Can God Be Real If Evil Exists?

Sermon:

Can God be real if evil exists? (Psalm 89:14)

I think He has to be.

And not in a wishful thinking kind of way.

Everyone struggles with the question of why evil.  I don’t care what you believe.

Evil hurts.  And no one likes it.

I certainly don’t.

So the question is can God even be real when there is so much evil in the world?  Why is there evil?

I’m not totally sure.  

But I believe that if God is God, and if He is love (1 John 4:8) then He has to give us a choice to choose love.  Well, I suppose He doesn’t have to, but He does nonetheless because He’s good.  Also, it seems love isn’t love if it isn’t chosen.  And nobody wants to love a choiceless robot (despite what some weird sci-fi movies say…).

But with the ability to choose love, you have to allow the option to choose not to.  The option to reject or be rejected, the option to treat someone poorly, to not love.  So to love is to risk.  In fact, to love is to sacrifice.  It’s the nature of giving yourself for someone else.

Enter the possibility of evil.

Genesis 1-3.  Will humankind choose God back?

No.  

And I think this is where evil comes from.  Because we reject our Creator continually, don’t know Him or how to be like Him, and so we don’t know how to treat each other.

*Sidenote: any fragments of goodness we can muster up in our good deeds or service is a graceful reflection of the Image we’re made in.  God still gets the glory in our “good” efforts even when we don’t know it or Him.

There’s a lot more to say on that.  But love requires choosing.  And sacrifice.

I think also that the bigger question is not “why is there evil” but “why do we care?”

Like, why is it that when someone does something wrong to us, it hurts us?  Why do we care what anybody else does?  And why are we bothered when we see the mistreatment of others (sometimes)?

Why do you or I care?

It can’t be because we’re randomly here due to a cosmic explosion that resulted in perfect laws of nature, that resulted in evolution and then us?  That offers merely an explanation of what (a poor one I personally believe), but in no way does it offer an answer to the great why or explain why we care.

Because if there’s no why, there’s no reason to care.  There’s no justice.  No reason to be bothered when we are impacted by evil, see evil or do evil ourselves.  There’s no right and wrong anyway, all is random.  It is what it is.

But we do care though.  And we can’t fully explain it.

Why the conscience?  And where does that come from??

Maybe we believe in right and wrong because we have an ingrained moral code of some sort.  We can disagree about what said moral code is or why we have it, but we can’t deny we do.  That’s what we have justice systems (howbeit flawed ones); police and military, laws and consequences, policies and procedures, checks and balances.

No human being has a perfect justice system.  For some reason, we just know we need one.

We haven’t trusted ourselves to ourselves because we’ve proven we can’t be trusted.  We understand wrong and create systems to right them.

Why?

Because maybe if there’s a moral code, or a law, whatever it may be, we must consider the possibility of a Lawgiver.  Maybe that Lawgiver is personal and not some presumed universal code that exists from randomness.  Maybe it’s given by Someone.

If we’re going to consider things to be random and purposeless, we must consider the possibility that they may be purposeful.

And maybe we are looking for right, for a reason.  And it’s not random.

Maybe.

I believe all of this is not maybes but it points us to God.  I understand the can of worms that why is, but I think that (1) our asking the question in the first place, and (2) our desire for “rightness” speak to the fact that we we’re not random and that we have a code that’s not from us.  I believe it to be a reflection of the image we’re made in, the glorious God of Heaven Who is drawing us to Himself.

The One Who has a throne of righteousness and justice.  In Who’s presence evil can’t exist.

I believe to know Him is to know why.  And thank God (Him) that he’s opened the door to know Him forever.

Hope you enjoy the Message.  Let me know what you think.

In Christ,