The Reason Why God Doesn't Intervene to Stop Evil

[Achilles6129]

I believe I’ve figured out the reason why God doesn’t intervene to stop evil, and I believe it’s hidden in one of the parables of Christ:

“24 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven [m]may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed [n]tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 But when the [o]wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? [p]How then does it have tares?’ 28 And he said to them, ‘An [q]enemy has done this!’ **The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”” Mt. 13:24-30 (NASB)

We all know what this parable is about, and it needs no interpretation (for those that don’t know, the interpretation is in Mt. 13:36-43). Anyways, the important part for our purposes is vv.28b-29, where the servants (angels) want to intervene to stop the evildoers but the landowner (God/Christ) prevents them. He prevents them due to the fact that their intervention may harm the wheat. What this means is simple: God doesn’t intervene to stop evil because in doing so he knows that he’ll somehow harm the interests of the elect. Once the interests of the elect are secure, God will intervene to stop evil (see the book of Revelation).

Thoughts?

 

[atheistgirl]

God doesn’t intervene to stop evil because in doing so he knows that he’ll somehow harm the interests of the elect.

God can’t stop evil in such a way as to **not ** harm the interests of the elect?

Sarah x

 

[Robert_Sock]

We do not live in a world good versus evil (which would be heresy), but good and evil. If God were to eliminate evil, our world could not sustain itself. Only during the Second Coming will evil be eliminated.

 

[Achilles6129]

God can’t stop evil in such a way as to **not ** harm the interests of the elect?

Sarah x

According to words straight out of his own mouth, no.

 

[Achilles6129]

We do not live in a world good versus evil (which would be heresy), but good and evil. If God were to eliminate evil, our world could not sustain itself. Only during the Second Coming will evil be eliminated.

Actually, evil isn’t technically eliminated totally until the final judgment.

 

[atheistgirl]

According to words straight out of his own mouth, no.

Is it not according to your and perhaps others interpretation of a parable?

Where is it written that God cannot stop evil without harming the victim of that evil?

I’m not even sure this is a position the Catholic Church takes

Sarah x

 

[Achilles6129]

Is it not according to your and perhaps others interpretation of a parable?

Where is it written that God cannot stop evil without harming the victim of that evil?

I’m not even sure this is a position the Catholic Church takes

Sarah x

Hi Sarah,

I actually think the parable is referring to stopping evil period, not just an isolated case. Stopping an isolated case of evil wouldn’t really accomplish anything.

 

[ynotzap]

I believe I’ve figured out the reason why God doesn’t intervene to stop evil, and I believe it’s hidden in one of the parables of Christ:

“24 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven [m]may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed [n]tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 But when the [o]wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? [p]How then does it have tares?’ 28 And he said to them, ‘An [q]enemy has done this!’ **The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”” Mt. 13:24-30 (NASB)
We all know what this parable is about, and it needs no interpretation (for those that don’t know, the interpretation is in Mt. 13:36-43). Anyways, the important part for our purposes is vv.28b-29, where the servants (angels) want to intervene to stop the evildoers but the landowner (God/Christ) prevents them. He prevents them due to the fact that their intervention may harm the wheat. What this means is simple: God doesn’t intervene to stop evil because in doing so he knows that he’ll somehow harm the interests of the elect. Once the interests of the elect are secure, God will intervene to stop evil (see the book of Revelation).

Thoughts?

Sin is considered evil, since it is to go against God’s will. God can only will good, to go against it,is what evil is, the absence of the good. Only intelligent beings who also have free will can commit sin, evil. If God intervened to stop evil, then He would have to eliminate free will in intelligent beings. God desires us to love Him freely, not by force. We have choices, we can choose a lesser good over a greater good, or we can choose no good at all such as an intrinsically evil sin, that is a sin that has no redeeming quality, such as a lie, or murder God allows evil because He can draw good from it, and use it to test the saints. God can not create an “impeccable-not capable of sin” man, man by nature is fallible, dependent, and limited. Only God is incapable of sin, and infallible. With God’s grace man can be holy, and sinless, but he was brought into this world in the state of Original Sin inherited from the fall of Adam. Jesus came to redeem us from this sin and it’s consequences. Evil is not something positive, like darkness which is the absence of light.

 

[Justin_W]

Stopping an isolated case of evil wouldn’t really accomplish anything.

The potential-victim of the isolated case of potentially-preventable evil might disagree with you. That is one of the key parts of the problem as perceived by many people (non-believers and believers alike).

 

[Justin_W]

God can not create an “impeccable-not capable of sin” man

Maybe not. But He could have created many or all men (and women and angels) with the completely un-exercised capacity for sin, even taking free will into account.

 

[fred_conty]

Is it not according to your and perhaps others interpretation of a parable?

Where is it written that God cannot stop evil without harming the victim of that evil?

I’m not even sure this is a position the Catholic Church takes

Sarah x

In that particular passage cited, Jesus is talking about people, the evil people, not all evil such as natural disasters which is sometimes considered evil. So the parable is reduced to the evil of sin.

Another thought about this parable is that if God removed the evil people right away, we would be so frightened that we would live only in terror and fear.

Or God has in the past destroyed evil people as illustrated in the story of Noah and the flood, or Sodom and Gomorah. But in those cases it seems that almost the entire population was sinful. So Jesus may be saying that he will wait for the last day instead of taking immediate action.

It any case it was given to us as a warning so we would not be taken by surprise and just think that because evil is not punished right here and now, that evil will go unpunished. So many people have a problem with evil people prospering and having it so good. The good have difficulty understanding why evil people seem to have all they want, while good people seem to suffer. And this seems unfair, and does cause some resentment. But this parable tells us not to judge the book by its cover. And Jesus is saying that the day will come when the wrinkles in this system will be ironed out. When the poor will be rich, the hungry will sit at a banquet, the lowly recognized as great, and in general the suffering and patience of the good will not be in vain.

Where is it written that God cannot stop evil without harming the victim of that evil?

If only evil in people or evil people are considered, then the only way to stamp out evil in bad people, is to withdraw their ability to act freely. Because the only real evil in people is sin which requires freedom.

So if God withdrew freedom or coerced the good and the bad, then there would be no evil. But that would also take away the freedom of good people which would hurt them. So Jesus will wait until the last day and at that time when the final judgment is given, then sin will not longer exist or be committed because at that time good people will see the glory of God in all its fullness and will no longer desire to sin. And the evil people can no longer sin as well but for a different reason. They will be suffering so much that what would normally be considered sin will be done in so much pain, that the pain will take away their freedom, the pain being so intense that they cannot help themselves, and thus no sin.

“I know the sun is shinning even when it isn’t shinning.” Christian hymn

 

[Iron_Donkey]

To the OP, I don’t think I agree with your reading. For one thing, God does intervene to prevent evil or correct it all the time, in ways both minor and major. (Many of the corrections are easy to see, and range from stopping a wedding from running out of wine, to healing the sick, to raising the dead, to triumphing over the disaster that was original sin. Prevention is harder to notice, since noticing would require us to know what could have happened but didn’t and why.)

Also note that it is the servants who offer to collect the tares on the master’s behalf, and it is them who are told not to because of problems they may cause. Particularly since the wheat and tares in such parables tend to represent people rather than good and evil as pure things (note that evil isn’t actually a thing in itself anyway, but a perversion of good), it would be just as reasonable a reading to say the master is informing his servants that they are not capable of purging the world of evil people (that is, people who ultimately choose evil over good) without also purging good people (those who, ultimately, don’t).

There are several directions taken to approach the problem of evil. That good can be made to come from evil is related to it, but not in itself a full solution since good can also come about without evil. Likewise, free will plays a large part, but is not the whole story (see below). Other important facets are that evil is on a fundamental thing in its one right on the same level of and opposed to good, but rather a perversion of good - a lack of good where it ought to be, or drastic imbalance - and that persons are created for their own sake.

The problem of evil isn’t unassailable, but be wary of any answer that seems too quick and easy, especially if it proposes such things as restrictions on God’s abilities.

Maybe not. But He could have created many or all men (and women and angels) with the completely un-exercised capacity for sin, even taking free will into account.

He could have, however that would involve making the creation of a being dependent on the actions of that being, which would both go against the idea that persons are created for their own sakes and be a sort of capitulation to evil, in that would involve refraining from doing something good in creating a good (the person) because of future evil. Christians say that the sin and the sinner are separate all the time, and that applies even on this level. The sinner is in fact good, it is his sin that is bad.

 

[Justin_W]

He could have, however that would involve making the creation of a being dependent on the actions of that being, which would both go against the idea that persons are created for their own sakes and be a sort of capitulation to evil, in that would involve refraining from doing something good in creating a good (the person) because of future evil.

That’s a very interesting idea. But surely there are fewer people actually created than God could potentially create, and so God must have some criteria or process by which He chooses which of the potential people will be created as actual people. (And yes I understand that there are some temporal ambiguities in my grammar and that God is outside of time.) I.e. God could have created some other person rather than any individual one of us. Therefore, why not create someone ‘better’ than me or you?

For example, why not create everyone to be as holy and moral as Mary and John the Baptist? I’m not suggesting He should, I’m just wondering why doing so would be a “capitulation to evil”? I’ve been pondering this very issue a lot lately.

 

[oldcelt]

Or, just perhaps, the creator had nothing to do with humanity. Maybe, we are just a result of the initial act of creation, and none of us were a plan by that deity. Cold, maybe…possible…I think so.

John

 

[Methos]

I believe I’ve figured out the reason why God doesn’t intervene to stop evil, and I believe it’s hidden in one of the parables of Christ:

“24 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven [m]may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed [n]tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 But when the [o]wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? [p]How then does it have tares?’ 28 And he said to them, ‘An [q]enemy has done this!’ **The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”” Mt. 13:24-30 (NASB)

We all know what this parable is about, and it needs no interpretation (for those that don’t know, the interpretation is in Mt. 13:36-43). Anyways, the important part for our purposes is vv.28b-29, where the servants (angels) want to intervene to stop the evildoers but the landowner (God/Christ) prevents them. He prevents them due to the fact that their intervention may harm the wheat. What this means is simple: God doesn’t intervene to stop evil because in doing so he knows that he’ll somehow harm the interests of the elect. Once the interests of the elect are secure, God will intervene to stop evil (see the book of Revelation).

Thoughts?

So, evil people are always evil and good people are always good. Just as tare is tare and not wheat, while wheat is wheat and not tare and neither can’t be the other.

 

[littlestsouls2]

The crown of the martyrs is proof that God permits certain evils in order to bring about a greater good.

I’m going to keep it simple, and leave it at that.

 

[tonyrey]

If God constantly intervened to prevent evil it would defeat the purpose of creating a world in which we are free to choose what to believe and how to live.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

That’s a very interesting idea. But surely there are fewer people actually created than God could potentially create, and so God must have some criteria or process by which He chooses which of the potential people will be created as actual people. (And yes I understand that there are some temporal ambiguities in my grammar and that God is outside of time.) I.e. God could have created some other person rather than any individual one of us. Therefore, why not create someone ‘better’ than me or you?

For example, why not create everyone to be as holy and moral as Mary and John the Baptist? I’m not suggesting He should, I’m just wondering why doing so would be a “capitulation to evil”? I’ve been pondering this very issue a lot lately.

I’m going to insert my typical “this is just the result of me thinking about things and can be contradicted by any official source” disclaimer here. What I write makes sense to me, but I am by no means an expert.

There’s a potential issue here in how we look at things. It is true that God could have created you or me to be more holy, but since our holiness is primarily a result of our choices, to create someone who was both me and who chose differently than I would would be to violate my free will. Of course, He could sidestep that by creating someone who was not me, but was similar in most respects (same parents, same personality, given the same name, reads too much, etc.) except being a lot more holy. But this person would not be me, and so we’d have the previous case of God choosing to create or not create people based on their actions.

So each possibility for having a world full of holy people has its own problems - either people are made for their own sakes but forced to be holy, or people are not made for their own sakes. Note though that the second is only a problem if He always does this - creating a John the Baptist in addition to everyone else who will go around and fix many og the problems we made is fine, because John is both a good person in his own right (the primary reason for his creation, had John been otherwise John could still have been created and someone else made who would fill his role) and is not being made instead of anyone else (a person’s creation is not dependent upon his choices).

As to how God decides who to create and who not to create - that is something that I simply don’t have an answer for, in any particularity. What mechanism He might or might not have I don’t know. It could be that each person who He imagines, He does create, but that He chooses the time and place to insert this person into the world so as to influence whatever He decides needs to be influenced. So it is possible (again, it seems possible, I cannot say that I know that it is happening) that God doesn’t “imagine” two people, and decide to create one over the other, but simply decides to create people at times and places when and where their existence will have the best result.

It is true that it is always possible for the world to be better, simply by the addition of one more good person. In part, the answer is that if the world can always be better, then the thing to do is to create a world that is continually evolving towards perfection - not so much in the sense as a reachable goal, but in the same way that a function might approach infinity. (Which is actually, insofar as I understand it, what the Church says is happening.)

So in short, it could be that because God could always improve the world by creating one more good thing, that He always does so, and so the world is always improving. As for how it is now - well, something that improves has to start somewhere, and while it could be better, it will be; and it is good now.

 

[ynotzap]

Maybe not. But He could have created many or all men (and women and angels) with the completely un-exercised capacity for sin, even taking free will into account.

When man or any intelligent being is created they are created with the condition of Potency and Act, a real capacity to become, or being, to the actual becoming or actual being. Even angels have this capacity, they have free will to obey or disobey. They are active the moment they are created, and their activity is sustained by God. To have a completely un-exercised capacity for sin is to remain in a Potential state morally, inactive, and that is not possible for an intelligent created being who by nature is changing always,active: In angels who are immutable once they make a choice not to sin, they will always remain without sin. Humans who are not immutable when they make a choice can sin again and again until they die. Once physically dead they will reap the consequences of their willful choices. HOw do you explain or justify your thoughts on how God could create intelligent beings with the completely un-exercised capacity for sin, even taking free will into account?

 

[Justin_W]

HOw do you explain or justify your thoughts on how God could create intelligent beings with the completely un-exercised capacity for sin, even taking free will into account?

You already alluded to some of the evidence.

Evidence:

1. 
   *]Each of the (unfallen) Angels has Free Will and never sinned.
   *]Each Human in heaven has Free Will and will never (again) sin.
   *]Each Human in purgatory has Free Will and will never (again) sin.
   *]Mary never sinned in her entire created life from the moment of her conception.
   *](I’ve heard it said) John the Baptist never sinned from the moment he leapt in his mother’s womb (and presumably was incapable of sin prior to that point due to incompetence).
   *]Scripture and Tradition both tell us that the Original Sin of Adam and Eve was not inevitable, and thus it was apparently possible for them to have never sinned.
   
   Proof:
   1. 
      *]According to reason, we can conclude that anything that is not logically impossible would be possible to an omnipotent being.
      *]If it is possible for any individual creature with Free Will to never sin, then that proves that it is possible for God to create Free creatures that do not ever exercise their Free capacity to actualize sin.
      *]If even one of the assertions in the list above is true, it would seem adequate proof that God has the ability to create creatures that have/retain Free Will yet who will never (or at least never again after a certain point) actually commit any sin.
      *]According to my understanding of scripture and Church teaching, I understand that all of the above-listed assertions/evidence are true.
      *]Therefore, God has the ability to create many creatures that have/retain Free Will yet who will never actually commit any sin.
      
      Is there a flaw in my logic?