God created evil...?

[BenRosa]

In a discussion with a Muslim acquaintance, he stated that God created evil and used these bible quotes to “prove”, or back-up his claim after I told him that evil is the only thing man can claim as his own.

Deuteronomy 30:15 states,

See, I [God] have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.

In Isaiah 45:7, the prophet describes God’s creation plan when he reports that,

I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.

Any and all comments will be greatly appreciated.

May His peace be with you today and always…

 

[DeFide]

BenRosa:

In a discussion with a Muslim acquaintance, he stated that God created evil and used these bible quotes to “prove”, or back-up his claim after I told him that evil is the only thing man can claim as his own.

Deuteronomy 30:15 states,

See, I [God] have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.

In Isaiah 45:7, the prophet describes God’s creation plan when he reports that,

I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.

Any and all comments will be greatly appreciated.

May His peace be with you today and always…

(Or: I form the light, and create the darkness, I make well-being and create woe; I, the LORD, do all these things.)

God allows, but does not will evil. To allow the possibility of true love on our parts, he allows us to choose evil by rejecting His grace and truth. In much the same way, when we stand in the way of light, we create shadows. Shadows are not composed of light, but the shadows can only be recognized in contrast to the light.

Evil is not a thing, but a rejection of God and his goodness.

You might ask your friend why he’d worship a “God” if he is anything less than perfection such that lack of goodness comes directly from this “God”. Invite him to worship the true, perfect God.

 

[Lazerlike42]

In Deuteronomy, God was simply asking the people to choose between good and evil. That verse is very obviously taken out of context. Simply read the passage and this will become obvious. God is placing before them good and evil in the sense of placing beforethem two things to choose from, not in the sense of creating them and putting them there.

Isaiah 45:7 “I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.”

Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

Lamentations 3:38 “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?”

Jeremiah 18:11 “Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you.”

Ezekiel 20:25,26 "I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live. And I polluted them in their own gifts…

Is God the source of evil, according to these passages? In the first four verses, the word “evil” is ra. This word does indicate moral evil elsewhere. But there are meanings offered in Strong’s for this word like “adversity” and words of similar nature. Ra can therefore be used in both senses.

Now with this in mind, how do we determine the proper translation of ra in this case? The answer is simple, once we consider the literary parallel in the verse in question. Note the antithesis in the first part of the verse from Isaiah: light/darkness. The second part of the verse must also be therefore reckoned as an antithesis. The word we translate “prosperity” is a familiar one: shalom. We commonly translate this word “peace” - but it is NEVER used to indicate moral goodness, the antithesis of moral evil! We must therefore translate “ra” in terms of its specified antithesis, and that is why it is thoroughly proper to give it the meaning of calamity/disaster/adversity here. (Presumably skeptics would “argue by outrage” and say that God has no right to cause us adversity. For more on this, see Glenn Miller’s article on this verse.) The verse from Amos offers a similar parallel, to the blowing of a trumpet – a sign of calamitous judgment, not moral evil. The same is the case for Lamentations, where ra is placed in opposition to a word that means “beauty” or “bounty” or joy, and the verse after which asks, “Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?” The verse prior in Jeremiah (“If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.”) uses the same word for “good” in opposition.

The verses in Zeke tell us that God handed the Israelites over to their sinful desires when they refused to obey him. God allowed the Israelites to govern themselves by pagan statutes as part of their punishment – in other words, they “asked for it”. God is not the source of this sort of evil; we are!

• tektonics.org/gk/godevil.html

 

[canadianlife]

Remember, evil is not a thing, its a lack of a thing, a lack of good. Evil is not a seperate entity, its just a lack of good. God created everything, therefore its good, everything is good. A lack of good is therefore evil