For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love. (Psalm 33:4-5)
If the Lord is right and true, and faithful in all He does; if He loves righteousness and justice and the world is full of that unfailing love, why does evil exist. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis provides one answer that is worth considering. He asks us to suppose that a woman desires that her children do what is good by putting their toys away when they’re done with them. One of my issues as one of the children is the question of what it means to be done with one’s toys. If I fully intend to come back to them tomorrow or the next day, am I done with them? (I know – I digress.)
She could go into the room and clean it herself. That would achieve her goal of the good of a clean room. She could go into the room and browbeat the children into cleaning up the mess “Right now!” Or, she could leave it a mess until her children figure out (thanks to her reminders or her not letting them play in the room until it’s clean) that keeping the toys they’re not using picked up is a good thing. One child may learn that lesson in a day. Another may never learn it.
God desires righteousness, truth, faithfulness, justice, and love. He could leave us without the capacity to do evil, but then we wouldn’t actually be good, and He would not really be loving. It’s easy to “love” something or someone that never even tries to cross.
He could come immediately give the evil person the punishment. They die, but that defeats the purpose of creating us with a free will, and again, what sort of love is it that loves only until someone messes up?
He could follow along behind us, cleaning up our messes, but then we’d never learn to clean up our own. What sort of love is it that condemns the beloved to eternal infancy?
We know all this. We understand it even though we resent it. After all, we want God and man to be lenient about our sins, but let someone enjoy a sin (e.g. serial murder, rape, pedophilia, abuse of animals) and we definitely want justice served… a large helping, sizzling hot, with a super-sized helping of pain. Our problem isn’t that God’s just, it’s that He’s merciful. Our problem isn’t that God isn’t merciful, it’s that He’s just. We just disagree with His timing and target.
She could go into the room and clean it herself. That would achieve her goal of the good of a clean room. She could go into the room and browbeat the children into cleaning up the mess “Right now!” Or, she could leave it a mess until her children figure out (thanks to her reminders or her not letting them play in the room until it’s clean) that keeping the toys they’re not using picked up is a good thing. One child may learn that lesson in a day. Another may never learn it.
God desires righteousness, truth, faithfulness, justice, and love. He could leave us without the capacity to do evil, but then we wouldn’t actually be good, and He would not really be loving. It’s easy to “love” something or someone that never even tries to cross.
He could come immediately give the evil person the punishment. They die, but that defeats the purpose of creating us with a free will, and again, what sort of love is it that loves only until someone messes up?
He could follow along behind us, cleaning up our messes, but then we’d never learn to clean up our own. What sort of love is it that condemns the beloved to eternal infancy?
We know all this. We understand it even though we resent it. After all, we want God and man to be lenient about our sins, but let someone enjoy a sin (e.g. serial murder, rape, pedophilia, abuse of animals) and we definitely want justice served… a large helping, sizzling hot, with a super-sized helping of pain. Our problem isn’t that God’s just, it’s that He’s merciful. Our problem isn’t that God isn’t merciful, it’s that He’s just. We just disagree with His timing and target.
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