Why does God allow evil to happen in the world?

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TreeOfLife123

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Why does He?
Is it somehow part of His plan?

Why so much falsehood? If the Lord hates falsehood why is there so much falsehood?
 
This of course begs the question of whether there is a God, or at least an all-loving and all-powerful God. The absence of such a god(s) provides a clear answer to the ‘why evil’ question. It does not answer the ‘what to do about it’ and ‘how to do it’ questions. These are matters which in my view, we must decide ourselves, without divine help.
 
Would a sinless world reaffirm God, or make Him obsolete?

I’m not trying to imply that God allows evil to exist for the sake of self-preservation (He wouldn’t of bestowed upon us the knowledge to defeat evil if that was the case) but knowing humanites inclination toward pride I think for Him to eradicate evil entirely would be to actually risk damning humanity to eternal separation.

God doesn’t want us to suffer, but He knows we are a race riven with pride, it is in that suffering that our faith is strengthened, without evil we would simply make God’s of ourselves and our souls would be damned. Essentially the complete opposite of what God want’s of us.
 
God has blessed us with the gift of choice. You only need look around to see why there is evil in the world. Why is there hunger when the world has bounty to fee all it’s creatures? Because men sin. Why do people live in crowded ghettos in abject poverty when there is enough land for everyone to have a share? Because men sin. Why is there abortion, over-population and the problems associated with them? Because men sin.

God loves us and cares for us. He also lets us make our mistakes, as any good father would. We simply haven’t learned from them yet.
 
TreeOfLife123 said:
Why does He?
Is it somehow part of His plan?

Why so much falsehood? If the Lord hates falsehood why is there so much falsehood?
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To bring forth greater good.

Evil is an absence of Good. God can’t will evil. Creatures chose to be away from the source of goodness, thus becoming evil.

Truth ultimately triumphs over falsehood.
 
Hokomai said:
This of course begs the question of whether there is a God, or at least an all-loving and all-powerful God. The absence of such a god(s) provides a clear answer to the ‘why evil’ question. It does not answer the ‘what to do about it’ and ‘how to do it’ questions. These are matters which in my view, we must decide ourselves, without divine help.
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The crucifixion happened in the holy land 2012 years ago and preceding that this man that was crucified gave us the answer to everything and what I’ve never been able to understand is that people like you don’t have much to say about that part of history.
 
Evil and good are opposites. One implies the other. If we didn’t have evil, then good would be lukewarm, not good.
 
I believe that because God gave us free will, WE are the reason that evil happens in this world.
 
Evil is an act of the will. To eliminate evil, either you eliminate the will (which is impossible) or use the will to choose good.
 
I don’t see evil anymore.

I do see pain, destruction, anger, despair, etc. and other undesirables, but it all makes sense. It’s all part of the plan, and part of prophecy.

Rom 7 explains how evil infiltrates every aspect of our thinking when we don’t even engage in it but are exposed to it by being told the law. This is part of our Christian conditioning, preparing us for our birth in the spirit.

Alan
 
TreeOfLife123 said:
Why does He?
Is it somehow part of His plan?

Why so much falsehood? If the Lord hates falsehood why is there so much falsehood?
Click to expand...
If God stops everyone being bad or thinking bad thoughts than we would be mere robots.

You could ask the same question to every single parent whose child does something wrong.
 
I think Augustines analogy of lights and darks are the best to explain this

imagine a large painting that is one of the most beautiful in the world and actually this painting is painted by just taking a color and putting it point by point, not strokes just like you have a pencil of color and you put a dot in it. Put your nose to it and it doesn’t look like anything just a strange collection of colors nothing beautiful at all. Then you take a step back and you notice that some images are starting to form, go all the way back and you realize that its the most beautiful painting in the world.

We are just like this painting and our perspective of it is like our noses are on the painting, the are lights in it, mother theresa what she has done in the world, the great scientific advances and how it has improved human life, but there are also darks in it. The Death camps in Europe during WWII, the Rowandan Genocide, abortion, along with other things. In our perspective it looks like the darks are bad and God should stop them and not let them happen. But if we were to see it from God’s perspective we would see the beauty of it and the evils are necessary for this to happen.

to put it visually without darks and lights on this post you couldn’t see my writing

Highlight the bellow line

If I were to put this entire thing in white you couldn’t see it

but by putting it in black you can see everything.

you could say the background is the good in the world, and the words the evil. But put it all together and it makes sense.
 
Hokomai said:
This of course begs the question of whether there is a God, or at least an all-loving and all-powerful God. The absence of such a god(s) provides a clear answer to the ‘why evil’ question. It does not answer the ‘what to do about it’ and ‘how to do it’ questions. These are matters which in my view, we must decide ourselves, without divine help.
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That brings up bigger questions, like why life exists, and where matter and energy came from, and what caused the first event to happen, whether it was the Big Bang or something earlier. Plus, we already have proof that Jesus rose from the dead, which is a huge starting point towards figuring out which belief system is correct.
 
catholictiger said:
I think Augustines analogy of lights and darks are the best to explain this

imagine a large painting that is one of the most beautiful in the world and actually this painting is painted by just taking a color and putting it point by point, not strokes just like you have a pencil of color and you put a dot in it. Put your nose to it and it doesn’t look like anything just a strange collection of colors nothing beautiful at all. Then you take a step back and you notice that some images are starting to form, go all the way back and you realize that its the most beautiful painting in the world.

We are just like this painting and our perspective of it is like our noses are on the painting, the are lights in it, mother theresa what she has done in the world, the great scientific advances and how it has improved human life, but there are also darks in it. The Death camps in Europe during WWII, the Rowandan Genocide, abortion, along with other things. In our perspective it looks like the darks are bad and God should stop them and not let them happen. But if we were to see it from God’s perspective we would see the beauty of it and the evils are necessary for this to happen.

to put it visually without darks and lights on this post you couldn’t see my writing

Highlight the bellow line

If I were to put this entire thing in white you couldn’t see it

but by putting it in black you can see everything.

you could say the background is the good in the world, and the words the evil. But put it all together and it makes sense.
Click to expand...
Great Post 👍 Can’t wait to hear your first homily!🙂
 
catholictiger said:
In our perspective it looks like the darks are bad and God should stop them and not let them happen. But if we were to see it from God’s perspective we would see the beauty of it and the evils are necessary for this to happen.
Click to expand...
Thank you.

:amen:
 
TreeOfLife123 said:
Why does He?
Is it somehow part of His plan?

Why so much falsehood? If the Lord hates falsehood why is there so much falsehood?
Click to expand...
The Judeo-Christian explanation: it’s because of free will. That is, we are given the ability to choose our path in life. In this way, we are not mere automatons who obey G-d, but rather imperfect beings who are given the wonderful opportunity to constantly strive to be better (according to Judaism) or perfect (according to Catholicism). In either case, we grow in our love of G-d and our love of others. Judaism believes we are the only creatures who have this free will: neither the beasts nor the angels do.

The “George Burns” explanation (from his film, “Oh, G-d!”): without evil in the world, we would never be able to appreciate the good but instead just take it for granted. A yin and yang philosophy.
 
Petersmate said:
The crucifixion happened in the holy land 2012 years ago and preceding that this man that was crucified gave us the answer to everything and what I’ve never been able to understand is that people like you don’t have much to say about that part of history.
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Well I’d love to have my say? But about what? On the subject of this thread, one of the outstanding things about the New Testament is that Jesus has so little (nothing really) to say about how an all-loving and omnipotent God can allow evil to happen. This is especially true of the suffering inflicted on animals, to whom the promises of after-life bliss do not apply.
 
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