Why Evil?

If God is good why is there evil?

The study of God's attributes raises many questions, perhaps the most common and poignant one being;
"If God is the Creator and He is all good and all powerful then why is there evil in the world?"
The question of the existence of evil is actually not as difficult to answer as some make it out to be. The real difficulty is in people's willingness or lack thereof to accept the obvious answer; prejudice, presupposition and  prejudgment are all deeply embedded in the psyche of natural man and prevent him from seeing the truth.
For Christians the facts concerning what God is, who God is and what He does should be settled and established, He is the Creator, He is Good and He is all powerful (Omnipotent), trust in God and faith in God are required before further understanding can be achieved concerning this or any of the other big questions in life, the Church Fathers put it this way "I believe in order that I may know", to remain in a state of doubt and second guessing concerning the goodness, power or intentions of God is to remain in ignorance concerning God's attributes. That is why we have taken the time to review them over these past weeks, to clear up any confusion or misunderstanding. We may not be able to readily process all of the concepts and information that the scriptures reveal about God, but we do need to acknowledge them as a starting point in our understanding of how reality works.
Now, with all that being said, let's get to the issue at hand, why doesn't God fix things?
Answer; He is fixing things, the process is ongoing , this world of sin and suffering is not the final product of God's creation, evil will be eliminated, justice will prevail, God's goodness will be established and vindicated, all questions concerning the existence of evil will be answered perfectly and acceptably for everyone, the end of the story is clearly spelled out in scripture for anyone with eyes to see, believing this is the starting point to understanding the presence of evil in God's good creation.
OK, we see that, but the question remains "where did evil come from"?

Let's outline the issue:
1. God is all good and all powerful and the creator of all things.
2. God created good creatures.
3. One of the good attributes that God gave to some of His creatures
(angels and humans) is free moral choice.
4. Free moral choice must allow for the possibility to choose the contrary, to choose good or evil, or else it is not real free choice.
5. Free moral choice must be self caused or else it is not free; God is the primary cause of all that exists but He is not the cause of free moral choices made by His creatures, He is the cause of the power of free moral choice, but He does not do the choosing.
6. Some good creatures used their good, God given ability to make real free moral choices to chose evil.
7. Therefore, God did not create evil, He created good creatures with the good power of choice which necessarily included the possibility for choosing evil.
8. Therefore good creatures with the power of free moral choice are the cause of evil.

To summarize: God does not perform the free acts of His creatures, He is the primary cause for their existence and their abilities and in this sense all creatures are secondary in causality.
But when it comes to free moral choice the creature's actions are self caused.
In order to understand this it is necessary to consider the concept of causality a little more closely.

Basically there are three possibilities when it comes to causality and choice.
1. Determinism: a free act is actually caused by another, or by some irresistible force. This of course would eliminate responsibility for the individual and place it upon the one who actually acted (making God the author of evil, which is obviously unacceptable).
2. Indeterminism: a free act is uncaused. This is logically irrational and impossible.
3. Selfdeterminism: a free act is self caused. This in fact must be and is the case.

God has a purpose for everything in creation (Prov.16:4), even though we may not be able to fathom all of the ramifications for God's purposes that doesn't mean He doesn't have them, we can understand some things now and for others we may have to wait, our job right now is to get to know God more fully, and in this way we can come to trust Him even in the things that are hard to understand. Keep reading your Bible, keep trusting in God and I hope you will continue to study along with us here at Friends and Family Forum.