Is God responsible for pain and evil?
The other day I was doing a Bible study and I came across a very interesting question.
The question was, is God responsible for pain and evil?
That question stuck out to me because on the surface some could say yes.
If you think about it, if God is responsible for creating all things, and has control over all things, then technically he would have control over the good just as much as he does the bad.
If we were speaking to an unbeliever of Christ, they could say since God knows everything that is, and is to come. He would have known from the beginning sin would come into the world causing pain and evil. Right?
But as we look deeper into scripture we get a better understanding of God’s mindset.
In Matthew 13:24- 43 Jesus tells us no. He is not responsible for sin, but the “enemy” Satan is.
In those scriptures, Jesus speaks in parables and later explains what he means. I will use some of my own knowledge and observation to sum it up here.
The opposite of good is bad. So if we have something good, then to whatever good thing we have there will always be a downside/bad part to it.
An example of this would be having a baby. Most people would agree that having a baby is a good thing. But realistically the downside or bad part to having a baby would be that when you have a child you have less time for yourself. You can’t do the same things you once did before. Your freedom becomes restricted and in everything you do you have to consider your child. Your body will change and so will your sleep. But yet, even though people know this they still decide to have children.
So think of it this way, to every pro there is a con.
But yes, technically God can control all things and he could have made it so there was never any bad side to anything in life at all. He could have made it so there was always pros but never any cons. But if he did that, that would mean we would have NO free will. WE would be robots only doing good things and never having, saying or doing anything bad nor having the choice to do so. Believe it or not, most people actually want to have free will and to be able to make their own decisions.
So no, God is not responsible for all of the pain and evil in the world. He gives us free will and with that free will we choose our own path. This leads me into my next point.
Love is not forced
From my own observation about God, I’ve realized that very rarely does he ever force anyone to do anything. This is the same with us and the people we love. When we love someone we don’t force them to love us back.
Let’s use our children as an example.
If we really loved our children we would not lock them in a room to protect them from everything bad in the world. I know at times as a parent, we do probably feel like doing this, but we don’t do it because realistically we’re not going to be alive forever, and so our children have to learn how to survive and thrive without us.
Since we love our children we nurture them, guide them, teach them as best as we can and then we allow them to make their own decisions and that’s exactly what God does for us. He helps us not only to survive but to thrive in this world despite the cons that may come with it..
This is my take on it. Thank you for reading saints! Have a wonderful day.
Alexandria Cooper
