By David Wood
The Bible speaks of a perfect God who created a perfect man and woman. But how can man, who was created perfect, do something evil? This has always been a question that unbelievers have put forth when told that the God of the Bible is Holy and good. Some have gone as far as to posit that God must have evil within Himself if He allowed any evil to exist. Their reasoning concludes that if God is good, He must also be evil for Him, or us, to even know what "good" really is. This faulty logic has lead many unbelievers to question the Bible right from the beginning.
To further their cause against a perfect sinless God, many unbelievers have also asked the question of why God even created anything in the first place. And if God is perfect, why didn't He create a world where it was impossible for any sin to exist at all?
The problem with the above arguments is they negate the moral goodness of a perfect God. For example, who would say that a world that doesn’t exist is better than a world that does exist? Furthermore, isn’t a free world better than a non-free world? God is described as a perfect God and a God of love. If He would have forced Adam and Eve to always do good, then they wouldn’t have been free to do bad. For God to do that would be morally wrong and evil in itself. Hence, as long as the first humans were free to choose evil or good, the possibility existed that they would refuse to do good.
Another roadblock for many unbelievers is that if God is really the all powerful God that the Bible describes, then He could destroy all evil. And if God is as good as the Bible suggests, then He would destroy all evil. But once again, these arguments negate the moral good of God.
Because God is morally good, He doesn’t destroy evil because it would be impossible for Him to destroy all evil without destroying all free choice. Remember, because God is morally good, He gave the first man and woman free choice. But with freedom comes the possibility of evil. For God to do it any other way, He would have had to force the first humans to do good. Forced freedom is no freedom in any aspect. And it would be wrong to say that freedom in and of itself is evil. It isn’t.
Because of Adam and Eve's sin we live in a cursed and fallen world. Everything is going from order to disorder and the universe and everything in it is in entrophy. Not only was there spiritual death from Adam's sin, but physical death as well. But keep in mind there can be good things that come from something considered evil. One example would be a person experiencing crushing chest pain. It is doubtful that this person would consider this pain to be good. In fact, it’s highly possible that this person would consider this pain as something evil and bad. And yet this evil horrible pain has it’s purpose. It’s a warning sign that signals to this person to take action, and these actions can lead to something good.
If God can’t destroy all evil without destroying all free choice, then what can He do about evil? What He can and will do is defeat all evil. Keep in mind that although He is a morally good God, He is also perfect and all powerful and as such will want to defeat all evil. Because of the sacrifice and blood of Jesus Christ, all evil will be defeated. Although the battle of good and evil still rages to this very day, the war has already been won. For in the end when every believer is forever in heaven, evil will be forever defeated.
But if all this is true, where did evil come from? God is absolutely perfect and sinless. When this perfect sinless God created humans, these humans were created as perfect sinless creatures. As a morally good God, He could not force these first humans to always do the good, so one of the attributes that God gave these perfect humans was the power to choose things freely. These perfect sinless humans freely chose to do something evil, and sin entered the world.
