GOD, FREEDOM, AND EVIL

This title is borrowed from a book by Alvin Plantinga. In it he discusses exactly the assumption addressed by Pastor Lawrence this past Sunday, the idea that a loving God would absolutely NOT allow evil.

It may be hard to wrap our heads around, but might there not be greater concerns to God than the problem of evil?

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis describes it in terms of will. God of course wills that there be no evil. It is not His ideal that we deal with that. BUT. An overriding will, if you will (ha), is that we be able to choose. If there were no choice for evil, we would simply be robots.

But He doesn’t leave us there….

N.T. Wright puts a different spin on it in Evil and the Justice of God, redirecting our attention from why evil exists to what He has done about it. In many ways, the answer to “Why?” doesn’t matter. Evil is an incredibly terrible fact of our existence. BUT GOD HAS NOT LEFT US ALONE TO DEAL WITH IT.

He sent His son in a tremendous act of love. LOVE DEFEATS EVIL. It takes all of the power out of it.

He sent His Holy Spirit to bring peace. 

He could have left us to our own devices, but He didn’t.

To leave with a poignant reminder from Sunday…if God got rid of all of the evil in this world, NONE OF US WOULD BE HERE. To quote Lewis, “…the intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another. Our life is, at every moment, supplied by Him; our tiny miraculous free will only operates on bodies which His continual energy keeps in existence-our very power to think is His power communicated to us.” That is mind-blowing. God is closer to the most evil creature than we are to each other!!

Which brings us back to where we started…is God good? If His actions tell us anything, then yes, He is.