16. Did God create evil?

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Questions For My Pastor podcast where we aim to answer questions on

[00:00:09] the Bible, the Christian life, anything really in 5 minutes or less. My name is James and

[00:00:14] I'm the pastor here at Sarf Fellowship. We are an international church in the kingdom

[00:00:18] of Bahrain. This week's question or the next question up for us is probably something

[00:00:25] that you've heard before, maybe even thought about, wrestled with, prayed about before.

[00:00:29] Did God create evil? So we will grab a timer and we'll try and do this in 5 minutes or

[00:00:37] less. It's really important to say that these are massive questions and we're trying

[00:00:41] to give a really brief answer if you want to go deeper into it. I'd love to talk to

[00:00:46] you about it. My contact details are in the show notes below or on the church website

[00:00:51] which is www.SarfRolarship.com. But for now in 5 minutes or less did God create evil?

[00:00:59] Short answer is no. We'll probably pause there after 5 seconds. But I think it's really

[00:01:04] helpful first for us to define what is evil. We think if God created all things and

[00:01:11] evil must have been created by God. He says, I made light and dark, I made good

[00:01:16] and evil. So what is evil? It's really important for us to understand, to know that

[00:01:22] evil is not really a thing, biblically, scripturally. Evil is not a thing like the

[00:01:31] microphone that I'm speaking into or the computer that I'm sitting in front of.

[00:01:35] You can't have a box full of evil. In and of itself it doesn't exist. Really

[00:01:44] evil is the absence, the void created by the lack of good. Think about driving down

[00:01:52] the road and there's a giant hole in the road. We talk about that. We say there's

[00:01:56] a hole, there's a pot hole. What is that hole? It's not something in itself that

[00:02:01] you can pick up and carry and do anything with. The hole is the lack of road that

[00:02:07] you've just driven through and hopefully not punctured. You're tired. So if we go

[00:02:12] all the way back to Genesis chapter one, we read about the creation of the world

[00:02:15] and then in chapter two, very typically Hebrew style, we go back into it. We get a

[00:02:20] little bit more detail. But Genesis chapter one, it's all good. Genesis

[00:02:25] chapter one, 31 says God saw everything that he had made and behold it was

[00:02:29] very good and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.

[00:02:33] Nowhere in Genesis chapter one that I've ever read did God make evil.

[00:02:38] Everything that he made is good. Scripture tells us in so many places that God is

[00:02:42] good, God is love. So he is not evil. So this kind of backs up this truth that

[00:02:49] evil is the lack of something good and one of the things we read of in

[00:02:56] Genesis one and again in Genesis two is the creation of people and elsewhere

[00:03:01] in Scripture of angels as well. But because God is a God of love and wanted

[00:03:08] the best for his creation, one of the tremendous gifts that we're given is the

[00:03:14] gift of free will. We're not pre-programmed. We're not robots kind of

[00:03:20] you know in some kind of simulation. So God wants what is good for us. He

[00:03:27] wants us to get on board with his program and in his creation but we have a

[00:03:31] choice whether to do that. So when we choose what is good, it's good. We choose

[00:03:36] what is holy and righteous and we're living our lives after the way God

[00:03:40] designed and decided. But when we choose to do things that are against

[00:03:46] who he is, against what he says. Scripture often calls that sin. It

[00:03:50] would be also very accurate to call that evil. We have chosen to leave out

[00:03:55] something good from our lives and then God hasn't created that but because we

[00:04:03] are beings with free will. When we choose to do things that leave out the

[00:04:08] good, leave out the God from our lives. The gap, the space, the hole in the

[00:04:12] road in our lives so to speak is sin and that's evil. It's the absence of

[00:04:17] good. It's the absence of a God-centered choice. So very, very briefly did God

[00:04:26] create evil? No because it's the lack of good. It's the lack of a godly choice

[00:04:34] and decision action. If God had pre-programmed us to completely, never

[00:04:40] ever ever be able to choose evil, the relationships all around us will be

[00:04:46] very, very different. We wouldn't relate to God in the same way because it would be

[00:04:49] our pre-programming master and overlord not a God that we want to love and serve

[00:04:54] and emulate and share with other people about. I read recently that God

[00:05:00] allowed for the possibility of evil in this wonderful gift of free will that

[00:05:04] he gave us so that we could genuinely choose whether or not we wanted to

[00:05:09] serve Him. When we do, it is good and when we don't, it is evil. So all of that to

[00:05:16] say with 10 seconds left did God create evil? No because evil is not a thing in

[00:05:21] itself. It's the absence of the good and the godly. If this is something that you

[00:05:26] want to go deeper with if you want to talk about why does God then allow

[00:05:30] why does he allow evil? If you want to go deeper into this please do reach

[00:05:34] out. I would love to hear from you but until next time, God bless.