It is our enemy and adversary, satan, that delights in wickedness and he alone comes to kill, steal and destroy. The Catholic edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSVCE) accurately communicates this message by rendering Isaiah 45:6–7 as the following: “There is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. In 2017 and 2018, scientists discovered a nearly eight-mile-long... You’re never too young to be a creation scientist! Nevertheless, note that the word author is being used in two different senses. 8 However, God does reward and punish on the basis of good and bad behavior. The psalmist says, “God is just in all his ways and kind in all his doings” (145:17). God does not cause evil. Evil is instead a privation or absence of good. 3:38). Welcome to Christian Forums, a forum to discuss Christianity in a friendly surrounding. Evil stems from the rebellious hearts of man. Even though this is blasphemy, it will nonetheless be addressed in this study. “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” (James 1:13-14). Who has commanded and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? I form light and create darkness, I make weal (shalom) and create woe (ra), I am the Lord, who do all these things.”. Evil is real, but it only exists as an absence or corruption of a good—the way rust only exists as a corruption of metal and has no real existence on its own. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it” (311). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches. The author of Lamentations, traditionally thought to be Jeremiah, is walking a fine line between two unorthodox views of God. There can be no impurity or inconsistency within the nature of the Godhead. Some other verses, however, lead critics to deny God’s goodness, or even to claim that he is the author and creator of evil. 1 Corinthians 14:33 Parallel One of the often-used excuses for rejecting the God of the Bible is if God is omnipotent (as the Bible teaches), and since evil exists in the world (as everyone can see), then God must be the author of evil or incapable of preventing it. In fairness, those who say God does evil are usually quick to add that it’s … For God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints. God created moral beings with a free choice, and this is the origin of moral evil in the universe. The Israelites’ suffering is not the result of God being unable to fend off other gods, but is part of God’s providential plan for Creation. |. This doesn’t mean that evil is “nothing” or that it is illusory in nature. God is certainly causing a disaster in this case, and using the moral evil of others to bring it upon the Israelites, but he is not engaging in an act of moral evil by allowing these events to take place. The first is to say there are events that happen outside of God’s control, such as the suffering of morally upright people. "God is not the author of confusion" (1 Corinthians 14:33)—and if that is true, He cannot in any way be the author of evil. The Israelites, along with everyone else in the ancient world, believed that every event was the act of deity – that every plant that grew, every baby born, every drop of rain and every climactic disaster was an act of God. "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). Dr. Mohler also stated that this is because God shows His love and glory more comprehensively than if evil had never existed. Every man, That’s because these bad things can serve God’s ultimately good ends (CCC 310). “Does evil befall a city, unless the Lord has done it” (Amos 3:6)? The second chapter of Amos indicts Israel for oppressing the poor (“they trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside the way of the afflicted”) and sexual immorality (“a man and his father go in to the same maiden, so that my holy name is profaned”) (Amos 2:7). Grand Canyon carves a 277-mile-long chasm through northwestern Arizona. The Hebrew word that the King James Version translates as “evil” in this passage, ra, can mean moral evil. . God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. This doesn’t mean that evil is “nothing” or that it is illusory in nature. God doesn’t will sin as sin or for the sake of anything evil; though it be his pleasure so to order things, that he permitting, sin will come to pass; for the sake of the great good that by his disposal shall be the consequence. God hasn’t told us everything we’d like to know about evil and why it exists, but one thing is clear: God is not the author of evil, nor does he give in to its allure. Those who choose to follow God, make choices that build people up, advance the cause of God on this earth, are positive. There are three wonderful figures in the New Testament... 3-D Human Genome Radically Different from Chimp. 1:13 To accuse Almighty God of evil is the same as stating that He sins or breaks His own law and commandments. Content © 2020 Institute for Creation Research. One of the greatest problems for evolutionists is the sudden appearance of complex animal life with no evolutionary precursors, as seen in the Cambrian... Science, Scripture, & Salvation Vol 3, Disc 1. The Bible insists that the whole of reality was initially “very good” (Genesis 1:31) but was quickly marred by Lucifer’s lie and Adam’s rebellion (Genesis 3:14-17). 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