evil, not God!

[dead]

Because blue light's short wavelength causes it to get scattered around much, much more by oxygen atoms in the atmosphere than the longer wavelengths of all other colors visible to us. This selective scattering makes the sky appear blue in color.

Oh wait, that’s the answer to the other question.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

BTW: That's not to deny that people turn to God when bad things like this happen. That would be consistent with the claim that these events give strong evidence that God does not exist, since the first would be a claim about social psychology -- causes of belief formation, and the second would be about _reasons_ for those beliefs. Beliefs might be triggered by events even if the events provide no warrant or justification for the beliefs they trigger.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

Dude, I wasn't there. I didn't eat the apple and I didn't authorize anyone else to eat it for me. So, not my bad.

[ArGee]

Then the question just morphs: Why does God blame little babies for something someone else did 10,000 (?) years ago that they had no control over? Same lump. Different swatch of the carpet.

Actually I think you misunderstood me. If you had understood me you would have rather asked, "Why does G-d allow little babies to be born into this broken world?"

I'm going to let you into a little secret. G-d is much bigger than I am and I will never understand all of the whys. I focus, instead, on the what. In this case the question is, "What did G-d do about the broken world."

The answer is: He stretched out His arms on the Cross and offered Himself a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

For G-d so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

G-d made the world perfect. G-d made man capable of choosing sin and then put man in the world. Man exercised his choice and sinned, and so broke the world. G-d fixed it at the price of His own life.

"Could it be that [G-d] would really rather die than live without us?" -Michael Card

Shalom.

[Jerry_M]

Scary, very, very scary.

According to Warren, God just sits back and lets us bash each other with no hope of His intervention. In other words, evil runs amuck and "heaven help" anyone in its way (except that "heaven" isn't going to "help").

This has to be seen as the logical result of an Arminian theology that grants man a form of "free-will" that not even God possesses.