Was the destruction of our world with a great flood an evil or a good?

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Robert_Sock

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Isaiah 45:7 - “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (Douay-Rheims)Isaiah 45:7 - “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (Douay-Rheims)
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We could say that it was a punishment, neither good or evil, but would that be consistent with an all-loving God? Like with us through Christ, could God not have saved these sinners too?
 
Dear Robert_Sock
First, we know not if those sinners were saved, for we cannot see the inhabitants of hell.
Secondly, we must remember that God is the First, and Only, Judge. Therefore, He alone holds the right to cast punishment on mankind. The people that were wiped away were described as committing evil, and, thus, deserved a punishment. In fact, and I may be wrong, I believe Jewish tradition holds that humanity was going to destroy itself if God hadn’t sent the flood to “restart” (I don’t have a better word to use).
However, keep this in mind too: a giant boat takes a long time to build. And it is very obvious. And the reason for building it is easy to explain. So God granted plenty of time for the rest of humanity to repent as Noah built the ark.
So the flood was a just punishment for a people so sinful that the only solution was to remove them, but they were still given time to repent and accept God’s Mercy.
 
Trojan_Horse said:
However, keep this in mind too: a giant boat takes a long time to build. And it is very obvious. And the reason for building it is easy to explain. So God granted plenty of time for the rest of humanity to repent as Noah built the ark.

So the flood was a just punishment for a people so sinful that the only solution was to remove them, but they were still given time to repent and accept God’s Mercy.
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This only applies to people in the local area. What about the majority of humankind in other parts of the world who were ignored but drowned also?
 
It was a good, for every act of God is intrinsically good for he is Goodness Itself.

How can Goodness do evil?
 
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I understand your point, and I do not have an answer for you, because I just don’t know.
But I still uphold my original point that it was a just act, for God is the only Judge and the only measure of Justice. Further, God is good, and cannot contradict Himself by committing evil. His actions may seem evil to us, because flooding the earth seems like a bad thing to people who live there, but the offences of humanity made the punishment fitting to their crimes.
 
Something must have been evil. Was it our free-will? I’m wondering what happened to our human nature after the flood? Did it change? For example, before the flood people seemed to have lived for a long, long time.
 
What was evil was us using our free will to enact evil desires. Free will is not evil, but the way we enact it can be.
After the flood, our human nature would have been the same: free will, reason, concupiscence, conscience, etc…
However, with Noah and his family being saved by the ark, the next generations would have been set more on the right track, by being taught by Noah and his family of what righteousness is. Of course, humanity kept falling, but God then called Abraham and His descendants to Himself.
As for the thing about human life-spans, I don’t know. It could be that people lived longer, but I feel like it is more likely that the writers of Genesis kept track of years differently than we would now.
 
What I want to know if what resources were out there for people to live a holy life in those days?

Like today we have the church & the bible etc to teach us.
 
The thing is, I believe that the flood was caused by the world’s inhabitants disobeying the natural law- That law which is not learned, but rather written on the hearts of man.
 
Trojan_Horse said:
It could be that people lived longer, but I feel like it is more likely that the writers of Genesis kept track of years differently than we would now.
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Or people living many hundreds of years were mythological.
 
Yes, especially to those that God ignored in all the rest of the world.
 
It was a very good event. From destruction comes rebirth.
 
Personally, i don’t think it really happened. It’s a story. But that’s just my opinion.
 
There’s geological evidence of a great flood. The planet is still mostly covered in water. Every ancient culture has a flood story. I think there might be something to it. But that’s just me.
 
There is not enough information in the genesis account to know exactly what the evil was that humans were committing nor is there enough information to know what this could have led to. Since God is omniescent (can see the future) perhaps he knew that humanity’s evil would only get worse and the flood was the best alternative.
 
adjective: mythological
relating to, based on, or appearing in myths or mythology.
 
That’s what I thought you meant, I just wanted to make sure.
It is entirely possible that their life-spans and such were of the type of myth.
 
Many people quote where the Bible says that He looked at creation and saw that it was “very good.” As I pointed out elsewhere, the term “very good” means the evil inclination according to Jews, which I personally agree with. How else could the world suddenly become purely evil in what appears to have been a very short time?
 
Seriously no, there is no geological evidence for a global flood, and since most civilizations grew up along river deltas, it’s little wonder they record floods.
 
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