While studying the book of Revelation, I included the book titled God and the Problem of Evil in my reading materials.
The book explored four perspectives that addressed a modern-day question: If God possesses unlimited power, wouldn’t He remove evil? And if He is truly good, wouldn’t He indeed do so?
Before concluding my study on the final chapter of Revelation, I wanted to present some insights from the book in a question-and-answer style.
I firmly believe that the traditional questions and their corresponding answers regarding the problem of evil are the most beneficial ones.
My article today is a summary of notes taken on Phillip Carey’s understanding of the traditional view.
Question: Assuming God is good and all-powerful, how is evil even possible?
Answer: No evil takes place unless God permits it. God has a good reason for permitting evil, which takes the form of a greater good that he uses evil to bring about.
Evil as Corruption
C.S. Lewis observes that evil means “bad” as well as “evil.” According to Lewis, “Badness is only spoiled goodness.”
For example, a rotten apple, a ruined house, and a divided community are all good things that have been spoiled in their own way.
I have never considered evil in the manner Lewis portrays it, but I hope you will share my appreciation for his insights.
Let’s continue our question-and-answer format to better understand Lewis’ thoughts.
Question: How can there be corruption when all things are created by one all-powerful God, who is wholly good and corrupts nothing?
Answer: “Corruption is not a failure of being, but is always a failure to be something. Corruption has no being, but is being except as something that is lacking” (Lewis).
That evil has no being of itself upholds the pure goodness of the Creator.
Every negative thing is, to some degree, a positive thing that has been corrupted.
Lewis explains that darkness is not a thing in itself. It is the absence of light.
Evil is what takes place when things are deprived of some good they ought to have.
Question: Does this mean that God didn’t create evil?
Answer: That is correct.
Yesterday, I drove past a historic house located on the Pacific Ocean. The house was originally flawless, but over the years, the wind and waves from the ocean led to its deterioration.
It has taken several months for workers to restore the house to its former beauty.
Did the architect and original builder cause the damage that the workers had to fix? Absolutely not. They constructed a magnificent house for a once-famous movie star.
Similarly, God created a flawless world for humans to inhabit. Just like the builders in my example, He did not create evil.
Question: Isn’t it necessary for God to create evil, so people can know the difference between good and evil?
Answer: That’s like saying you need darkness to see light. Good can be known of itself, but evil must be known in the light of the good it is missing.
You know the house in my illustration is ruined because you have an idea of what a good house looks like.
You know a society is corrupt only in comparison to a standard of justice the person or society has violated.
Question: Didn’t God have to create evil, so people could have free will?
Answer: The will, like everything God creates, is oriented toward good. The freedom of the will is its ability to love and choose what is good.
For example, the thief is choosing to get a good thing in an evil way.
Question: If God created all things, then God must have created evil.
Answer: Evil has no causal effect of its own, just as it has no real being of its own.
The reality of evil is the reality of absence. Like a hole in a shirt. You can’t have the hole without the shirt.
Real evil is parasitic. It is something missing, defective, or deformed of the good.
Evil takes the form of real defects with real effects, but it gets its power to do anything at all from the reality of the good things it deforms.
In a morally evil action, the ability to act at all comes from God as the Creator, who made the human will as well as the human body.
The vice that makes the action evil is the deformity of the will that is not of God’s doing.
Corruptible Creatures
Question: Why does God make corruption possible in the first place?
Answer: Creation is capable of being corrupted because we are created. Every house that is built is a house that is capable of ruin.
What God can do is give created beings the gift of everlasting life, preserving them from corruption.
Paul speaks of this in his letter to the Corinthians.
For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53).
Origins of Evil
Question: What about the first moral evil or sin?
Answer: Augustine taught that moral evil originates within the self as a corruption in the will.
The will is a good thing because it is by nature oriented toward the good of happiness.
Happiness is the attainment of the intrinsic purpose of your life. It is the chief end of man.
Jesus pointed the way to true happiness when he said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
“This is the greatest and first commandment.
“And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22.37-38).
Moral evil occurs when we seek happiness in the wrong way or in the wrong things.
True happiness is being united with God forever in love.
Augustine taught that all moral evil is a kind of love. It is a love disordered and deformed in the wrong direction.
The essence of the disorder is to love lower things rather than the higher ones.
Many things are genuinely good and often necessary for life, but they should not be sought as if they could make us ultimately happy.
Sin or moral evil originates when the will turns away from God, the supreme Good, and prefers something else in his place.
Augustine reasoned about the sin of the fallen angels: “Angelic sin – to love something good – themselves – but in the wrong order, putting themselves before God.”
Think about it this way. There is no evil in the world. The angels chose evil by choosing an inferior good – themselves – in preference to God.
They loved what they knew could not possibly be their highest good in preference to what they knew was their highest good.
You could call this self-love, but it hardly deserves the name, for it means failing to seek their own highest good, which was to be found in God, not themselves.
Why? Their decision amounts to a conscious rejection of their own happiness, following a desire that what they know cannot be their highest good.
Question: What could be the cause of such a choice?
Answer: The failure to choose their own good was always a possibility, because of free will.
Question: How do humans who have been made in the image of God become corrupt sinners?
Answer: When we attempt to make ourselves the ground of our own being and the source of our own ultimate good, we sin like the fallen angels.
We corrupt God’s design for our lives when we choose a good thing – ourselves – above God. Our highest good is always God, not ourselves.
Disordered love leads to exploitation, oppression, and war.
Humans were to rule over creation, but we brought disorder to earth rather than wisdom and justice.
Today’s Application
I appreciate the logic that fallen angels and sinful humans choose to love themselves over the love of God and other humans.
By God’s grace, I want to experience the highest and best that God has for my life. That involves striving for God’s best gift – loving him and other people.
YouTube Video
Rudy Ross and I have a video on the Book of Revelation today. It can be found on the Bob Spradling channel.
Real Voices 