Can God be evil?

[Michaeljc4]

I am following along with great interest. Essentially, God is a mystery. Why good people suffer and bad people flourish, why there are tsunamis and plagues, why the children of the Egyptians were killed by the Angel of Death…there is no answer. Or, rather, there are two possible answers: either there is no God, or there is a God who we are incapable of fully understanding. Either the world is a random collection of events, or there is some underlying (perhaps overarching) order to it all.

Faith leads me to hope for the later. Reason forces me to consider the former.

 

[GraceDK]

I am following along with great interest. Essentially, God is a mystery. Why good people suffer and bad people flourish, why there are tsunamis and plagues, why the children of the Egyptians were killed by the Angel of Death…there is no answer. Or, rather, there are two possible answers: either there is no God, or there is a God who we are incapable of fully understanding. Either the world is a random collection of events, or there is some underlying (perhaps overarching) order to it all.

Faith leads me to hope for the later. Reason forces me to consider the former.

Brother Michael…
do not settle with the unease.
Pray hard… pray through.
It has been my experience that God grants answers to precisely this kinds of questions…
But you have to keep asking Him… not only your own brain

 

[j2c99]

I can’t help but being judgmental, but whenever I see the following in any source of documentary, news article, any information from the media, I just think anti-Christian, atheist/newage, anti-logic, or just simply anti-using brains:

CNN
MSNBC
ABC
PBS
CBS
History Channel
Discovery Channel

So careful you don’t just get suckered in by them.

And God is never evil; its not in His nature. He can allow evil to happen, but just by allowing evil to occur doesn’t make him evil.

 

[Shin]

We suffer because we are separated from God, but when we are united with His will, suffering becomes sweet and gains us a greater capacity for God and higher place in Heaven.

God’s permissive will, and His direct will, guides our lives in rewards and punishments.

'It is one of the most firmly established and most consoling of the truths that have been revealed to us that (apart from sin) nothing happens to us in life unless God wills it so. Wealth and poverty alike come from Him. If we fall ill, God is the cause of our illness; if we get well, our recovery is due to God. We owe our lives entirely to Him, and when death comes to put an end to life, His will be the hand that deals the blow.

But should we attribute it to God when we are unjustly persecuted? Yes, He is the only person you can charge with the wrong you suffer. He is not the cause of the sin the person commits by ill-treating you, but He is the cause of the suffering that person inflicts on you while sinning.

God did not inspire your enemy with the will to harm you, but He gave him the power to do so. If you receive a wound, do not doubt but that it is God Himself who has wounded you. If all living creatures were to league themselves against you, unless the Creator wished it and joined with them and gave them the strength and means to carry out their purpose, they would never succeed. You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above, the Savior of the world said to Pilate. We can say the same to demons and men, to the brute beasts and to whatever exists – You would not be able to disturb me or harm me as you do unless God had ordered it so. You are sent by Him you are given the power by Him to tempt me and to make me suffer. You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above.

If from time to time we meditated seriously on this truth of our faith it would be enough to stifle all complaint in whatever loss or misfortune we suffer. What I have the Lord gave me, it has been taken away by Him. It is not a lawsuit or a thief that has ruined you or a certain person that has slandered you; if your child dies it is not by accident or wrong treatment, but because God, to whom all belongs, has not wished you to keep it longer.’

St. Claude de la Colombiere, ‘Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence’

 

[Michaeljc4]

So careful you don’t just get suckered in by them.

It was actually Masterpiece Theatre, which is produced in the UK but broadcast on PBS. The show was apolitical, and very, very good. Along with the scene I’ve mentioned, there were several other incredibly powerful parts about how the universe only makes sense if there is a just and loving God. You should see it yourself and decide. It really is about faith in the face of the mystery of evil, and of suffering.

 

[j2c99]

I don’t know if God can be evil or not. A priest once said that the Old Testament is like radio and the New Testament is like Television and we have less of a picture of God in the Old Testament. I don’t know if God is always the author of the events in the Old Testament or if that’s just the way the Jews retell their history. I saw this comedian Peter Kay who said if God created everything, why did he create the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve although to counteract this Jesus said: How can Satan drive out Satan. In order to plunder a strong man’s house you first of all have to tie up the strong man. I do not know if God would love us in the same way without Christ though. I do not know if God the Father could love us as an equal without Jesus but he always had the intention of sending down his son.

Well the details or physical why and aspects of it are a mystery (thats why the mysteries are called just that during that rosary… MYSTERIES…because they truly are something we can’t rationally comprehend or say why DID God do that in that manner?)

To answer your question, you probably already know, but God created all good. Everything was good, he didn’t create an evil serpent or any of that. He created lots of angels who were inherently good with free will. Some opposed God after their creation, but most went towards God. Thus why satan and all the evil exists. Because of free will.

I hope I don’t need to explain that free will is essential, and that just because God let us have free will , he vicariously made evil… that would be apologetics 101 and any one can find the answer to that on some apologetics site.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Well the details or physical why and aspects of it are a mystery (thats why the mysteries are called just that during that rosary… MYSTERIES…because they truly are something we can’t rationally comprehend or say why DID God do that in that manner?)

As long as there are very good reasons to think that God exists and is benevolent, I think it’s rational to accept some things as mysteries (and I would probably do the same if I thought there was strong evidence that he exists). I don’t think it would make much sense to accept mysteries without that evidence though. If you were to take a position like that, you might still be willing to believe in Santa Claus and just say that things like how he goes to so many houses and why rich kids get more presents are just mysteries.

To answer your question, you probably already know, but God created all good. Everything was good, he didn’t create an evil serpent or any of that. He created lots of angels who were inherently good with free will. Some opposed God after their creation, but most went towards God. Thus why satan and all the evil exists. Because of free will.

I don’t think this explanation really works. If God is able to ensure that everyone in heaven will not turn against him, either by taking away free will or only allowing in people who he knew would want to be with him, why couldn’t he have done that with angels?

But there are other problems. Knowing the future, God could have decided not to create any angels (or at least no angels that could intervene in what’s happening on earth). A truly all powerful being could do all the good that angels do himself with no effort whatsoever. So it seems like we’re still left with having to say that all the apparent evil done by Satan has actually made us better off.

I hope I don’t need to explain that free will is essential, and that just because God let us have free will , he vicariously made evil… that would be apologetics 101 and any one can find the answer to that on some apologetics site.

I agree. I think that atheists are wrong when they try to argue that no evil could possibly exist if God is omnibenevolent. My problem is more with the amount and types of evil that exist.

 

[Eucharisted]

I made a blog on evil. Here it is:

Why dose evil exist?

God permits evil so He can bring a greater good out of it.

What is evil?

Evil is, philosophically speaking, of three kinds: the physical, which is suffering; the moral, which is sin; and the metaphysical, which is demons.

Why dose suffering exist?

Suffering exists as a result of the sins of the rebellious angels and of man.

Why dose sin exist?

Sin is the actions of God’s free creatures (angels and men) which infinitely offend God. Man’s sins are the work of demons.

Why do demons exist?

Demons are those angels who disobeyed God, and so, rebelled against He who is All-Good.

Why didn’t God create everything free of evil?

God created His creation free of all evil. He who is All-Good can only create what is good. But some of His angels decided to rebel against Goodness, and they brought suffering into the world. The demon tempted man, and he gave in; because man rebelled against God, he lost the grace of immortality, thereby bringing suffering unto himself.

To clarify some points:

Suffering includes pain, suffering, death, disorders, disabilities, and other physical corruptions.

Immortality is the freedom from suffering.

“Work of demons” simply means the demons tempt man to sin.

God is All-Good, the Source and Summit of all good things, Goodness itself.

God created a world so good that He gave angels and men free-will, making them free creatures; they could choose to love God. But they could also choose to not love God, and some of His angels chose this, just as some men choose to not love God.

 

[Sinner82]

From what I understand, the Jews are the chosen people of God to whom He had revealed Himself. The Jews and Egyptians were cool with each other specially when Joseph the dreamer told them to prepare for the famine. I guess after several years the new Egyptian leader no longer knows about Joseph the dreamer’s contribution and enslaved the Jews. The heart of the Egyptian leader was just so hard that he allowed his son to die. Just like us when we sin we self inflict pain. He had been given several warnings to free them but he resisted. God gave the Egyptian leader several chances and He freed the Jews from slavery, for me that is a sign of His love and not some evil doing.

 

[Cowboy_Curtis]

Reading a lot of the posts on this thread by Catholics has me frustrated .

It seems like people just state “No, God is good not evil.” without explaining further and how it relates to the O.P.'s question regarding the children of Egypt.

ASSERTION DOES NOT MAKE TRUTH!!!

We, as Catholics, should know this. If I say I have a real unicorn in my closet, and offer no proof that I do, you would think that I was lying. Back up your statements with the logic and reason God gave you!

I second that and I enjoyed your post very much, so I thank you.

Many of the arguments on this thread sound like you have never read or thought about any arguments against your position. You don’t even consider a duality within the nature of god. Use logic and at least think about it.

The real answer is that the Old Testament god and the New Testament god are nothing alike and therefore not the same god. They were written by different people at different times and how these two deities can be considered the same thing is baffling.

In the Old Testament we have a rampaging, jealous, angry, spiteful, homophobic, sexist, sadomasicist God who either goes on bloodthirsty murderous campaigns or tells people to do so for him. He also gets quite a kick out of sending people to Hell.
In the New Testament though, we are unconditionally loved and so long as we believe in Jesus we are saved.
I see no resemblance between the two because nobody changes so drastically and therefore these aren’t the same God.

 

[Belle777]

asks her wise father
Bad decisions created from free will, and the Old Testament is more of a spiritual lesson than a historical lesson.

 

[Michaeljc4]

That makes sense to me, too: the Old Testament is much more allegorical than historical. There is no actual historical record of the Egyptian children dying en masse. It is most likely a story that teaches deep spiritual truths. Unfortunately, when you apply historical analysis to the Bible–both the OT and the NT–some core truths become questionable. Pope Benedict talks about this in the prologue of his book Jesus of Nazareth, which is well-worth reading. Alas, the old struggle between faith and reason…

 

[GraceDK]

That makes sense to me, too: the Old Testament is much more allegorical than historical. There is no actual historical record of the Egyptian children dying en masse. It is most likely a story that teaches deep spiritual truths. Unfortunately, when you apply historical analysis to the Bible–both the OT and the NT–some core truths become questionable. Pope Benedict talks about this in the prologue of his book Jesus of Nazareth, which is well-worth reading. Alas, the old struggle between faith and reason…

Brother. I don’t think you should read it allegorically only.
In the OT a whole group of Egyptian soldiers are drowned because God commands the Red Sea to close in on them…
In all manner of ethical postmodern thinking you can ask: whats that all about? were these men not just soldiers under command who might have little fault of their own?
To deny the harshness in the Bible is a refusal to see. We have a duty to look deeper than what things appear to be.
The point is then… how do you deal with it… what do you think of it.
I see everything in light of Christ… the Christ who has suffered endlessly on the behalf of mankind and who was with every Jew even into death in the gaschambers. Jesus said: whatever you did, you did it to Me!
So too when priests have molested children. Who suffered this pain if not Christ?.. Its a giant mystery. But as long as we are Christians we can never say God has an abstract relationship to human suffering.

 

[Michaeljc4]

Brother. I don’t think you should read it allegorically only.

A complex issue. To read it as history–as I would read a book about WWII, for instance–is highly problematic since, as many others have pointed out, the God of the OT is quite unpleasant at times. To read it a pure allegory reduces it to “just” another work of literature, which can certainly offer many insights…but is less holy, somehow. Striking a balance is the work of both faith (the OT is the inspired word of God) and reason (the OT is a work of literature). This is one of the reason I love being a Catholic: I can use both!

 

[GraceDK]

A complex issue. To read it as history–as I would read a book about WWII, for instance–is highly problematic since, as many others have pointed out, the God of the OT is quite unpleasant at times. To read it a pure allegory reduces it to “just” another work of literature, which can certainly offer many insights…but is less holy, somehow. Striking a balance is the work of both faith (the OT is the inspired word of God) and reason (the OT is a work of literature). This is one of the reason I love being a Catholic: I can use both!

That God seems unpleasant in some passages and great and pleasant in others is no adequate reason to deny it as a historical and inspired document.
I have met individuals who read the Bible as pure litterature…
As a believer I read it out of faith. My faith also compels me to seek to understand. I will not go about it by saying: I am a Christian… but I dont take the OT seriously… its way too harsh.
many people speak thus, thus judging the Word of God.
I will say something that might disturb you. For me, as a Caholic, the Bible is wholly a historical document of things that occured and will occur. At the same time its all inspired and deeply prophetic.
God created reason and there is no reason without God. God also inspired an OT that we sometimes find it hard to understand. This means we must pray more while we read the OT.

 

[AdriannaJean]

I second that and I enjoyed your post very much, so I thank you.

You are very welcome. I am glad to see we agree on this issue.

The real answer is that the Old Testament god and the New Testament god are nothing alike and therefore not the same god. They were written by different people at different times and how these two deities can be considered the same thing is baffling.

In the Old Testament we have a rampaging, jealous, angry, spiteful, homophobic, sexist, sadomasicist God who either goes on bloodthirsty murderous campaigns or tells people to do so for him. He also gets quite a kick out of sending people to Hell.
In the New Testament though, we are unconditionally loved and so long as we believe in Jesus we are saved.
I see no resemblance between the two because nobody changes so drastically and therefore these aren’t the same God.

Close but no cigar. While at first this seems like a logical explanation, we must reductio ad absurdum and see where it takes us.

I believe it was Socrates, but I am known to mix up Socrates and Aristotle, that proved that there can only be one God (which is why he was eventually executed). The reasoning is as follows:

1. If God is God then God is perfect and infinite
2. If there are two of anything (gods included) then they must be inherently different
3. If the two are different then there is a standard and one must be better than the other
4. If one is better than the other then the lesser one is imperfect and finite and therefore not God
5. Therefore there can only be one perfect, infinite being so therefore only one God

The theory that you state is called the Marcion Heresy and, as I have just shown above, it is false. Though I wouldn’t be too worried about having fallen for it. It seems logical at first and many intelligent people have made the same mistake.

Now, onto why the OT God and the NT God can be and are the same being:

1. Before Jesus the only way to receive salvation was through following the Law. Obviously as no one was perfect, this salvation was impossible to attain. After Jesus we receive salvation through belief in Him. When it is easier to obtain salvation, of course God can show us His loving side as opposed to His wrath.
2. The Bible is not one book, but a collection of many different books. Many of them written by different people and many of them are in different genres (poetic, historic, legal etc.) If you were to take a collection of secular books from all those different genres you would read them all differently because they are written differently and so have to be interpreted differently. Of course the temptation is to read the Bible as if it were one book, but as it is not, we must not. This is why Biblical interpretation is a field all its own. It is complicated business and it is really only for the people who have studied it long enough to understand fully what it means.
3. Could not the people who wrote the Bible have come to a fuller understanding of God through Christ? Before Christ there was no hard proof that God loves each and every one of us, of course people would tend to see Him more as a dictator than a loving Father. But, through Jesus, we matured and so did our perception of God. It is like teenagers who see their parents as tyrants, but then when they become adults they see that their parents did what they did out of love and that their parents were right all along.

 

[Michaeljc4]

Whoever pointed out the Marcion Heresy, thank you. That was a good tip and has given me a lot of information on those who believed that the OT God was somehow different from the NT God. More to love about Catholicism: no matter what question I come up with, *someone *in history has already thought about it!

 

[AdriannaJean]

Whoever pointed out the Marcion Heresy, thank you. That was a good tip and has given me a lot of information on those who believed that the OT God was somehow different from the NT God. More to love about Catholicism: no matter what question I come up with, *someone *in history has already thought about it!

No problem. I knew I had heard of it somewhere so I googled it and found out what it was called.

That’s what I love about Catholicism too!!! You can rely on 2000 years of great minds (Augustine, Aquinas) who took the Truth from great minds before them (Socrates, Aristotle) and they have thought of almost everything for us! All it takes is a little digging to find out that our complaints and questions really aren’t as original as we think and that they have a perfectly logical reasonable answer. All you have to do is look…

 

[budgie2]

I second that and I enjoyed your post very much, so I thank you.
The real answer is that the Old Testament god and the New Testament god are nothing alike and therefore not the same god. They were written by different people at different times and how these two deities can be considered the same thing is baffling.

I see no resemblance between the two because nobody changes so drastically and therefore these aren’t the same God.

The Old Testament isn’t just the word of God. Not all the books are written by prophets ie. people that speak on behalf of God. Solomon was a king who had hundreds of concubines and could not be seen to lead a moral life at all. So again, I would say it’s the way the Jews retell history. Some of the books in the Old Testament probably shouldn’t be there and classed as sacred scripture, the Song of Solomon for one.

 

[anjoh66]

The Old Testament isn’t just the word of God. Not all the books are written by prophets ie. people that speak on behalf of God. Solomon was a king who had hundreds of concubines and could not be seen to lead a moral life at all. So again, I would say it’s the way the Jews retell history. Some of the books in the Old Testament probably shouldn’t be there and classed as sacred scripture, the Song of Solomon for one.

You are wrong, the church has in her infallibility accepted all the books from the old testament as canonical, so you can not say they shouldnt be there.

The Song of Solomon is an allegory about the Lord and his people, Israel. It can also be about Christ and his church.

The words in this book is not to be taken literary.

It is not about Solomon or any of his concubines.