Help! Writing apologetic email!

[jlr247]

Hi, I’m writing a response to my atheist friend that emailed me with a barrage of stuff. I’m only 18 and I’m in RCIA so I think I could use some help. I only know so much :whacky:

Anyhoo, heres the gist of what he asked:
-How could an all powerful and all knowing God not know that Lucifer was going to uprise
-why would he want to torment humanity by letting lucifer be
-why doesnt he destroy him
-maybe God and the archangels and lucifer are all as old as each other
-maybe they are just opposing sides, ie. he didnt create lucifer

And then heres what I have written so far:

Sorry it took me so long to reply, I’ve been busy this past week (5 midterms, ugh), and i haven’t been checking my emails. Anyways to reply to your email…:

Why shouldn’t God have created Lucifer? When there is evil and sin in the world, only then can people see what goodness really is. What I mean is, how can something be “good” if there is no converse of “evil” to that “goodness”? There can’t be; that would make the idea of “good” a useless idea since it would not be able to differentiate anything from anything else. why on earth would we have the word and idea of the colour “blue” if everything in the world was the colour blue? The answer: we wouldn’t, because that would be pointless. From here, you can ask “why would God want to create a world of creatures who do not realize his goodness only because they do not know what goodness is?”

If he did that, humans would not appreciate or respect him, they would not realize the greatness of his love, nor would they love him back. They would not have to consciously choose God, because he would be the only option.They would take God for granted. To prevent this from happening, he gave his creatures free will. Yes, he knew that some of his creatures would turn away from him (like Lucifer), and curse him, and act as though he didn’t exist. He knows that some will choose this, and of course it pains him because he loves everyone and wishes for them all to choose him. But even though he realizes the downside, he chose to give free will to the people anyways. This is because now he will have children who love him, honour him, realize that he is good, and the creator of all that is good on Earth. These children who love, respect and honour him would be a far greater thing to God than the people he could’ve created who do not know he meaning of goodness. The difference would be something like the difference between having a son/daughter, and building a robot who has been programmed to love you. Yes, the robot will obey you, but will it truly love you? The robot has no choice in the matter, and therefore this artificial love is quite meaningless. On the other hand, the child can rebel, maybe even desert you in old age, but is the risk not worth it when the child could also choose to love honour and respect you? Most people would choose the risk of a child over a robot who has been programmed to “love”. God is the same. He wanted to create something wonderful, not a lot of meaningless automated nothingness.

If I could get some help answering the rest of his email, or if something I’ve written seems a bit off and youd like to tell me, I’d really appreciate it! Thanks!

 

[Unitas]

First off, your exlanation of the nature of good and evil make them out as subjective. This is not so. The definition of good is not that it’s not evil and vise versa. Good is based on objective truth; God. He has revealed to us what good behavior is; obedience to His will. To be disobedient is what is bad behavior. Good can exist without evil as God is the source of goodness and objective Truth. Good and evil are not relative. Relativism is heresy. ope Benedict XVI has spoken out many times against relativism.

But, you’re right on the money with why evil is allowed in the world; it gives us the ability to use free choice which is what makes choosing good (objective Truth, God) have meaning.

Did God know lucifer would rebel against him? Of course.

God does not want lucifer to torment humanity. It’s our free choice that damns us, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Satan merely provides the temptations, it’s up to us with willful mind and body to accept.

Satan has not been destroyed because he too is a creation of God. Albeit the father of lies, death, etc., but he was created. He will live with his decision to rebel and suffer in hell the same as our choices will lead us to damnation or, God willing, salvation.

God and the angels are not as old as one another because they were created. Granted they are outside of time as we understand it, but as only God can create and the angels cannot, then it’s obvious that They were created by God. And as such, God must have existed beforehand to do so.

If lucifer wasn’t created by God, then that would put him in the same position as God. If all things were not created by God then the things that weren’t would be just as omnipotent as He. And with this omnipotence would be the ability to create, and being in direct opposition to one another would be reflected in the interraction between the two “gods’” creations. This is certainly not the case.

We’re made in God’s image. This is proven that in any civilization at any time in the wrold there has been a basic standard of behavior; of right and wrong. If this was learned behavior then two different civilizations separated by time and distance would have drastically different codes of conduct. Yet they’re all strikingly similiar. It’s obvious it’s not at random.

If lucifer is on par with God then his creations would be the antithesis to these, since they would be made in lucifer’s image, not God’s. But anthropologically this isn’t correct at all.

This lack of “un-Godly” creations proves one of these supernatural “beings” is subservient to the other. Us in creation being made in God’s image shows that God is superior to lucifer. And as being superior, it must mean that lucifer was in fact created by God, and not an equal.

Hope that helps