Let’s establish some facts here.  God is all love.  God is all good.  God created all things good.  So why is it that everywhere we look there is evil?  Great question.  I wish I could say the same about the answer but I can’t because the answer reveals a problem that is not with God but rather with us.  First of all let’s run a little garbage disposal through the question to “clean” it up a bit.  I see a tremendous amount of “good” in our world.  I certainly don’t have to look far to find evil but I see some incredible good in the world we live in.  I see people loving one another like God wants them to love one another.  I see families that are strong and loving.  I see caring and concern and compassion amongst people here in this world.  Where did that come from?  I look at this issue from a completely opposite perspective.  I do that frequently and most times it gets me in trouble but I look at the question of evil today from a different view.  My question is “Why is there so much “good” in the world today?”

God created the world as a perfect and only good place.  He created man to be a perfect and only good people.  And God created a little thing called “free will” so that His creation had the complete ability to “choose” what they wanted to do.  We know the result of that from Genesis 3.  The perfect man in the perfect environment with the perfect relationship with God made the imperfect choice to sin against God.  It ruined everything.  Not because God wanted it ruined or planned for it to be ruined but because man made the choice that ultimately ruined it.  The result of that choice?  Curse after curse after curse.  Gen. 3:14- Curses on the snake, Gen. 3:16-Curses on the woman, Gen. 3:17-Curses on the man.  My question today is “How is a world that has been cursed directly by God supposed to look?”  I say we should not see “any” good.  It should “all” be evil!  It has been cursed by God!  In fact it is on a timer right now just waiting for the moment when God finally says, “that’s enough”, and then He is going to completely destroy it once and for all.  That’s what a curse looks like.  Expalining the presence of evil in our world is not even close to a challenge for me.  What is a true challenge is in trying to explain why there is any “good” in our world.  Why do we live in such luxury when God specifically cursed the ground so that it would only be through “painful toil” that we should eat of it?  The only ”pain and toil” I’ve experienced from “eating of it” has come from a result of putting more food in my system than I physically had room for! Why do we have it so very “good” if this God fosaken place has been directly cursed by God?  There shouldn’t be one ounce of good to be found as I see it and yet as I stated earlier, I see a tremendous amount of good in our world today.  WHY?  THe answer is that there are many people in the world today that “choose” to do good.  The good that they were origianlly created to do.  Eph. 2:10 tells us, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do “good” works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”.

Just because everything was ruined as a result of mans choice in the garden does not mean that man was no longer created for “good”.  God is the one who creates all mankind.  We are ALL God’s workmanship, created to do “good”.  Now whether we make the choice to do that which is “good” is entirey up to us, just like it was in the garden.  The result of making the choice to not do the good results in what is known as evil.   Evil was not “created”.   Evil is simply the result of not choosing good.  The definition is right that says darkness is simply the absence of light and evil is simply the absence of good.  God did not create evil. it is not possible.  God created only good and he gave that which was good the free will and choice to choose how they should live.  The choice in the garden to disobey God resulted in evil and we are suffering the consequences of that choice every day.  Not because God created evil to consume our world but because man continues to make the wrong choices in life and those wrong choices result in the evil we see and experience.  We need to get beyond the blaming game and accept the responsibility of the terrible consequences of sin in our lives.  Evil is “NOT” everywhere we look.  There is truly good to be seen in many places and that good is there because of people making the right choices concerning how they are living their lives.  We will continue to suffer the consequences of having to live in a world that has been eternally cursed by God but God has created us with the same ability to choose how we will live.  I pray we will always choose to live according to God’s word and always choose to do the good for which we were created to do.  It is so frustrating to witness how God is the first to get the blame when something bad happens in life and God is the last to get the credit when something good happens in life.  It is not right.  We live in a world that has been cursed by God.  How do you expect it to look?  I thank God everyday for the “good” that exists in our world today.  That good is here because people are choosing to do it.  I pray that we will be those people.  I pray that we will live every day demonstrating and making the choices of good until He comes.

Greg