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Photo: Full of Eyes - How Long? |
While working for VOMC, I hear a lot of horrible stories, man's inhumanity toward man. The thing that gets my goat though is when people blame God for the suffering and atrocities playing out on the nightly news. The sheer audacity of our fallen nature accusing the perfect Creator for giving us the freedom to choose evil begs the question: Does suffering make sense?
"A God who did not abolish suffering -- worse, a God who abolished sin precisely by suffering -- is a scandal to the modern mind," states Peter Kreeft.
Many stumble over this issue, asking how a good God could create evil. Some even confuse Joseph's comment, "What you meant for evil, God used for good," as a mantra for this concept that evil is needed to mature us as Christians. If that were true - if God designed evil for any reason - it would mean that He is evil, and has evil in Him, whereby our salvation is nonsense. The Perfect Lamb would be rendered imperfect. In addition, if God created us with an internal evil, then he was lying when he declared in Genesis 1 that we were good, and that His creation as a whole was "very good."
What then? If evil is not a part of God, or inside Him, then it must be outside Him. Enter "free will."
God created us in His image, meaning "intelligent with freedom." We have the freedom to choose to obey Him, or turn away from Him. As Chuck Colson writes: "...to turn away from God, the source of all goodness, is to create evil. Evil does not have an independent existence, nor was it created by God. Evil is created by sin."
As we hear the stories of persecuted Christians around the world, the temptation to ask God "why?" is palpable. "Save them, Lord!" is the cry on our lips. His response to us is not, "I'm doing this to them for their own good"; but rather, "I have saved them by defeating the very sin that has had us both in death's grip." Our Saviour is well-acquainted with the pain inflicted by sin's hand.
By Vanessa Brobbel 
