Why would a God of love create a world with evil?

None of us have to look very far to see that our world is filled with hate, death, and fear. We have all seen the latest invasion of Iraq played out in our own homes thanks to modern technology and CNN. In a world filled with terror, rape, deception, and war one would have good reason to question the existence of a loving all-powerful God. Skeptics have often asked, "Why would a God of love create a world with evil?" There is no thornier question than this one. I will try my best to bring some light on this difficult issue that I often wrestle with.

The Christian God is loving and all-powerful, but this does not mean that He can do whatever He wants. For instance God cannot make square circles. When God finishes His Creation on day six He calls it very good-meaning that His work was without a blemish or flaw. It was in a state of perfection, exactly as God planned it to be. So where did evil come in, and why would God create evil?

By definition evil is the abolition of good. For anything to be very good there must be at least the possibility of something being not good and evil. God's creation was very good but by allowing for good to exist he created the moral possibility for evil.

Not only did he create everything as "very good" but he decided to crown the creation with a being that was made in his own image, man. A creation that would have the free will to live, fellowship and create with his own mind. A being that would have the capacity to truly love and intimately know God. God did not want another tree or fish though they are wonderful and awesome in all their beauty and specified complexity; they are not able to return love as man could. They are not able to thank God and praise him in his glory as man could. And most importantly only man could actually choose to obey God and choose to believe his word.

When God made man he did not want a puppet or a robot. He did not want to create a complex machine that would continually babble praises at God. Would you want a wife or a husband who continually just repeated programmed phrases all day long? Would you want a spouse that did not really have the ability to choose to love you, but rather loved you out of habit or routine? Would a computer that would say "I love you honey" after each key pressed be appealing at all to you, or would you, like me, throw the thing out the window? It seems clear that a lover cannot be programmed, it requires something more than an intelligent mind to love. Without the soul love is only apparent.

Not only can love not be programmed, but love also can't be forced. Soldiers in a concentration camp can make the prisoners do virtually anything. They can force men to eat human excrement, have sex with their sister, or even kill their own parents; but there is one thing that no soldier of any concentration camp has ever been able to do. No matter how much torture and suffering a victim can undergo no one has ever forced another individual into loving them.

Love requires freedom. God desires spontaneous acts of intimacy from his people. I look forward to the future when God reveals that beauty to me; what an adventure that will be to fight for and rescue her heart. I don't want a bride that feels obligated to cook, clean, and most importantly "be good in bed" because of who I am. I want a woman who desires intimacy with me because she needs me, and because she desires my glory because it flows from her heart. Even if she can't cook or clean she may be perfect, because it's her heart that I want and I want her to give me a portion of it as my own. God created men and women for one another, but the purpose of creating them was so that he could invite them up into a similar romance, a selfless sacred romance with himself.

A perfect garden with perfect flowers, and perfect fruits, and perfect friendly animals all in a perfect world; does this sound more like the beginning of a love fantasy to you? It should. God designed man for his pleasure for his communion, and for fellowship. ( I know your asking: So what does all this have to do with evil again? Please hang in there, it's coming) To have such a romance God had to take the risk of allowing his romantic lovers the ability to reject him at any moment of there glory. And sure enough on the honeymoon Adam and Eve decided to have an affair with the enemy, and the world has not recovered since. See it was not God who brought Evil into this world but rather man trying to live apart from the word of God.

People will often ask: How could there be a God with so much evil in this world? This is an argument that commits suicide. By saying that there is such a thing as evil you are automatically implying that there must be a thing that is good; and you are also assuming that there is a moral law to differentiate between the good and the evil. But to have a moral law in existence their must be a moral lawgiver (God). (For we are all subject to this moral law; meaning that whether or not you believe rape is acceptable does not change the law stating the practice as evil.) Now by the way the question is worded it is trying to deny the very existence of God because of the dilemma of evil; however this argument collapses in under it's own weight. If we eliminate the moral law giver (God) we must then delete the moral law, and without a moral law there is fundamentally no such thing as good or evil. In other words for evil to exist there must be a supreme God who set up a moral standard and created it in such a way that perfection could be sought after. But this does not mean that Evil was directly created by God, but instead was produced by man when we decided that we could live without God.

I have heard some apologists give brilliant answers to the problem of Evil; ones that would slay their opponents in the debate. It's easy to decapitate an atheist with intellectual apologetics, but what do you say to someone when they have just lost a child in a car wreck, and want to know why God let that happen? It's easy to give answers from a pulpit or write them in a short essay where you can't feel the pain, but when a skeptics child is diagnosed with terminal cancer or their ten year old daughter is raped, or they just learned that an injury will leave them paralyzed for life our approach must conform to meet them. When the problem of evil enters the skeptic's world we must bring the answer to meet their needs and our response must be filled with the grace and mercy that they so desperately need.

I met a Chaplin at a hospital in Michigan who told me an amazing story. A woman that he dearly cared for begin to turn his back on God and neglect coming to church after her son died in the hospital, after the Chaplin had prayed for his recovery. After a few weeks the Chaplin sought her out to ask her why she had forsaken the body. She immediately cornered him with words filled with bitterness and resentment "Where was your God when my son died?" And I will never forget his response as long as I live. The Chaplin looked the woman in the eye and softly, with gentleness and sorrow in his voice said, "Right where He was when His son died."

Many people believe that Jesus died only for their sin. But this is not complete. Jesus died for their suffering too. The entire process of being, rejected, disowned, whipped, beaten, spit upon, humiliated, nailed, left dangling naked from a splintered tree was so that he could die for our sorrow, for our pain, and for our heart ache. During His sick execution Christ defined true masculine love for us. He took the full penalty of sin. He bought us back from the power of evil.

I am so glad that the story didn't end in the Garden. God spent 4000 years and required the death of his own son to ransom the heart of his creation back. God did not create evil but He did destroy the power of death on the cross. Because of His blood we can be free from the Evil in our hearts. And because of His suffering we can live free on a new earth in a restored garden and live that romance that we were designed to have with the God who loves us and desires our delight in him for eternity.