It's a common question that many people ask themselves, even life long Christians often ask, “why would a loving God allow evil in the world? Why would he allow pain and suffering?”
I mean when you think about it it makes no sense. How could a God who cares about us and truly wants the best for us allow things like hurricanes, earthquakes and volcano eruptions. How could he allow people to commit murders, to lie and to steal, to hurt people? Well although he does allow evil in our world its not that simple. He allowed free will. He let us choose between good and evil. The answer to our question is found in the very beginning of the Bible. In Genesis 2:8-9 we see God creating the garden of Eden: “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
In Genesis two verses 15-17 it reads “15 The Lord God took the man and put him (Adam) in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.””
And what do they do? They eat from the tree of knowledge. They have thus disobeyed a perfect God and don't even deserve life, so God banishes them from the garden of Eden. He lists a bunch of consequences to their sin. Both physical and emotional suffering are very prevalent. This is where pain and suffering begin, not by God's choice, but by ours.
But this still raises the question, why does God allow this pain and suffering? Why not just stop it if he is all powerful? You see, God is Holy. He is 100% perfect and 100% sinless. Once we commit a single sin we are filthy next to God and cannot be in his presence. By letting us go without suffering, and dying he would be unjust. However, there is good news. God gave us a way out. When Jesus lived a perfect life and died on the cross he payed for all our sins. Since he was infinitely perfect he was able to pay for an infinite amount of sin. Now that he has taken our place we no longer must pay the price for our sin, so God can have us with him and still be Perfect and Holy. All we have to do is accept God's gift. It is not that he doesn't want us to be with him since we are sinners, its simply that if we were to be with him he would not be a perfect God.
But there is yet another reason that God allows evil in the world. To help you understand this let me tell you a little story about myself. When I was younger I would play with action figures. I would have them go on adventures and fight and all that stuff, but eventually I would get bored with them. This was because they did whatever I wanted them to. There was no free will so they weren't really people. Now this is obvious but think about what we would be if we didn't have free will, if we always did the right thing, if there was no suffering, no evil, no wrong choice. We would be robots under God's control. This doesn't give us the joy of love or giving or kindness, because there would be nothing to compare it to. So you see without giving us the choice of good verses evil, there would be no good. That is the biggest reason why God continues to allow evil in the world. God hates evil but it is necessary for there to be good.
So you see, God allows evil in the world not because he hates us, but because he loves us. Without evil, love would be worthless. We can choose life or death, and even after we choose death, God gives us a way out. It's an amazing gift. I hope you will utilize it to get what God truly wants for us, joy through serving out his plan. Joy by doing what God calls you to do.
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