Permitting evil

[jesusmademe]

Let me tell you what came up in my mind when reading your question(s):
God never ever said that murder is ok. He gave us our conscience, the ten commandment (though shalt not murder). So the question is: could it be that we are blaming God insteaf of examining our consciences? Is that what we are doing here? What do you guys think?

A good father could tell his son what life is all about and about the moral law but the sins majes the moral deciscions. It seems like the OP said that we should not interfere when someone is being murdered.
My question is: how is that different from how God permits evil?

 

[FiveLinden]

Even if we accept that it would be good, or fair, or just, to allow the suffering of human descendants of those who first committed sin, there is no good explanation I have heard as to why non-human creatures should suffer. And that is nearly each and every one of them, most of which lived before humans existed. I have not been able to find anything in Catholic teaching to explain this.

 

[stpurl]

Come on, Oscar, you can do better than that.

Do you remember a TV show a few years back where the main character received a newspaper each day --but the paper was from the day AFTER that day? So supposedly he could then ‘change’ what happened if it didn’t suit him. I think you think of God as being like that; if God (like the man) 'knew something bad would happen in the future, he would ‘try to stop it’.

But TV and reality (or novels and reality) don’t mix well sometimes.

This is one of those times.

God does not exist in time and he doesn’t see something happening ‘in the future’ that He could just ‘stop’. He sees everything all at once. He doesn’t CAUSE your actions, and He certainly doesn’t interfere with them because YOU are the one with the free will. Because God created you, you get to choose good or evil every minute. God didn’t program you and say, “OK, Ozzie will be a good wizard most of the time but a very naughty little wizard on X, Y, and Z occasions” and then sit back to watch the fun.

So we DO have free will and it’s not bunk.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

That sounded always pretty convincing to me until it came to my mind if permitting evil isn’t immoral too.
If I knew that someone is going to commit murder, I should probably stop him rather than tolerate his decision to do evil.

If you can reasonably stop someone from committing an evil sin such as murder, then yes, you should try to do so. Not doing anything would be considered a “sin of omission”, described at Mass in the Confiteor when we say we have sinned “in what I have failed to do.”

The issue is that people can’t always reasonably prevent another from doing evil. Using the murder as an example, perhaps you weren’t sure the person really meant it when they said they were going to kill so-and-so and you convinced yourself they were just angry and blowing off steam.
Or perhaps you were afraid that you and your family would be harmed in retaliation if you snitched on the guy planning to commit the murder.
These factors can reduce culpability for not stopping the murderer.

 

[Gorgias]

The book of Job does not provide a satisfying answer.

“Trust God and all shall be restored to you in the afterlife” isn’t a satisfying answer?

without God’s aids our mind is useful only for lying and to commit acts of sins.

Are you sure your username shouldn’t be “Calvin”, rather than “Latin”?

In other words we don’t really have free will, and so blaming the evil in the world on our free will is complete bunk.

Hardly. Saying that God is the cause of our willing is not to say that God forces our will. I could say “my mother is the cause of me”, but that doesn’t imply that she forced my choice of lunch today.

 

[Elf01]

“Trust God and all shall be restored to you in the afterlife” isn’t a satisfying answer?

In terms of explaining why evil happens, no.

 

[Gorgias]

In terms of explaining why evil happens, no.

Job isn’t attempting to give an explanation for the origin of evil, though. Do you call your computer manual ‘unsatisfying’ for not including a good recipe for apple pie?

There’s a difference between the claim that “God permits evil” and the question “why evil exists in the first place”, no?

 

[Elf01]

There’s a difference between the claim that “God permits evil” and the question “why evil exists in the first place”, no?

Why God permitted the evil in Job is also not very satisfying to someone struggling with why a good God allows evil to happen.

 

[Vico]

…Who gave Satan specific nature that Satan could feel pride?

The nature of an angel is spirit. Their fall was a free choice of these created spirits who had the given grace to not fall.
(See Summa Theologiae http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1062.htm#article3)

 

[Gorgias]

Why God permitted the evil in Job is also not very satisfying to someone struggling with why a good God allows evil to happen.

Sure, but I think that the author of Job doesn’t have an answer, either. His set up for the story just shrugs and says “God allows it to prove a point to the devil.” It’s a pretty weak set up (Hollywood has come up with better, no?), but it puts in motion what the author wants to be set in motion…

 

[Mary888]

It is often said that God just allows evil, because he tolerates our freedom. That sounded always pretty convincing to me until it came to my mind if permitting evil isn’t immoral too.
If I knew that someone is going to commit murder, I should probably stop him rather than tolerate his decision to do evil.

From our human standing point I think too that permitting evil (within our grasp to stop) is sinful and we will be asked about it at our personal Judgement.
During the Holy Cross homily a priest said we will be asked two questions:

• why did you do (what you could not have done and was evil)?
• why didn’t you do (what you could have done and was good)?
  And this makes perfect sense to me. We must strive to prevent evil from happening and do the good that we can do. Maybe this is what Christ meant to say when He said that no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless one is like “one of these children” (pointing at some children). Children don’t overthink when they come to help and they always speak up if they notice something that they know (were taught) it is wrong. They just do it and say it.
  I don’t think He meant to say that we can do anything and behave like uninformed kids who make mistakes because we do grow up (part of God’s plan for us) and we do have a conscience which we should grow.

 

[STT]

The nature of an angel is spirit. Their fall was a free choice of these created spirits who had the given grace to not fall.

One need to feel pride in order to choose pride. For that you need a specific nature which allows feeling pride.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

The nature of an angel is spirit. Their fall was a free choice of these created spirits who had the given grace to not fall.

One need to feel pride in order to choose pride. For that you need a specific nature which allows feeling pride.

The grace given before their fall providesd a way to overcome it.

 

[STT]

The grace given before their fall providesd a way to overcome it.

How do you know? Regardless, that is God who created evil nature in Satan. Given grace does not resolve any problem when God knows that His creature would sin regardless of the grace given.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

The grace given before their fall providesd a way to overcome it.

How do you know? Regardless, that is God who created evil nature in Satan. Given grace does not resolve any problem when God knows that His creature would sin regardless of the grace given.

It is revealed in the scripture and tradition of the Catholic Church. God did not create an evil nature, but by choosing not to cooperate with grace evil is done. Free will requires the possibility of choosing evil or good. Without that God could not let creatures share in the divine nature as love is only given freely.

 

[STT]

It is revealed in the scripture and tradition of the Catholic Church. God did not create an evil nature, but by choosing not to cooperate with grace evil is done. Free will requires the possibility of choosing evil or good. Without that God could not let creatures share in the divine nature as love is only given freely.

Do you feel good, happy, or evil, angery? Where do these things come from? Your nature which is created by God. You cannot decide to become evil or good. You just feel them.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

It is revealed in the scripture and tradition of the Catholic Church. God did not create an evil nature, but by choosing not to cooperate with grace evil is done. Free will requires the possibility of choosing evil or good. Without that God could not let creatures share in the divine nature as love is only given freely.

Do you feel good, happy, or evil, angery? Where do these things come from? Your nature which is created by God. You cannot decide to become evil or good. You just feel them.

God is the cause of things by causing their existence. Evil however is a privation. Evil is sinful actions and omissions not temptations.

 

[STT]

God is the cause of things by causing their existence. Evil however is a privation. Evil is sinful actions and omissions not temptations.

Evil is not a privation. There was no experiencing extreme pain if extreme evil is non-existence.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

God is the cause of things by causing their existence. Evil however is a privation. Evil is sinful actions and omissions not temptations.

Evil is not a privation. There was no experiencing extreme pain if extreme evil is non-existence.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in S.T. Part I, Question 48. The distinction of things in particular

… evil imports the absence of good. But not every absence of good is evil. For absence of good can be taken in a privative and in a negative sense. Absence of good, taken negatively, is not evil; otherwise, it would follow that what does not exist is evil, and also that everything would be evil, through not having the good belonging to something else; for instance, a man would be evil who had not the swiftness of the roe, or the strength of a lion. But the absence of good, taken in a privative sense, is an evil; as, for instance, the privation of sight is called blindness.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1048.htm#article5

 

[fhansen]

I choose to eat of the apple.

You’d probably agree that, while freedom is good, not every way in which a human may choose to exercise that freedom is good. Evil, in fact, doing harm to neighbor, often results from wrong choices generally motivated by selfishness, ego, pride, etc. Evil choices/sin are an abuse of our freedom.

Now touching a hot stove can be good, not because the pain is good but because the lesson-to not touch it again-is good. God knew that Adam would touch the stove, would eat of the fruit, and had planned for that from the beginning. So from the larger perspective God made His world “in a state of journeying to perfection”, as the Church teaches. And this is how human perfection is attained according to the catechism:

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil , and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

So Adam already possessed free will which is what made his choice possible. He had the option to choose God so to speak, by heeding Him, or to choose to be unallied with Him, by disobedience. He could freely choose either. He chose to be his own god, preferring himself to God as the catechism also teaches. He had not yet gained the wisdom to be bound to God. The point is that man has limitations, and must come to recognize them and the first way that this is done is by knowing God, that He exists first of all and that we owe Him our obedience and subjugation. That’s what we’re here to learn, along with the means to find that obedience within us, the right and authentic means. Man was made for communion with God. Otherwise we’re lost, hopeless, even if we don’t realize that all at once as we experiment with a life in a relatively godless world. God is present to the extent that He’s present in us. And so that’s why we’re here to learn whether or not Adam’s choice was right, because he effectively extricated God from the direct relationship with man that we were meant for.

So was touching the hot stove good? Yes, to the extent that we learn from it. Man did not become more free or better in some manner with his sin; rather he came to know evil, by touching it directly, by experiencing it, the first evil being the very sin consisting of opposition to God that shifted Adam into a whole new state of being. Good is known by contrast; it isn’t identifiable until evil is known.

Anyway, finding and going back to God is a good journey, even as it’s a struggle, and one that involves the proper use of our freedom.