The Problem of Evil Series, Wk4, “God's Purpose and Answer in Evil”

  A man was living a great life. He had a large healthy family, and his health was doing well too. His assists were diversified and made him rich. And he was known by everyone as a good man. Then one day everything crumbled. He lost his family in a freak natural disaster. His assists were destroyed over night. Eventually his health was ravaged. When his friends showed up, they should have comforted him, but instead, they began to tell him it was all his fault. He had done something wrong in his life and now the bad was coming for him. He didn’t understand it, and he never did. His story ends without a real resolve as to why. Sure his health, and wealth came back. He even had more children, but he never had the answer as to why it happened in the first place. 

This is the summary of the book of Job. Job never found out the the purpose to the evil that befell him. But as the reader, we do. We know that God was making a point to Satan, and future generations. First, bad things happen even to those who follow God. This was a foreign concept in the Ancient Near East, as it is today, where we ask the question, why do bad things happen to good people? But there are things that God knows that we don’t as to why certain evils fall into our lives. Second, God is in control. Though we might think that evil has reign in this world, God is still working out his plans to bring about his end goals. In both, we should awe in God for he does everything for his good purposes, and that is a comforting thing.

 

The understanding that God does have purpose in evil, is what brings us back to our final week in our Answering the Problem of Evil series, where we’re going to look at God’s purpose in allowing evil, and his answer to it. But before we dive into his purpose and answer, we need to recap what we’ve talked about so far leading up to this week.

In our first week, we looked at the origin of evil. Since the Scriptures tells us that God is wholly good, and that he creates all things good, evil cannot begin with him. Instead, what we see is that evil comes out of the will of God’s creatures in rebellion against him. It is the choices of God’s creatures to seek their own desires outside of God, that produces evil. 

In our second week, we looked at the affects of evil in the natural world. Here we discussed a link between the image bearers of God who are given dominion over the physical creation and the rebellion of those image bearers against God. Through a spiritual connection that we have with the physical creation, by way of our dominion position, we are the primary source to the chaos that is occurring in the world today. There is also a secondary source of evil in the creation, which are those spiritual beings who are also in rebellion against God. Finally, in the same week we talked about how God uses natural calamities to bring just judgment down upon evil.

Then last week, we asked the question about the amount of evil in the world. Why is there so much? The answer being that God is actually restraining the amount of evil there is. There could be more, and yet, God is working to mitigate evil for a time. However, there will be a day when he allows evil to run rampant for a time, and then, we will see what real untethered evil looks like. But we’re not there yet.

With these three aspects of the problem of evil addressed, we can now ask our first question of the day, what is God’s purpose in allowing evil? This is a general understanding of why, and doesn’t address every specific reason, because those specific reasons are for God’s counsel alone, and may or may not ever be revealed to us.

At the beginning of series we wrested just a bit with the concept of what it meant to be an image bearer of God. One of the things we must understand that when God creates anything it is automatically less than himself. It is deficient, or lacking, in some way compared to himself. Not deficient in the sense that it is created somehow imperfect, but rather it cannot carry all of the divine aspects of God. God does not create mini-gods. There are not other all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present beings. There are not eternal and self-sufficient gods out there. When God creates, he creates with eternity in mind for his creatures, but they are not eternal as God is. They have a beginning, he does not. They have reason and are able to know things, but they are not all-knowing. They can do amazing feats, but they are not all-powerful. So they are deficient in the totality of divinity. Yet they can participate, in limited ways, in God’s divine nature.

We see these to concepts in places like Isaiah 43:10, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.”

And in what Peter writes in Second Peter 1:3-4, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”

One aspect of this participation is knowledge. God’s divine attribute of knowledge is that he is omniscient, or all-knowing. God does not need to open a book to know something. He does not need to be taught, or instructed in any way. God has the divine knowledge of all things. However, his creatures do not. They are limited to only know what they themselves are instructed in. 

One of the aspects of the choice in the Garden of Eden, is the choice to pursue knowledge from God, or to pursue knowledge outside of God. God’s knowledge expounds his goodness, whereas seeking knowledge outside of his good already begins in evil. The clue as to the central issue that God is trying to teach us is found in the very name of the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The concept of good and evil doesn’t make sense to a creature who is made in total goodness, as Adam and Eve were. But to God, who knows all things, he fully knows the concept of good and evil. He knows what the effects of evil are without ever needing to act in evil, or to experience and understand it. 

However, for the creature of God, they can only learn by two options: either they learn through obedience, which is trust in what another says, or they learn through experience with the effects happening to them and those around them.

We can see this in things such as addictions. I have never been addicted to alcohol or drugs, because I obeyed those who told me about the effects of the addiction. Yet there are countless people that learned the hard way, through experiencing their effects. In the garden’s choice we see these two ways of learning presented to the creatures. They could learn through obedience, or they could learn through experience. They chose experience, and do to that choice, we all are learning what evil is by way of experience.

But the next question must be, what then is the point? Why does God want us to understand good and evil? Last week we briefly talked about a greater world to come. As Revelation 21:3-4 told us, a world where, “… the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

In this greater world, evil has no place, because there will be no rebellion against God. This is because the will of God’s creatures will be willing laid before him. He will have a people that, in a small way, know what he knows: that his goodness is what we should seek through trustful obedience, and that evil should be turned away from. 

In the opening to the book of Isaiah, the first time God speaks through the prophet is to address the wickedness of the southern kingdom of Judah. The Lord says this beginning in Isaiah 1:16, “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Is. 1:16-20)”

The Lord is seeking those who will turn from evil and to his goodness. Those who are in eternity have sought the goodness of God in obedience to him. So the overarching purpose of God in evil, is to allow his creatures to understand the horridness of it, and to seek only his goodness.

But what is his answer to dealing with evil? There are three parts to this. The first is this, God’s fix for evil has always been through the cross. First Peter 1:17-21 states, “And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”

The cross is God’s answer to the plight that we are in. Through the cross the punishment for evil is placed on the shoulders of God himself. Though the trespass was our fault, God placed the punishment upon himself as a display of his goodness. At the cross of Christ, the justice and love of God collide. Justice in dealing with evil, and love that would not hold us to an eternal accountability, but make the way for salvation.

The second answer to the problem of evil is the Church. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:4-12, "When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.”

The Church is to proclaim God’s fix which is in Christ Jesus. God answers evil by saying, I’ve dealt with it on the cross. The Church’s role is then to proclaim it to all people of all nations. This is why the proclamation of the Gospel is important for every Christian believers to participate in. By word and deed we are the trumpeters of God’s answer to evil. That though we were the cause of all the evil around us, God himself heaped the punishment onto himself, that we may turn from evil and to his goodness.

And because our Lord suffered for others, those who put there trust in him may suffer to prove that God’s word is true. That though we suffer here, we trust there is a greater world ahead.

God’s final answer to the problem of evil is this from Revelation 20:7-15, “And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

There will be a day when God will bring about his final judgment on all evil. Neither image bearers nor spiritual beings will be safe from the final judgment of God. And the judgment isn’t whether we accepted Jesus or not, Jesus’ sacrifice is what broke evil, and through him we can receive eternal life. But make no mistake, it is our own desire to turn away from God and to evil that brings judgment upon us. God has given us a away out of the judgment, but if we are unrepentant of evil, then all that’s left in us is a heart which only desires it. But that evil must be dealt with, and at the end he will. God’s final answer to evil, is the lake of fire.

This is why Pauls states this in Second Corinthians 6:1-13, "Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything. We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.”

The call of the Church to the world is to repent and turn to Jesus before we move into eternity, because on that day there will be no more repenting, and our eternity will be sealed.

In the coming weeks we’re going to zero in on these last three aspects as we talk about Christ our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King, but for now, we need to end on this: Church, our Savior broke the power of evil on the cross, we are now to live in his victory. We are to proclaim it with our words and deeds, until the day he returns or takes us to himself, because there is an eternity where there will be no more turning either to God’s goodness or away from it. For the decision we make in this life reverberates with eternal consequences. 

So my challenge for you is this, is to seek the Lord for one person in your life that needs to hear the Goodness of the Gospel which broke evil’s hold on humanity. I want to challenge you to steep yourself in prayer for them and seek the Lord to give you the words and the moment to share with them the Gospel. That they may hear it and that seeds may be planted. Then give them over to the Lord who will bring the flowering of faith.

Let us be a people, not scared of the question of evil, because we have and know the answer, it is the Lord Jesus himself. Amen.

The Problem of Evil Series, Wk3, “Why So Much Evil?”

  William A. Rowe is a twentieth century philosopher who wrote in an 1979 article about an example of what he believed to be unnecessary suffering. Rowe’s example is this, “Suppose in some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering.” Rowe writes this as an example of an abhorrent evil. The idea here is that there is evil that has no purpose and yet happens, he then states that therefore God is either not in control or not fully good. 

Rowe’s example of the fawn brings us back to our sermon series on the problem of evil. In the last two weeks we have covered our role in the problem. In the first week we looked at the origin of evil. Evil does not begin with God, because God creates all things good. However, God gives us the divine gift of will in which we can choose his goodness or reject it. By rejecting the goodness of God, even in a small way we commit evil. Because any movement away from God is categorizes as moving away from good and therefore must be evil. So the origin of evil is our desire to do our own will and not the will of God.

In week two we looked at the affects of the will choosing evil. God crated his image bearers to have dominion over the physical creation. Due to this, there is a spiritual connection between us and the physical creation. When Adam sinned the very nature of the world was thrown into bondage and now is in chaos. Just as sin affects relationships between God and his image bearers, it also affects image bearers and the world they inhabit. Due to this bondage, all matter of natural disasters and diseases happen, even the seemingly unnecessary suffering of the fawn. The image bearers of God are the primary source of evil in the natural world. But there is a secondary source, which are the spiritual beings who are in rebellion against God. They have an affect as well as they battle both God and his creatures. Finally, though God does cause some natural disasters, he always does so as the just Judge; carrying out divine punishment on those who choose evil.

After tackling both the origin of evil and its affects in the natural world, the next question many people ask is what about the amount of evil? This can be asked in various ways as, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people, or why does God allow children to be hurt? Or in the more philosophical way, why did God create this world and not another world with less or no evil? 

Let’s begin in reverse, why did God create a world where evil even exist? Philosophers wrestle with the idea of the Best of Possible Worlds Theory. Scholars Marilyn and Robert Adams write, “Taking his inspiration from Leibniz, Pike proposes the Best of All Possible Worlds as such a comprehensive good. By ‘possible world’ is meant a complex state of affairs, whether a completely determinate, maximal consistent state of affairs, or an aggregate of finite or created things together with their whole history. What is important for present purposes is that the least variation in world history constitutes a different possible world. According to Leibniz, what God does in creating is to actualize a possible world.”

The concept here is simple when you take out the philosophical jargon. In the mind of God are all possible worlds that could be created, the world we now live in is the best world that God could actualize or create. Think about it like this, if you’ve ever watched the current Marvel universe movies there are many other universes out there. This is called the multiverse and is actually a real naturalistic scientific hypothesis. 

In the multiverse theory, there’s a universe out there where everything is exactly the same except you wore black socks instead of white socks. However, there is also a universe where black socks wore you. Due to the infinite amount of choices humans can make, there is an infinite amount of universes to match them. The difference between the multiverse and the best of possible worlds idea, is that the possible worlds are only in God’s mind, for he knows all the possibilities but only creates one of them, the best one. And since we’re here and able to discuss it, this one must be the best world that God could create. 

So the question becomes, could God have created a better world with less evil? Here we run into a problem, what do we mean by less evil? Do we mean that there are no natural disasters, but allow for murder? Do we take out all natural disasters and murders, but allow for broken bones? Do we take out all those things and the broken bones, but allow for scrapes? Or do we take out all forms of suffering even down to eczema and balding? A world where only bad people get hurt but not the good ones? A world where, adults may get hurt, but children don’t?

The issue of the best possible world is not one of evil but one of the degree of evil that we’re okay with. There is always a lesser evil that could happen. Because if we had the lesser evil, we would not know there was a greater evil, that lesser evil would be the greatest evil, and therefore we could say that there is still more evil than there needs to be. 

In reverse, there is also a better good. We could have a sunny day, but then there’s the heat, so it could improve with a slight cool breeze. But that could also be better with a day off. That could also be better with that day off sitting on a beach. 

The modern philosopher, country singer Brad Paisley writes of a group of guys sitting around a campfire and one says, “Man, it don’t get any better than this…,” to which another responds, “Boys, I hate to disagree,” and then proceeds to sing, “If Bill Dance and Hank Parker floated by in a boat/And volunteered to be our fishin' guides/And Richard Petty pulled up in the old '43 car/And asked us if we wanted a ride.” In other words, it could always get better. So the best of possible worlds, could always have less evil, or more good. The reality is, we would never be satisfied with more good or less evil, because there would always be more to have either way.

Except I believe there is a better world. A world that is to come, where we’re told in Revelation 21:3-4, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”

So why doesn’t God actualize that world now? That world which has no evil and has maximum good, because the people will be next to the infinite God who is infinitely good. Again, the issue has its root in the will of the image bears. God has created the best world in which image bearers can experience in a finite way, what he understands in the infinite. God understands all things without the need of experience, because he is all-knowing. Anything God creates does not have that level of knowledge, they must live into a world where experience can happen. It’s through experience that creatures gain knowledge. This experience comes by way of choosing God and his goodness or not and turning to evil. In this way we can learn what it means to desire God or to reject him. Through experience in this world, God can then bring us into a world without evil because we understand what it means to resent it and follow him.

We see a glimmer of this learning when Paul writes of the angels, “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (Eph. 3:10)”

Even if my argument is true, the question still remains, why this amount of evil. To this I would respond that we do not fully grasp the work that God is doing right now to restrain the evil of our world. 

Paul writes in Second Thessalonians 2:1-7, “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.”

God is currently restraining evil. Imagine if God wasn’t restraining the hearts tended towards evil, what kind of devastation would occur. We see the mass destruction that we can cause on each other. The further we move as a people away from biblical teaching, the more wicked our world becomes. Love diminishes and hate multiples. And the brutality we show to each other increases. Yet it always seems to be getting worse, and we’re surprised by it. The reality is, we can’t imagine the brutality that could be, we just experience the brutality there is. But it could be worse, and the book of Revelation reveals much of that as it unfolds God’s removal of his restraint on evil. 

Jesus speaks of that day, when evil will no longer be restrained, “For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. (Matt. 24:21-22)”

Until that day comes it is Christ’s Church who stands as a beckoning light in the world which points to the Light of the World, Jesus. This is why it is the Church who is to stand against injustices, against corruption, against perversions, and all other types of evils as it also stands for compassion, mercy, and grace. We as believers are to be seeking God in holy lives, proclaiming his transformational goodness through our words and deeds. There should be a distinction of Christ’s people from the world around them. 

But too often there isn’t. Too often we fail and fall, and the world sees no difference. This is why we must be more truthful of our struggles. Not denying our failures but boasting in Jesus who overcomes them. Because there will be a day, when this world will experience an untethered evil and then a judgment of the evil. God will then answer the problem of evil with a finality to end the discussion. But more on that next week.

For now, my challenge to you is this, are you seeking to live a holy God honoring life? If you have trusted in Jesus as Savior, does your life bring the goodness of God to others? Are you compassionate, and merciful? Do you stand against injustices wherever they are? Because we can be compassionate to those who we like and love, but God calls us to a greater compassion, to those who we don’t love or like. God calls us to not only seek justice for those we agree with, but also for those we don’t. The goodness of God calls us into his life, he is not merely an additive to our own. Seek God to open your eyes to the areas where he wants to work.

Let us not be good only to those from whom we will receive good, but also to the one who would reject us. Only when evil is confronted with God’s goodness, can we see the affects of Jesus’ victory in our lives. Amen.

The Problem of Evil Series, Wk2, “What About Natural Evil?”

  Growing up I was taught this little jingle in school, “recycle, reduce, reuse, and close the loop.” The jingle was to teach us kids to recycle our cans, bottles, paper, cardboard, and whatever else there was. We used to be shown the pictures of the plastic bottle holders wrapped around a turtle’s neck. We were told that the Ozone layer was collapsing and that if we recycled we could do our part. As I grew up, my dad and I would recycle some bottles and cans we had been collecting. One time when we did, my dad started up a conversation with the guy, asking him where all the stuff went. The man told us, most of it goes to the landfill. And the estimates are up to 80% of all recycled material doesn’t get recycled due to either not being done so at the beginning, or because of food residue that wasn’t cleaned before the item was recycled. 

But the idea that we as a nation should be trying to fix our waste to help the environment around us, is what brings us back to our series on the problem of evil. Last week we tackled the issue of the origin of evil, which is our purposeful choices to choose things that are not of God. Through our God-given will, we can choose to lay our will before God and seek his goodness, or we can use our will for our own purposes which leads us further from goodness into evil. This concept has at its center that anytime you move away from the purest good, which is God, everything else is a diminishing of that good, which is evil.

With the origin of evil is understood that it comes out of our own will, we can now turn to the affects of our choices. From here on out, we’re going to use this term “free creatures” to represent those beings within God’s creation who act freely. For our purposes today, this would encompass only those creatures that have the cognitive abilities to make choices.

With that in mind, we can turn our attention to the affects of choices made by free creatures. We’re going to look at how the choices of God’s free creatures affect the creation itself.

Now usually, when we talk about the choices we make, most of us can agree that our choices can have an affect on the world around us. Child safety advocate, Elizabeth Smart  said, “The truth is, the bad choices of other people can hurt us.” A Turkish writer once wrote, "One person's choices can turn a calm lake into a rough ocean.” There is an idiom, "Make sure everybody in your boat is rowing and not drilling holes when you're not looking.” And Proverbs 11:9 states, “With his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbor ….” 

However, those effects do not go beyond relationships. I might say a cross word to someone and our relationship is damaged because of it. I might make a bad choice and others suffer due to it. This is usually called moral evil. Evil that humans create because of their choices. However, there are other types of evils, such as natural evil. 

In fact, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant absolve humans of any wrong doing beyond what they can affect in their personal sphere. Matthé Scholten, picking up on Kant’s view of natural evil, writes, “Although natural evils are explicitly defined as not being produced by the intentional or negligent actions of human agents, they are still referred to as ‘evils’ in this tradition because they are seen as the side effects of the intentional actions of a nonhuman or divine agent, that is, of God.” 

The vast majority of people separate themselves from the natural evils of the world, because, "How can I effect the people in the next town over, or on a greater scale, an earthquake in China?” Because we have limited influence, people reason that natural evil must then come from God who is the all-powerful being who can effect nature. Yet the choices we make have a larger impact in the natural world than we might think.

Last week we began to look at Genesis 1:26 and who we are as image bears of God. It’s here that we must return so that we can answer this question of natural evil. In the same breath that we’re told that God decides to make humanity in his image, he states, in Genesis 1:26, “… And let them have dominion …” This concept of dominion carries with it how one governs something. The Topical Lexicon states, “In the Tanakh its (the word dominion) range runs from benevolent oversight to harsh subjugation.” God gives over the dominion of the physical creation to humans and by their choices they will either govern it in his goodness or subjugate it in evil. 

It’s in this concept of dominion that a link is establish between God’s image bearers and his creation that we will see play out after Adam and Eve make their first evil decision. The reason this decision is evil, is because the first humans have decided to turn away from the good order of God’s creation to choose a different path. But any turn from God’s goodness leads not into more goodness, because there could never be any greater good than God, who is wholly good. So any turn from him would be to turn towards evil. Therefore disregarding God’s command to not eat of the tree, is an evil act. 

Now, let’s look at that connection in the aftermath of Adam and Eve’s decision. The scene is set as God returns to the Garden, but his image bearer are no where to be found. We pick up the scene in Genesis 3:9, “But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’ He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’ (v. 9-13)”

This is the cascade of evil rooted in that first evil decision as one person blames the next in a series of passing the buck. Already we see the relationship aspect of evil grow. By turning their back on God their relationship with each other is also broken. They hide, not only from God, but from each other, by distancing themselves from the other’s actions.

Due to their decisions, God begins to tell them their consequences. Going in reverse from the serpent to the woman, and then final the man. Let’s zoom in on God’s consequences to Adam. Dropping down to verse 17, we read, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. (v.17-19)”

Here we see the connection between the evil choices of these free creatures and the impact they have on the world around them. Paul R. House and Eric Mitchell comment that, “After sin enters the picture, sin, pride, and trouble escalate until the entire creation becomes corrupted.” Victor P. Hamilton remarks, “Sin always puts a wedge between things and people …God and humans … man and woman … man and himself, and now between man and the soil.” The decisions of free creatures have a direct impact on the natural world around them.

We can see this impact in things such as the AIDs epidemic, where the CDC recognizes that the disease is perpetuated through human sexual acts. During the cold war, Russia tried to create a reservoir by setting off a nuclear bomb, only to turn the lake radioactive. The dominion God’s image bearers were to have over the creation was placed under a harsh subjugation due to their decision to seek evil. Paul writes of it likes this in Romans 8:20-21, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Creation was impacted by the decisions of God’s first image bearers.

So then because of this intimate connection we have as images bears with God’s creation, when we choose evil, i.e. not choosing to follow God, we participate in the subjugation of the creation. The spiritual connections are greater than we typically give credit. Just the simple decision not to thrown away a piece of trash can have an impact on the creatures that inhabit God’s creation. And collectively, as image bears we have a connection to the greater world around us, and we do not even tend to recognize. 

This type of individual evil adding to corporate evil can be scene in the idea of vehicle traffic. I could drive all day and the exhaust from my car doesn’t do much. In fact, you might not even notice it unless you’re right next to the tail pipe. But when you head into a city, there’s a brown cloud that hovers over the buildings. Put a million cars on the road and now you can see the exhaust. Individually, we may not seemingly have impact on world around us, but as we grow as a people, we carry evil collectively and it impacts the creation more and more.  We as a collection of image bears participate in the creation’s subjugation by our personal evil choices. This creates a spiritual torrent that continues to affect all creation.

Because of this, we can answer questions such as, where does cancer and all the diseases that plague us? Well, hey come from the evil choices which subjugate this creation. Why are some inclined to evil? We all are in varying degrees, but our evil choices have led to an increase of the degradation of the physical and psychological aspects of who we are. Why is it when there is inbreeding, there are physiological and mental deforming? We are a corrupted race and therefore that corruption is passed down. Our spiritual connection to creation is deeper and more intense than we tend to think, but the Scriptures tell us that connection is there. As a image bearers, our choice to participate in evil is the primary cause of the natural disasters of this world. 

However, there is a serpent too. We cannot miss the fact that there are other free creatures in this creation. Whereas the actions of the image bearers have physical creational effects, spiritual free creations have a secondary impact. These free creatures also can cause evil. The serpent in the garden (Gen. 3), Satan in bringing destruction upon Job (Job 1-2), the demonic spirit who battled against Michael when Gabriel was bringing a message to Daniel (Dan. 10:13). Paul states this about these other free creatures when he writes this in Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Yet, though there are spiritual forces, we must not do what Adam and Eve did, and pass the buck to them when it comes to evil. We are guilty of evil just as they are, and more so, sense we are image bearers of God.

So there are two sources that cause natural evil: The primary source are image bearers who have a dominion connection to the physical creation, and secondarily, spiritual beings who are in rebellion against God.

Finally, when talking about natural evils, we must address the concept of God’s role. As I stated at the beginning, the traditional view is that natural evil stems from God. However, I argue that natural evil actually stems from the connection of image bearers and their dominion connection over the creation. 

Yet there are verses such as Isaiah 45:7, which is usually quoted from the King James Version, and reads as God speaks, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Without tackling everything in the verse, the word that the KJV translates as evil is better translated as, calamity and is used in the biblical sense for humans when they do evil and for God when he brings judgment upon that evil. There are genuine times when God causes natural disasters. We see this in Genesis 7-8 in the flood, but we’re told that the reason this natural disaster occurs is because,  “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen. 6:5)”

We see God causing natural disasters again when he brought the ten plagues of Egypt (see. Ex. 7-12) because, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out … (Ex. 3:7-8)”

God brings natural disasters in light of human sin. In this way he conducts himself as the final judge of his free creatures. Isaiah 33:22 states this role, “For the Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king; he will save us.” Since the Lord is the lawgiver, he is the One who judges those that were created under his law. Too often God is given a catch 22 situation. Either he keeps his creatures accountable for their actions, and so brings judgment, or he does not, and is accused of not being just. People pray that God would act against the murder, or the dictator, but when God moves and the murder is caught and sent to jail, or the dictator is captured, people rail against God, because they wanted it a different way. Yet, out of all, God is the only one who brings unbiased verdicts against all free creatures. Something that we will talk more about in our final week.

In the end, there are three sources for evil in the case natural evil: The first two, stem from free creatures. The first free creatures are the image bearers whose dominion over creation leads them to have a significant spiritual connection that places the creation in bondage, which affects are felt both relationally between the image bears and in the natural world. The second of the free creatures are spiritual beings who interact with the natural world and the image bearers. And though they have significant power, they do not have the spiritual connect that the image bearers do. Finally, God does cause some natural disaster, but he does so as an impartial judge in response to verdicts he passes upon the evils of his creatures.

Too often we, like Adam and Even try to pass the responsibility of evil to the next person. The devil made me do it, God isn’t fair. But the reality is, we cause more evil in this world than we would ever want to know. The ramifications of our promiscuity, of our harsh words, of our not picking up the trash, is felt for generations that follow. 

Only when we recognize our role in the evils of this world, will we begin to see the reason for Jesus’ work on our behalf. Jesus came to break the power of evil, that we might return to the goodness of God in which we were created to live. 

This week I want to challenge you, to take a few days and ponder the effects of decisions you have made in the past, both good and evil. See their ramifications. You might have tried to absolve yourself of them before, saying things like, “Well yeah I said that harsh word, but they didn’t have to respond to it like that.” Or, “Well yeah I didn’t treat my spouse very good, but my kids should still talk to me because I’m their parent.” 

We need to be truthful about our decision and the ramifications they cause. This isn’t an excuse for evil to happen to us, we cannot control the evil that others do, but we can take responsibility for our own, and turn to Jesus for forgiveness. He knows every evil we’ve committed and all the repercussions of that evil throughout all of history. He is the just and good God, if we turn to him, he promises his goodness to us and that’s a comforting thing.

So let us be an honest people before the world, and be seeker s of the Good God. Amen.