Well said, well said. Someone smarter than I said God, of His own accord, surrendered some of His power when He created a creature that could create. God could eliminate all evil, but then He would not be all loving.

But that would be another blog!

Couldn't God just get rid of Sin? What complications do we face if Satan is removed from the equation, any?

Considering sin is the root cause of evil and arguably accounts for disasters both manmade and natural. Couldn't sin just be removed and the problems be solved.

ALso, I would suppose that freewill (the choice to accept God or not) could still exist aside from sin.

Daniel, sin is basically selfishness. I sin because I want something for myself regardless of the impact on my relationships with God, my family and friends, and other people. God cannot remove sin without removing our free will to follow or reject the teachings and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Through the sacrifice of Jesus, we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit does not indwell us, self does. And self is the motivation for selfishness, which is sin. It becomes a vicious circle.
So, you cannot remove sin without removing self. You remove cannot remove self without removing free choice.
In addition, if God removed sin, God would negate the sacrificial work of Jesus.

God can't wipe out evil without wiping out good. Each relies on the other. Without light, there is no dark. Without dark, there is no light. It's hard for our minds to grasp this as we live in a world of opposites and only have knowledge of things that have opposites. So in order to experience good, one has to also have knowledge of bad. The worse the bad, the better the good. Remove evil and the whole world would no longer exist.

Those who say God should wipe out evil demonstrate at best a misunderstanding of God's character and at worst have "created a god in their own image."

First the latter ... the god many follow is not concerned with their sin but only the sin of others. "I am ok because I am basically good by comparison" allows us to excuse our own sinful desires and actions as not being that bad. Sadly this shows a woeful misunderstanding of the scriptures especially in the understanding of sin as instructed and informed by the law. We are all under condemnation because no one is perfect and that is the standard. If God were to be "consistant" we would all be wiped out because we all sin and fall short of God's standard. The God they have created in their mind is one that lets the little sins slide.

The former is in reality the reason for the latter and is understandable where the unregenerate is concerned. However, we of the household of faith seem to be somewhat confused in this area too. It is not God's love for us that restains Him from dealing with our sins. What restrains Him is the sacrifial death of His son on the cross at Calvary. He loves us for sure ... but He loved us enough to send His son to die for us. Many Christians seem to believe that because God is love he winks at our little sins. The truth is because God is love he sent His son to the cross to die for our sins ... even the little ones. When I think about the cost I can only conclude there are no little sins.

Padre

PS to Wren: Praise God one day evil will be no more and God will reign forever over a sinless world.

The issues of Theodicy have perplexed me greatly as a Christian and I have not found a concrete answer to this problem. There are nice answers and very intelligent answers, but none seem to answer the question beyond reasonable doubt.

If nothing is impossible for God, then it follows he can create whatever kind of place he so desires. Ultimately it is an issue of Faith.

The problem with this kind of dialogue, as I see it, is the root concept of God itself. The question, 'Why doesn't God do something (about this or that bad thing)?' implies a concept of God as a kind of CEO, a person-like entity who weighs issues, assesses situations and then makes choices based on analysis.

Such a cognitive process takes place in time and space and implies options (to intervene or not to intervene). Let's use the example of children suffering and dying of starvation. With this concept of God as executive decision maker, we assume he can elect to not intervene at all; intervene in some cases, but not others; or intervene and prevent all suffering of children. In the last case, we have a conundrum. Why conceptualize a God who intervenes to prevent the suffering of children, but not innocent adults? And who decides what qualifies as suffering? Obviously we humans define the term, but it is not a universal definition.

Similarly, in choice number 2, why conceptualize a God who would elect to save some children from suffering but not others and then conger up all kinds of implausible explanations for this behavior?

In option 1, we posit an all-powerful entity who could intervene to stop suffering but declines to do so and then we puzzle over this untenable idea.

My question is, doesn't it make a lot more sense to question the concept we have of God? Instead of continuing to think of God as a separate person who ponders issues and decides on who he will help and which events he will set in motion and then intervene to stop, is it not more rational to conceive of God as the living source of consciousness and life, which in itself is outside of time, perpetually present, 'overflowing' into the conscious and physical world, but never separate from it. This living and perpetually present God would have no 'experience' of death. The living forms which issue forth from this source are subject to time, motion and change, and then resolve back into God would have no life of their own. They would all be expressions of the One Life.

Like it or not it seems to be in the very nature of life on earth that creatures hurt and kill other creatures to survive momentarily, only to die themselves in the end. In which part of this endless process would we have God intervene?

Furthermore, much of the suffering on earth is caused by greed and selfishness. Everyone of us is greedy and selfish. Isn't it absurd, then, to debate the question, 'why doesn't God intervene to stop me from being greedy and selfish?'

David

If there is no BAD, Then how would we know what is GOOD?.

Daniel,

We must, to answer your question, consider the nature of God as revealled in nature and His word. In my pea-brain then the answer to the question is a qualified yes. God can create (and did) any type of world he wants to, but he did not and cannot create something that is not consistent with His nature. While this seems paradoxical with the world we live in, might I suggest (without suggesting God is in anyway evil) that we are missing something that is fundamental to the nature of God. God is by nature a god of justice. Let's chew on that for a while and see what the implications are of this.

Padre

David your post is thought provoking and humbling. I do not demand my God deal with evil because as you reminded us He would have to deal with my evil. But here is the cool part ... he does deal with my evil. His son paid the ultimate price to save me from "my evil." His nature demands justice while His love provides mercy from that justice.

God as CEO may seem quaint but the scriptures use similar imagery {king, judge, priest) that convey pretty much the same idea as a CEO. Our king/CEO does intervene in the affairs of man according to His will or purposes, unless we are to understand the history of the OT as fables or lessons. And were that true then we still have to consider the NT and the ultimate intervention in time and space by the one who exists outside of both ... the birth, life, death and ressurection of Jesus the Christ.

Perhaps misreading your words I have two final thoughts. While God is present in this world of time and space we must be careful to not equate the two. God while I could say transcends time and space is seperate from His creation. Once nothing existed and teh He spoke the universe into existence. By faith, the writer of Hebrews says, we understand the world was created at God's command. So the creator is extrinsicly different from the creation ... unless we are talking about some sort of instrinsic "togetherness of maker amd makee.

Hebrews also reassures us that our God is quite familiar with the concept of death. Because Jesus is like our high priest, but not as a priest who is not touched by our infirmities.

Padre

Padre: Whether God is separate from his creation or not is an interesting question. Thomas Aquinas said that if anything can be said to 'characterize' God it is his utter lack of distinction. In other words, things with limited shape (extension) or duration in time are known precisely by their limitations. To 'know' or define God in this way would be to define him by his limitations.

Also, if we conceive of God as separate from his creation, then are we not obliged to define what kind of 'space' separates the two? Who or what created the space that separates God from creation? We are forced to one of three answers: God created the space that separates him from his creation (a contradiction); someone or something else created it; or there is no space between the two. One inevitably comes back to the understanding that God is not distinct from creation. This does not mean that God is only the sum of his creation as the following analogy might illustrate.

God and creation might be compared to our experience of the present 'moment' and its content. You can't say the content of the present is somehow separate from the present and yet, neither does the content in any way limit the present. The present is the source of its content, not distinct from it, yet not in anyway limited to or affected by the present content.

The analogy of the present to God is apt in another, related way and that is that both are eternal. We know we live in the present, yet the present has no duration because it is outside of time. We can't identify the beginning or the end of the present. Time is included in it, because we can conceive of past and future only as present recollections or projections (St. Augustine). This why I said in my last posting that God as the Living Source would have no experience of death. The eternal present can have no experience of passing into something called the 'past'. This seems to be an mystery, yet we live the reality of it every day without even being puzzled by it.

One could argue, then, that God is the 'intrinsic being' of all created things. They do not possess their own separate and individual being and the basis of sin, perhaps, is the misconception that we do.

In this context, and perhaps only in this context, the admonition to see Chris as the very being in all created things make sense, not just as a good practice, but more importantly as a reflection of reality.

David

i am not a christan i want to know about god plc help me

how is the true god

George,

I don't understand your question. What would you like to know about God?

Larry

God allows these things as a test. Yes He is testing Christians to see how they act. If He let us do whatever we please then we may be filled up with pride about how good we are.

Donald,

How is it that the evil in the world is a test? It is the direct result of disobedience to God. Are you saying that it's God's will that we disobey? Hard to get my mind around that.

If there was no evil what would the challenge be? Did God create a world to make us be perfect, what would the point be if he had? There would be no challenges for us to overcome and if you wipe out sin you wipe out the ability to think and make decisions for yourself.
God gave us a thinking mind so we could make decisions for ourselves and decide whether to come to him or not. If he got involved with every little sin you would be complaining then because there would be no sense of fun in life.
You have the choice whether you sin or not. Would you rather be controlled? I wouldn't.

Good day folks,

I'm a natural born Christian, age 48, doing the usual things most Christians do. Whenever someone ask me 'are you Christian?' my proud answer will be "yes I am" Until lately this awful feeling keeps on bugging me. I ask myself 'Am I really Christian?' and that question leads me into some soul searching. Now I stumbled upon this site and read some intriguing issues about Christian belief. Now I want to share my point of view on this subject. I think God gives us the freedom to choose to do good or evil, sad as it may seem, but good and evil cannot be separated, they are coexistence. It's just a matter of who's in control, the good one or the evil one, and our obligation as God loving creature is to see to it that the good ones rules.

So many interesting observations. Diverse opinions for sure around the nature of God and the presence of evil in our world. But there are common themes. One is the recognition that our vocabulary is insufficient to describe the indescribible. I think David posted the paradox that if God is seperate from His creation then what exists in that "space" between God and creation. We have no words to describe such a space or how two things can be seperate and interactive at the same time. Thus we use analogies. And of course all analogies break down.

The other is an apparent effort to reconcile this and other paradoxes wiith logic or our perception of reality. That is ... in our world these are the laws we observe or anticipate and then extend them to that other world. While I am very much indebted to the Greeks for giving us some very useful tools for this task, they are at best (like ours) the reasonings of imperfect finite minds trying to understand the perfect and the infinite. But that should not discourage us from trying.

I suppose there is another common thread if something absent can be counted as being coomon to a number of sets. I do not claim to own much acreage in the Land of Truth, but it seems to me God has provided us with His word and His spirit. For example, John wrote so that His readers could know they have eternal life. While we might debate what he meant by this, we would be on shakey ground to suggest that John's readers would not understand what he meant. Therefore, at some level this must be a "knowable" concept. BTW John's teaching against proto-gnosticism rules out any idea that he was suggesting his readers were to pursue some mystic revelation to know whether or not they had eternal life.

His word ought to be our starting point and His spirit our guide. And if we get it right great ... and if we get it wrong (as I often do) there is grace and mercy.

Padre

I think the question of what occupies the "space" between us and God is misplaced. There is no space. God is different from His creation in terms of kind, not of location. God, in the essence of who He is, is a different kind of being from anything created.

That's an excellent way Larry to describe the distinction between the creator and His creation. I was only trying to show how hard it can be to describe something indescribible or something beyond our ability to observe or our expereince. the point I failed to make is two-fold. One, just because sometimes words fail us and don't convey in depth the truths of God, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Nor does this make God's word invalid. Second,I was trying to promote the Bible as our first stop in plumbing these depths.

Padre

Larry's point is very important. He notes that there is no space between God and creation, but that God is of a different 'kind' from creation. Simply put then, God is not in a different place from me, but because he is different in kind I cannot perceive him. That means the apparent separation between God and creation is one of perception. I perceive God to be separate because I cannot perceive him. But the inability to perceive has nothing to do with distance.

Perhaps it has more to do with the difference between perceiving and knowing. Imagine if I am standing in the corner of a room and can perceive everything in the room but myself. I 'perceive' all the other people and objects in the room, but I 'know' I am in the corner. I don't doubt that I am in the corner just because I cannot perceive myself.

But one has to be careful even defining God as different in kind. It should not follow from this that God is therefore of a different species or genus. That would make him distinguishable by his limitations. Rather, as Aquinas said, if God is to be characterized at all it would be that he is utterly and radically not distinguishable from everything else.

If God is nearer than hands and feet as it states in the Bible, he is nearer even than thought. So prior to thought arising, God must always already be present. This suggests that the perceived separation from God arises from the fact that we 'look' for him on the 'other side' of thought or, in other words, in the thinking process itself (thinking being form of perception).

I rather like what Meister Eckhardt said: "God is to the soul what the soul is to the person." That makes God imperceptible, but indistinguishable from creation. But it also makes him more than the sum total of creation.

Cheers.

David

Very interesting discussions, but it really does not answer the question of why God does not eradicate evil if God is all powerful.

There is an age old conundrum where only two of the three following statements can be true:

God is all-powerful
God is all-loving
Evil exists

If God is all-powerful and all-loving, God would eradicate evil. If God could eradicate evil (as many Millennialists believe, God will do after the Millennial Reign of Jesus), why doesn't God do it now? Why wait?

If God is all-powerful and evil exists, God must not be all-loving. If we had the power to alleviate someone's pain, wouldn't we? Are we more merciful than God?

And if God is all-loving and evil exists, God must not be able to eradicate evil; God must not be all-powerful (as we think of the term all-powerful). If a certain set of actions must occur (such as the Millennial Reign of Christ and the Final Judgment), then God is not all-powerful as God must wait for these actions to occur.

Your thought…

By the way David, I perceive your are a progressive theologian.

Eli,

Actually, it seems to me that you should answer the questions I presented. It's simple to make these assertions, but I am asking you how you would do it. If you are certain of God capabilities, let's then assume you are God's advisor. How would he solve the problem? What would he wipe out and why? And how would he achieve his original creative goal without the same problems?

I await your insight on the solution to this very difficult matter.

Good questions. Larry in response to your conundrum, I would offer the following: when it is said 'God is all loving' we are inclined to interpret this to meant 'everything God does, he does with love.' We do so because we think in terms of activity - physical, mental and emotional. But is it reasonable to conclude that God is engaged in activity? Activity means motion, movement and change. Can the eternal God be subject to or involved in change?

The concept of an 'all-loving' God can just as easily be interpreted to mean that God is Love and here Love equates to selflessness. If asked, what is the opposite of love, our top of mind response is usually hate. But that's not accurate. The opposite of love is self-centeredness. So if God is Love, then I would say evil is self-centeredness in the extreme.

So evil exists to the extent that we alienate ourselves from the selfless God which is the source and essence of Love. This alienation derives from the notion of our own separate self.

So, again, the question can be reduced to this: why doesn't God intervene to stop me being selfish? While the question may be legitimate, if it is asked honestly and sincerely, there will be no need for intervention.

With regard to God's omnipotence, perhaps we have anthropomorphized this into the idea that God has unlimited potential to do anything and everything. But having 'potential' suggests a linear cause and effect sequence that is hardly compatible with the notion of an eternal, changeless God. God is all-powerful if he is the very source and sustenance and resolution of all creation. If God is the eternal, continuously present, living, conscious source out of which every living being arises and back into which every living being resolves, forever and forever, how much more power do you want God to have?

Eli's question is a good one. If we would have God intervene in the affairs of men, where would we have him start? In the long line of causes and effects that led to the Ugandan genocide where would the ideal point of intervention have occurred?

David

This article is really great. I also think God sees sin as sin. Just as he gives grace and mercy to the one who commits a "small sin" in our eyes, God will give grace and mercy to the murderer or the rapiest. It doesn't seem fair but Gods ways are not our ways, and he wants the wicked to forsake his way (ref Isaiah 55:7-9) He also takes no pleasure in seening the death of anyone!! (Ezekiel 18:32) In the end God gives EVERYONE many many chances and I thank Him every night for that.

Larry,

Adviser to God? That’s a scary thought! I would not like to have God respond to me like God did to Job. Job 38:1-4 – “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.”

God is God and regardless of our concepts and ideas, God will continue to be God. Having said that, I will give you my understanding for what it is worth (but of course, I could be wrong).

I believe God is not all-powerful in the sense God has all power and God can do all things (can God sin?). God shared power with God’s creation, whether it is a human, an insect, or a battery (after all, if a battery has any power, than God is not all powerful). Yes, God has more power than anything created yet when God created everything, God had to enable (to make able; give power, means, competence, or ability to; authorize) creation to exist.

God is all-pervasive power, touching and filling creation with God’s essence. To use a metaphor by Marjorie Suchoki (from her book "In God’s Presence"), God is like water that pervades all things, molds all things, and nourishes all things.

To get back to the original question, I would advise God to continue to do what God is currently doing, partnering with humankind to eradicate sin. I agree with David, love is selflessness and sin is selfishness. After all, I sin because I want something regardless of the impact on other people (whether it is robbing a bank or polluting the Earth). By becoming selfless and fighting for the oppressed, we become enlightened and enabled to do God’s work. God is partnering with us to help us realize our full kingdom potential (after all, Jesus said the kingdom is at hand, not 2000 or 3000 years from now). So the real question is not why doesn’t God eradicate sin (God can’t because God enabled us with the power to make our own decisions, including the decision to sin). The real question is when will humankind open their collective heart to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and become God’s “hands and feet” and eradicate sin (selfishness)?

More succinctly:
How would he solve the problem? God already has!
What would he wipe out and why? God would wipe out the selfishness in each of our hearts if we would only let God do it.
And how would he achieve his original creative goal without the same problems? God wouldn’t, I believe God knew what would happen and God created creation regardless, knowing that we need to partner with God. And I don’t think God is sorry for creation.

Don’t look to God to eradicate sin, partner with God to eradicate sin (selfishness) in your own heart and allow the love of God to be displayed to the world.

But that is just my opinion and my thoughts…

Be a blessing.

Eli said: "God is like water that pervades all things, molds all things, and nourishes all things." I think this is very good. It reminds me of St. Augustine who likened the universe of manifest things and beings to a giant sponge immersed in an infinite ocean of water. The sponge is in the water yet the water utterly pervades the sponge.

I think Eli's succinct summary is also good. The problem is already solved. God is always, already present. "Before Abraham ever was, I am." It's as if I am looking all over for my glasses, when they are all along on my forehead. My sin (missing the mark) is looking elsewhere for my glasses because I have forgotten they are on my head.

On the matter of evil and the desire for divine intervention, if we accept the premise that no created thing functions in isolation or disconnected from everything else, that everything is an effect of a cause and the cause of an effect ad infinitum; and if we accept a second premise that God is the source of this creation and the sequence of causes and effects, where is the logic in questioning why God doesn't step in at the point in the sequence when an evil is about to occur? Either we accept the world of causes and effects in its entirety or our question should be why didn't God create a different kind of world -- a world in which people are not self-centered, animals do not feed on other animals, beautiful roses do not have to die. Well, that's a fair enough question but it's a completely different question than why doesn't God intervene when I think he should intervene?

St. Augustine also noted that when he sought an answer to the question where did evil come from, he sought it in an evil way. His use of the term evil may be a bit archaic to us, but the same idea could be put this way. 'I sought my way out of confusion, but, being confused, every action I took was confused.' If the source of sin is self-centeredness, and I am seeking the source in a self-centered way, then my very search is a sin.

David

Well, I suppose God could MAKE all of us be good. But that poses another problem. If God forces us to be good, doesn't that make us robots, only doing what we're programmed to do? Is that what a loving Creator wants, a herd of cattle-brained robots? No, I see that a Creator would want us to want goodness, which is the reason for the question. It's a good question, worth asking. We want goodness. But we also want the freedom to make up our own minds. Some of us will abuse our freedoms and believe we are not answerable to God. We will lie to ourselves saying that God doesn't really care. We will cause no end of havoc, causing needless others to suffer. But, again, the problem is not God.
Others of us will take the gift of forgiveness offered to us by a God who loves us more than we can imagine, and will try to live accordingly.

Or you could say, God DID make us to be good, but in order to be good we have to choose to be good. In other words, we can only be good if we have an option to be otherwise.

The Creator set in motion a universe which is a closed, dynamic (i.e. perpetually changing) self-perpetuating system, propelled by the tension between opposites (knowledge of right and wrong). Thus something is recognized to be good because its opposite exists. What would perpetuate the world if there were no opposites? If everything were in perfect equilibrium this would be the changeless, eternal realm. Differentiated form would then cease to exist and all would be resolved back into the eternal God. Not a bad ending to be sure, but one Jesus said has to be earned through understanding and giving up attachment to the world of opposites.

David