Why there is Evil
In God’s Good world
The Backstory
God is not the source of evil. Yes, It was God who planted the two very unique trees in the center of the garden. One called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and one called the tree of life. Many people wonder why God did this? The answer revolves around God’s will and pleasure to make man in His image. This would necessarily include a free-will. Man needed to have a legitimate choice, hence the two trees. God gave clear instruction and warning to Adam and Eve. He also foreknew what would transpire in the garden.
Evil is the perversion of God’s goodness in giving His highest creations free-will. Free-will is the right and responsibility to choose. He didn’t want robotic servants, He wanted a family who would love and obey Him by choice. Though God foreknew what would happen; this it does not mean Adam and Eve did not have a legitimate choice. Nor does it mean our choices are always a part of His plan. God does not need evil to fulfill His plan.
Our choices are important and they do have real consequences. When we choose to call something good which God calls evil, this is rebellion. This is what happen in the opening chapters of Genesis. There are actually three rebellions recorded in the first eleven chapters of Genesis which reveal both realms of God’s creation have their rebels.
It is in understanding the heavenly and earthly scope of these rebellions that we begin to understand why there is such evil in God’s good world. These rebellions are the reason we have experienced separation, suffering and death. The Good News is, this is not the end of the story. From before the beginning He already had a solution. He has a plan, and it’s working.
God is so good, that He has made a way for us to turn back to Him. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. It is because of His redemptive work that we can return to the Father. When we come to Him, He is able to work all things for our good.
In the Beginning
In the Beginning we see that it is Father’s expressed will to live in the midst of His creation. Both the heavenly realm and the earthly realm would unite in such a way that His Imagers would co-rule with Him over all His works. His good pleasure was and is to live as one family on Earth administering and stewarding the whole of His creation. In Genesis 1 - 2 we are introduced to the pleasure of The Father and a glimpse of what He wanted and created as a model. A Mountain Garden, where God Himself would live in fellowship with His earthly human creation, as well as His heavenly spiritual creation. Both realms of His creation had assignments in God’s Kingdom to make the whole earth like this mountain garden. This plan and purpose was initiated with the creation of Adam and Eve, with God giving them dominion over all the works of His hands. He gave them His word which expressed His eternal plan. Therefore His plan has remained unchanged. This also means it will surely come to fullness and continue forever. God’s plan is about His Kingdom’s righteous rule over all creation. It is about living in right relationship with Him. This divine plan came with a risk He was fully aware of.
Worth the Risk
The Heavenly Father had created beings, both heavenly and earthly whom he had empowered with the gift of choice and free will. This meant they could choose to follow a plan of their own instead of God’s. This is exactly what took place, and it took place in both realms. Both of God’s households experienced an insurrection which warred against The Father’s original intentions. The good news is the Father’s commitment to what He has said in the beginning. The Biblical account from Genesis to Revelation is not only about how sin and death entered in and ravaged all of creation. It also reveals God’s commitment and His plan to preserve and restore what He began.
“For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”
— Colossians 1:19-20
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