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.
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