We need to establish one thing before we can respond to this question: God is good. “Oh thank the Lord, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever,” says 1 Chronicles 16:34. is stressed in Psalms 119:68; 100:5; 145:8–9 and echoed in Psalms 107:1, 118:1, 118:29, and 136:1. God’s goodness is explained in 1 John 1:5 (“God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all”), but perhaps more significantly, Jesus Christ affirms God’s goodness in Luke 18:19 (“No one is good-except God alone”). God’s goodness is evident in all that He says and accomplishes.
Why does evil exist? Is it “from God”?
I can respond to this quickly: wickedness is not “from God.” [“Evil” was not created by God]. According to 1 Timothy 4:4, everything that God has created is excellent, and He Himself said as much (in Genesis 1:31). “Evil” was not introduced by him. Evil is the degradation of what was once good, and it exists where there is no good.
Very early on in the Bible, the root cause of evil on Earth is identified. In Genesis 3, the evil (d)evil is revealed to mankind as a serpent. According to John 8:44, the devil, who “was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him,” is the source of all lies and deceit. Jesus said, “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character because he is a liar and the father of lies.” This being, whose nature is devoid of truth, goes by the name Satan. Since the dawn of time, Jesus has known him.
Satan is no longer permitted to remain in God’s presence since he is God’s enemy. According to Jesus, he witnessed Satan “fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). If Satan is referred to as the “King of Babylon” in Isaiah 14:12–15, then his fall might be explained by his conceit and attempts to imitate God. In order to deny humanity the right to eternal life in God’s presence, Satan pretended to be a serpent in the Garden of Eden in an attempt to convince man to disobey God.
Why doesn’t God simply remove all evil?
God will ultimately drive out all evil. “The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil,” according to 1 John 3:8. According to Revelation 20:10, the devil, indeed, will be defeated. God is therefore at work. However, let’s consider what would happen now if God really “removed” all evil. Something or maybe someone would be “removed”?
Man-made evil may well be the worst kind of evil we know. But man’s natural tendency is to sin, and to disobey God. According to Romans 3:23, all people sin, and all “fall short of the glory of God.” Compared to God’s perfect holiness (Isaiah 6:3), all of humanity “does evil”, and all people are “evil-doers”. Fortunately for Christians, our lack of “perfect holiness” was redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus makes us righteous before God, and thanks to Jesus, we can look forward to an evil-free eternal future in the presence of the Lord. But while we are here on earth, the answer to the title question is that if God were indeed to “remove” all evil, this would include us, as well. Is this what we want: presumably not, and it’s certainly not what God wants for us.
However, if God permits us to commit errors without taking action, He must also grant others the same grace. This implies that we could be harmed by others without God intervening to stop it. You could wonder, though, what about evil that manifests itself as disease or natural disasters? This is also a result of Genesis 3’s account of man’s disobedience to God. Both the Garden of Eden and humanity’s actual location in God’s presence were lost. The gift of being able to live in a physical world devoid of disease and death has vanished.
Does the presence of evil mean that God isn’t in control?
It is not because God isn’t in charge that we essentially choose to be a “presence of evil” whenever we exercise our own free will to sin. It’s because He bestowed upon us free will and because He will not “revoke” His blessings. “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” says a God who loves us and values us more than anything else. Peter 3:9 If God steps in to stop people from doing evil, then no one will be able to repent and will ultimately end up in the grave. Basically, He would be working against His own loving purpose by interfering.
It makes sense that many Christians would struggle to weigh the promise of eternal bliss against their present pain, even while we are aware that our earthly sorrow will be short lived in comparison to all of eternity with God. Maybe there are lessons to be learned from the life of the apostle Paul. He enumerates the bad things that have happened to him while he has been serving God in 2 Corinthians 11:21–28. As if the list weren’t lengthy enough, he omits being bitten by a serpent (Acts 28:3) and having a “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). But he is happy about it all since it makes him weaker, which lets Christ’s power rest on him (2 Corinthians 12:9)!
Does it not bother God that we encounter evil?
Yes it does. We should never think that, because evil doesn’t prompt God to send lightning down from the sky on our behalf, God is indifferent to our suffering. Psalm 34:16-18 goes some way to describing God’s sentiments. He can be “grieved in His heart” (Genesis 6:6) by people’s actions, and we have the assurance that He is continuously working to guide us back to better times because “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). It pains Him that we are troubled by man-made evil, natural disasters, crippling illnesses, pandemics, economic hardship and other corruptions of the goodness He created. Wherever goodness (health, love, prosperity, etc.) is absent, evil makes inroads into our lives, and God hates evil (Zechariah 8:17, Proverbs 6:16-19).
How can we be certain that God IS in control?
“With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), and with God, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37). God is almighty. Absence of His intervention does not equal absence of His control. We know that there is no darkness in God, whatsoever (1 John 1:5) and that He loves us (John 3:16). These are the comforting truths that we can, and must, rely on. There ARE things that God will not and cannot do – such as break promises or lie (Psalm 145:13, Hebrews 6:17-18, Titus 1:2). Lack of control is not one of His characteristics. However, as His perfect righteousness does not allow Him to restore the Garden of Eden for our corrupted world, we will have to accept that our “life in the flesh” will be subject to challenges, and that some will suffer more than others before all reach repentance. Like the owner of the vineyard in Matthew 20, God wants us all to get the opportunity to earn a denarius, even those who join at the eleventh hour.
