Why doesn't God intervene to stop evil?

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AFerri48

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I get that God gave us free will, but hear me out. If a police officer was to catch a man getting ready to shoot someone, they would obviously intervene, and this wouldn’t be taking away free will.

Why doesn’t God do the same thing? Intervene to stop atrocities like murder?
 
If God directly intervened to stop every atrocity then humans would grow complaint and would inevitably be dependent on him for every task no matter how small.

Having said that, God DOES intervene indirectly. In the Hundred Years War he intervened against the English Atrocities by telling Joan of Arc to help the French. In the Mongol Invasion of Europe he intervened against Mongol Atrocities by causing the Mongol Khan to die of natural causes before he could sack Vienna. Against the Nazis God planned for FDR and Patton and Churchill to be born in Allied Nations and for the Russian Winter to ensure an Axis defeat.
 
God wants US to recognize and stop evil, if he intervenes, we will never learn. It’s like the old saying, " Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry again."
 
Without evil our world could not sustain itself. We’re only here for a relatively short time, so we must grin and bear with it until the day of salvation comes.
 
Crusaderbear said:
God wants US to recognize and stop evil, if he intervenes, we will never learn. It’s like the old saying, " Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry again."
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Beat me to it 😃
 
AFerri48 said:
I get that God gave us free will, but hear me out. If a police officer was to catch a man getting ready to shoot someone, they would obviously intervene, and this wouldn’t be taking away free will.

Why doesn’t God do the same thing? Intervene to stop atrocities like murder?
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God doesn’t stop the evil because He converts the evil into a greater good. He doesn’t stop the fornication because out of it He brings a child. Murders are used to show the sanctity of the marytrs. And so forth. There is no evil, no suffering that cannot be integrated by Christ’s Cross into a holy, happy life.

Instead of merely ending evil, He truly shames Satan by making evil work for Him.

Christi pax.
 
Because of our fallen nature, evil inclinations are always on the back burner of every human beings’ personhood. Our free will determines whether we allow those inclinations to be in the forefront…and thus leading us to sin or evil situations. Evil came as a result of the disobedient act of Adam and Eve and thus is now embedded in our psyche, but does not always have the last word. As other poster commented, good can still come out of an evil situation, although it may be in awkward circumstances, yet still allows for hope to reign in those situations. Does God allow evil to make good situations? Not within the framework of His being all good and loving. It’s probably more towards that he allows good to even come out of an evil situations. Not so much that he makes the evil situation in order to show or allow good to come from it. I always found it as a consolation that if Christ while being here on earth did not make that happy miracle of wiping out all evil from our lives….then there must be a pretty good reason why it is allowed to exist and manifest itself throughout generations. And it actually shows the reality of our making this world a place of peace or discord. In essence, our free wills are the driving force to that…and God renders what our wills put forth. Jesus has spoken His word to us…we are challenged to follow it and make the world what we hope to one day attain in heaven…if it so be our will! Yet, he said will he find faith when He returns? Hmm.
 
AFerri48 said:
I get that God gave us free will, but hear me out. If a police officer was to catch a man getting ready to shoot someone, they would obviously intervene, and this wouldn’t be taking away free will.

Why doesn’t God do the same thing? Intervene to stop atrocities like murder?
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He is possibly trying to bring a greater good out of it. It is counter intuitive , i would agree. But that is applying human reasoning.

Remember, he did not spare his only son(and in a way himself) a gruesome and unjustified death.
 
God is *able * to do anything . It isn’t so much a case of what God doesn’t want, as much as a case of what He does want: Our greater good . . . for each and every one of us.
Working in the same vein as Lucretius’ post -

If God intervened to stop evil . . . we wouldn’t have the Crucifixion . . . or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass . . . or even the sacrament of Reconciliation, if we follow the logic.

In addition to God shaming Satan in making evil work for Him, our Blessed Lord permits Satan and his minions to tempt us, to engage in spiritual warfare against us. One reason for this is that it is much more humiliating to Satan when a human being, by God’s grace, defeats him.

God not only wants or expects us to stop and recognize evil - as Crusaderbear says , he is also willing to stack the deck in our favor in order to make it happen. But we need to begin by recognizing our own evil tendencies - that’s where the true battle lies.
 
Tim_D said:
Oh, come on. :rolleyes:
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My point is there are a lot of times in history where a good side and an evil side were fighting against each other, and the good side seemed to have luck on their side.

If the Germans won the Battle of Britain OR the Battle of Stalingrad than they probably would have won the war. But the Germans lost both battles by a hair each and the world is better off for it.

There’s a reason why generals often say “God is on our side”.
 
AFerri48 said:
I get that God gave us free will, but hear me out. If a police officer was to catch a man getting ready to shoot someone, they would obviously intervene, and this wouldn’t be taking away free will.

Why doesn’t God do the same thing? Intervene to stop atrocities like murder?
Click to expand...
Murder is horrible because we’re conditioned by God’s revelation that it is. God’s revelation is His intervention to stop atrocities.

Television and movies depict the depravity of people towards one another, all too-vividly. These depict not that God doesn’t care nor that God is evil for allowing it. If the Bible is anything, it’s a rulebook of do’s and don’t.

NO ONE can say absolutely that God is not intervening millions of times every day to avoid atrocities. I can think of a group of people I’d have already killed if God had not intervened in my life. It scares me to think that He might have allowed me to act out on my impulses. I was a Viet Nam war conscientious objector based on my Catholic beliefs – that I could not take an order to mow down unarmed civilians as took place at My Lai and a documented thousand other places in that country. (I acknowledge the impulse for sadism in myself that would allow me to do just that sort of thing, but I would not submit to it, in that atrocious conflict.)

Perhaps you are expecting God to intervene with lightning bolts to avoid atrocities, but that’s not how God does it. The Father did not so intervene with His Son, did He?
 
The Catholic Church has long explained our tendency toward evil as something called concupiscence.

In Judaism, it’s explained more graphically, as yetzer hara, the evil impulse. There are 613 laws enumerated by Jews in the Jewish Scripture, as I read about it.

One rabbi explained that he had the temptation to do all the things that scripture forbids, and to not do the things that scripture commands.

The Catholic Church does not absolutely forbid us from reading Jewish writings (indeed, more than half of our Bible is composed of Jewish writings). It’s illustrative to me to delve into the orthodox and conservative understanding of scriptures, to absorb the intensity of people who take God’s word seriously.
In the matter at hand – atrocities – I am very uncomfortable. I can only wonder at the infinite mind of God who watches on those things.
 
It’s a two way street. God loves the world, and the world needs to love God. If people turn away from God they are responsible for the evil that comes.
 
psalm90 said:
One rabbi explained that he had the temptation to do all the things that scripture forbids, and to not do the things that scripture commands.
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I can completely relate to what he is talking about. The flesh seems to temptate me to everything evil. The spirit, on the other hand, inclines me to everything holy. I desire both to love my neighbor and use my neighbor as an instrument of my own selfish goals, at the same time even.

This is why I and others find the life of the saints both utterly desirable and completely repulsive too.

Thank you for your post 🙂

Christi pax.
 
AFerri48 said:
I get that God gave us free will, but hear me out. If a police officer was to catch a man getting ready to shoot someone, they would obviously intervene, and this wouldn’t be taking away free will.

Why doesn’t God do the same thing? Intervene to stop atrocities like murder?
Click to expand...
He DID intervene, just not in the way we sometimes want/expect. He sent Jesus to redeem us…He saved us. Only focusing on worldly problems is short-sighted. The best we can hope for is NOT happiness here on earth. Our sights are [supposed to be] focused eternally. If all we look at is this temporal world, it’s really difficult to make sense of the existence of any violence, except the obvious reality that God can bring good out of evil…and He often does. (The Crucifixion, for example.)
Yet, if we are focused on the reality of our spiritual natures and the eternity which makes life in this world a mere blink of the eye, then violence in this world is not problematic…it’s just the natural consequence of humans rejecting God and its something we have to face as we grow in holiness.
 
Good and evil work together in this world to keep it afloat. When our world reaches its completion, God will intervene and eliminate evil. This is all spelled out in the Book of Revelation.
 
AFerri48 said:
I get that God gave us free will, but hear me out. If a police officer was to catch a man getting ready to shoot someone, they would obviously intervene, and this wouldn’t be taking away free will.

Why doesn’t God do the same thing? Intervene to stop atrocities like murder?
Click to expand...
It might appear that the free will of the murderer trumps the freewill of the murdered.

To allow evil, inside of time, is to really allow for great resurrections.

Many people in this world have needed the time to repent aka - change directions.

For God to intervene, is to say - ‘there is no hope’ for the sinner.

That’s not freedom.

The problem is that we compare ourselves to others.

If we can somehow break that habit, we can start to work out our own kinks and change directions.
 
AFerri48 said:
I get that God gave us free will, but hear me out. If a police officer was to catch a man getting ready to shoot someone, they would obviously intervene, and this wouldn’t be taking away free will.

Why doesn’t God do the same thing? Intervene to stop atrocities like murder?
Click to expand...
God isn’t a grand puppet master.
 
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