God lets the sun to rise on both the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
- Matthew 5:45
God lets the sun to rise on both the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
- Matthew 5:45
The Bible of the Christian God shows some chapters where it is clear that the so called “evil” (which is a subjective human noun to describe anything that disagree with the current zeitgeist of the society and their resulting norms) is actually the creation of the “almighty” God himself:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORDdo all these things.
— Isaiah 45:7
If God created evil, why call him a Good God , a Benevolent God? One thing you must understand from the imaginary minds of the believers is that God is Good because Good is defined by what God does. He ordered the Israelites to kill all the indigenous people who lived in Israel before the nomadic tribe conquered it (or more likely, being made the “excuse” for genocide), except for the young virgin women, of course
Paradox #2: Christian God let “Good” and “Evil” to get the same blessings and hardships, but he is still “Just”
God lets the sun to rise on both the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
- Matthew 5:45
So the answer to the question why does God let good thing happen to bad people and bad thing happen to good people? from the biblical point of view is: He let them happen. You can call it Free Will or other similar bullshit. But if a policeman or woman let crime happens in front of his or her eyes, that would be called dereliction of duty.
Paradox #3: When Good Things happen it’s ‘Praise the Lord’, but when bad things happen it’s ‘God has his plans, we are too small to understand his greatness’
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return thither. The Lord Giveth, The Lord Taketh. Praise be the name of the Lord
• Job 1:21
It’s a masochistic belief. If something bad happen, it’s our fault. If something good happen, it’s His greatness.
If you can wrap your mind around the 3 paradoxes above, as a billion Christian in the world are able to do, then the saying become:” Is he able, but not willing? Then he is Good, and Just, and to be Praised.”
Now most people can objectively said that it is an illogical stand. But that is what Christian Doctrine is all about. God is Good because Good is defined by that God does; whether it is performing genocide or helping the poor.
Centuries ago, God promised Abraham and Sarah they would have a son through whose offspring the world would be blessed. But there were problems. Abraham and Sarah were getting on in years, and Sarah was barren. When told she would be the mother of Abraham’s child, the child of promise, Sarah laughed. In response to her laughter, God spoke these words to Abraham:
13 And the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I indeed bear [a child,] when I am [so] old?’ 14 Is anything too difficult for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son” (Genesis 18:13-14, emphasis mine).
When God rescued the nation Israel from their bondage in Egypt, He led them into the wilderness, where the “menu” was a miraculous provision of manna. But the Israelites began to grumble because they could not enjoy the variety of foods they had eaten in Egypt. In response to their grumbling, God promised to give this great company a diet of meat for an entire month. If the feeding of the 5,000 seems difficult, imagine feeding this hugh congregation. Moses had the same thoughts and expressed his concerns to God:
21 But Moses said, “The people, among whom I am, are 600,000 on foot; yet Thou hast said, ‘I will give them meat in order that they may eat for a whole month.’ 22 Should flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to be sufficient for them? Or should all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to be sufficient for them?” (Numbers 11:21-22).
But God asked another question in response to Moses, a question vitally important to every Christian today:
23 And the LORD said to Moses, “Is the LORD’S power limited? Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not” (Numbers 11:23, emphasis mine).
The answer to this question is crucial, and the answer of the Bible is clear and unequivocal:
3 But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases (Psalm 115:3).
17 “‘Ah Lord GOD! Behold, Thou hast made the heavens and the earth by Thy great power and by Thine outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for Thee’” (Jeremiah 32:17).
26 And looking upon [them] Jesus said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
24 The LORD of hosts has sworn saying, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand, 25 to break Assyria in My land, and I will trample him on My mountains. Then his yoke will be removed from them, and his burden removed from their shoulder. 26 This is the plan devised against the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out against all the nations. 27 For the LORD of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate [it]? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?” (Isaiah 14:21-26).
over the many centuries of human endeavor, theologians and philosophers have puzzled over the origin of evil. Without appropriate knowledge, the very fact of the existence of evil causes doubt about the existence of God.
The world of philosophy terms this frustrating conundrum “the problem of evil.” Accordingly, the Dictionary of Philosophy (Penguin, 1999) tells us that “there is evil in the world: bad things happen to people, and people do bad things.” Furthermore, there is “a disproportion between virtue and happiness, between vice and misery: an evil exemplified when the wicked prosper and good people meet a grim fate.”
The problem was perhaps most famously summed up by philosopher David Hume, an 18th-century neoskeptic. He wrote, “Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?” (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part X, 1779).
Can we know the origin of evil? Does the presence of evil in this world really negate the existence of God? Is it possible to accommodate both the existence of God and the existence of evil within a coherent explanation of life? There could hardly be more fundamental and perplexing questions.
Most would agree that the greatest outbreak of evil in the 20th century found expression in one man—Adolf Hitler. There have, of course, been other terrifying examples, among them Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Pol Pot in Cambodia. More recently we have seen tribal genocide between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in Iraq and the Balkans. How does one explain outbursts of such profound evil?
Emil Fackenheim is considered by some to be the foremost theologian of the Holocaust. He distinguishes between the “ordinary” evil of human nature and what he calls the “radical evil” of Hitler’s nature. To Fackenheim, even the best explanations of Hitler (and there have been quite a few) are doomed to failure. In the end, “only God can account for such radical evil, and he’s not talking” (quoted by Ron Rosenbaum in Explaining Hitler, Macmillan, London, 1998, p. 279).
Fackenheim believes that the evil of Hitler is off the scale and lies beyond rational attempts to understand it, “that no amount of biographical and psychological data about a difficult childhood, a dysfunctional family, no concatenation of trauma and deformation, no combination of bad character and evil ideology, could add up to enough. Enough to explain the magnitude of Hitler’s crimes.” He believes Hitler’s badness was “something else again entirely . . . the meaning of which we need to search for not in psychology but in theology. The explanation for which, if there is one, can be known or fathomed only by God” (p. xvi).
Indeed, the answers to this question of evil do lie in the theological realm. The Hebrew Scriptures and the Apostolic Writings—which together we call the Holy Bible—comprise the Word of God. Together they provide a record of God’s words, including His explanation of both the origin and the development of evil. If we are willing to look to this source we will find the answers to the question of evil.
You have a very interesting question. If indeed God is all-powerful, why would He permit anarchy and suffering?
What if God had offered all His creations (subjects) complete freedom. God could very easily force all His created beings into obeying Him. He is all powerful, He could do that. However, what if He really does value the free choice of His creations. How can God allow free choice if He forces all to obey Him? He cannot, God cannot do both. It does not make sense!
Even though God is all powerful, God cannot just zap people out of existence or to change their memory, etc. because that would go against His goal of having His creations with free choice. From the Bible, we see that it goes against what God’s wishes to do. It would go against God’s own value system because He is merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth (Exodus 34:6).
To say it another way: What if God wanted all His creations to worship Him by choice and not because He forces them to worship Him? How would He do that? Would He destroy all who would choose to go against Him before they are able to do so? Would He just change their thinking so they don’t even know what they were thinking about earlier? Would He have created His creations so they could not have revolted against Him?
No, none of these options work. God Himself would know that He was not allowing complete free choice. If God really wanted His creations to actually love Him and appreciate what He does for them. He would have to work out this rebellion/sin problem right out in front of the whole universe, so that God’s own created beings would be able to know for themselves, what God is like and they would be able to choose to really serve Him. They would want to serve Him!
When I read the Bible, I see evidence that God really does value free choice and freedom for His creations. We can see that in the stories of the Bible. We do not see God changing people’s thoughts, but rather, we see that God works with us so that we can make a free choice.