Good, loving parents teach their kids to live good lives. They teach them that certain behaviours have good results, and certain behaviours have bad results. Sometimes when kids grow up and start making their own decisions, they act differently to what their parents taught them, and then get themselves into trouble. Does this mean that they don’t have loving parents? No, not at all!

As kids get old enough to think for themselves, love requires them to be given more and more freedom to choose. Love cannot be forced. Unfortunately, sometimes kids choose differently to what their loving parents know is best.

The Bible teaches that God is good, and loving. For him to be loving requires him to give us freedom to choose to obey him or not. If he forced our submission it would not be love.

It just so happens, that the guy who was the top angel in heaven chose to rebel and do his own thing. He managed to get a bunch of the other angels and the human race to side with him in opposition against God.

When people do evil things, innocent people suffer. This doesn’t prove that a good and loving God does not exist, it just proves that people are exercising their freedom to choose. But they choose evil rather than good. The consequences are what we see going on around us.

So why didn’t God just destroy Satan before he got the human race to rebel? Why doesn’t God destroy evil straight away? Why doesn’t he intervene more?

To see the answer to these questions, continue to the next section....

Yes, it is possible for a good, loving God to exist, even though innocent people suffer from evil. So we now have four reasons left to be an atheist.

A Story of Defamation

There once was a young couple that fell in love and got married. A year or three down the track they had a son together. We will call him John. Now this couple ran into some relationship difficulties and ended up getting divorced. John’s mother ended up with custody of John. John did not see his father again for many years. While he was growing up, he often wondered about his father. He never received gifts from him (not even a birthday card), he never visited him, never received letters from him. His mother told him that he never even paid his child support payments. She said that his father was a nasty sort of person and really horrible to get along with, and that she divorced him in search of a better life for herself and John.

When John had reached adulthood, he came to the point where he wanted to confront his father about the situation. Why did he never reach out to visit? Why did he never send a letter or a gift? Why did he never pay child support? What sort of father was he?

John discovered that his father lived close by. This fact made his lack of communication with John seem even more inexcusable.

John went to visit his father and confront him. During the awkward conversation that followed, John asked him why no visits, no letters, no gifts, no child support?

With tears in his eyes, John’s father led him inside to a room. On the shelves where many packages, gifts addressed to John but that had been marked “Return to Sender”. There were many letters marked the same way. John’s father opened a file and showed John the child support payment receipts, many of which revealed that even more had been paid than required. His father revealed that he had tried to visit many times, but every time John’s mother would try to hide by moving to a new address.

John had been led to believe that his father did not love him or fulfil his responsibility to care for his son, yet all along it was his mother who was deceiving him as to the true love of his father.

Could it be that we are in the same story? God has been made out to be a terrible person. Why does he allow evil to exist? Why do innocent children suffer? Why doesn’t he put an end to all this? Because we don’t see the whole picture, we are led to doubt that God is truly a loving God.

The Nutshell

Humanity is in the midst of a conflict that has resulted in the pain and suffering we experience here on earth. The word’s present condition is not of God’s making and He is actually right on the verge of completing the “court case”, which will then enable him to make a complete and final end of evil.

The Nature of Love

Imagine if I were to point a gun at your head in a threatening manner and tell you to jump up and down. Would you do it? What if I told you to run around in circles? Now, what if I pointed that gun at you, and told you to love me? Would you love me? Can I force you to love me?

Love can never be forced. For love to exist, there must be the possibility to not love as well. If there was no option other than to love God, we would be mere robots doing exactly as He determines for us. But God is a God of love; therefore He gives us freedom of choice. God desires our voluntary loyalty. He sets before us life and death, good and evil, so that we can make an intelligent choice. Christ’s death on the cross was the supreme demonstration of the love of God, of the nature of sin, and of the nature of Satan.

Where Evil Began

“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” - Revelation 12:7-9

The Bible tells us that evil actually began in Heaven of all places! A dispute broke out between God and the head angel, who’s name was Lucifer. We now know him as Satan, or the Devil. So why did this happen?

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, Son of the Morning! How you are cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations! For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” - Isaiah 14:12-14

Lucifer decided to rebel against God and set himself up in the position of God.

“You are the anointed cherub that covers; and I have set you so… You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, till evil was found in you. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, you have corrupted your wisdom because of your brightness... Ezekiel 28:13-17

God created Lucifer perfect. There was nothing evil about him. Because everything God does is based on the principles of love He gives freedom of choice to all beings, including Lucifer. Freedom of choice means freedom to choose to love God and be loyal to him, or the freedom to choose to do the opposite. Lucifer chose the opposite.

A world in which wrongdoing would be impossible would be a world in which love would be impossible as well. So if love were the end-goal, freedom would be the only way to get there. Therefore, a world in which both good and evil are possible is the only kind of world in which good could eventually reign supreme and from which evil could be permanently eradicated.

Why did God let it go on so long?

Imagine a man who is recognised as an outstanding community member. Everyone in his community respects him and he does much to serve his community. Now imagine that he has a son who falsely tells someone that his father seriously abuses him. Word gets out into the community about this. The next thing, the son disappears, and someone finds him dead and dumped up in the bush somewhere.

Who are the community members going to believe now, the father, or the son? To all appearances it looks like the accusation against the father was true. It would seem that father had something to hide, so because his son started revealing it, he killed his son to keep the truth hidden. In other words, to be able to reveal to the whole community what the truth really was, the father could not remove the son, but had to allow things to play out and allow the community members to discover for themselves that the son was telling lies.

The same is true with God and Satan. If God destroyed Satan when he rebelled there would be too many questions in the minds of the other angels and any other beings in the universe. Doubts would arise as to whether or not God was just and fair. People might start to be scared of God. What if He were to destroy more people? This would lead to people complying with God just because they are scared of Him, and create a universe in which it would become harder and harder for complete love to exist anymore.

God had to allow Satan time to dig his own grave. All beings in the universe must see for themselves that Satan was in error, that his ways were selfish and they would lead to pain, suffering, damage to love, and eventually to death itself. Only once this process was complete could God step in and eliminate Satan once and for all without any doubts in the minds of the inhabitants of the universe that God was doing the right thing.

How did it end up on Earth?

According to the Bible, when God created the world it was perfect, no evil, no pain, no suffering.

Genesis 1:31 – “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

It is obvious that this is not the case now, so something has happened to change this.

God created the first humans in His own image. He then gave them control over this earth.

Genesis 1:26 – “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So if this world was perfect, how did evil enter? Once again, Adam and Even must be given free choice in order for them to have the possibility of love. God provided this freedom to choose through a simple method. Everything on the earth for free to them, and was under their dominion. The only restriction was they were not to eat of the fruit of a particular tree in the Garden of Eden. This was a very simple test of love.

It was at this particular tree which Satan was given the opportunity to have access to the human race if they choose to disobey God. As we already have explored, Satan was given the opportunity to dig his own grave, and now the human race must have the opportunity to choose to follow God, or to join in Satan’s rebellion.

If Satan appeared as a wicked looking monster, he would never have been able to deceive Adam or Eve. Instead, he disguised himself as a beautiful snake (if ever you can have a beautiful snake) and one day Eve wandered close to the forbidden tree where Satan called out to her through the snake. Imagine that! A talking snake! Of course Eve’s attention was captured.

Through the snake, Satan started trying to convince Eve to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Eve knew that God had freely given them the many trees of the garden for food. All except this one, and she well knew the consequences.

In Genesis 2:17 God clearly told Adam and Even that rebellion against Him would lead to their death. In Genesis 3:4 and 5, Satan said to Eve that God was actually withholding from her something that was good. He said that God knew that if she ate the fruit she would be elevated to a higher position and become like God Himself, so that is why God was stopping her from eating it.

In doing this Satan started creating doubts about God in Eve’s mind and creating in her a desire for self-exaltation. Simply put, Eve started developing selfishness. After eating of the fruit, Eve took some to Adam and, long story short, he ate as well.

Up until this point, Adam and Eve were given dominion over the earth. But now that they had rebelled against God, they had chosen to follow Satan.

Romans 6:16 – “Don’t you know, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

Having now subjected themselves to Satan, He was no longer confined to the one tree in the garden, but gain free access to the whole earth. Almost all of the human race descending from Adam and Eve have been rebellious towards God and perpetuated the evil that exists.

While it is outside of the scope of this article to explain the necessity of God to take on the form of a human being and to die on the cross in order to save us from the evil that we brought on ourselves, it is sufficient at this point to say that this is what ultimately dug the devil’s own grave. God wasn’t the murderous one. It was Satan. This is like the son, who in our previous example made false accusations against his father, finally proving himself to be a liar.

Now the whole universe could see without a doubt the unselfishness and justice of God. There could be no doubt any more that God actually is love and His ways are the best.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God gave the world a demonstration of His true character so that we all may make an intelligent choice whom to follow.

So why does it go on still?

Simply put, God has proven His character. The Devil has dug his own grave. But the human race is still has to make their choice which side to be on. It’s a bit like a huge custody battle between God and Satan.

2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

God is not being slack about making an end to evil and suffering. In reality, it is the human race who is slack. God has made now put everything in place ready to make a final end of sin, but the human race is slow to get on board. God cannot leave it go on forever though, and so will have to bring an end to it.

The Bible reveals a number of ways to know when God is about to step in and put an end to sin. When we look at the world around us today, the indications are clear that we are living in the last days before Jesus returns to this earth, not as a quiet gentle Saviour to die in our place, but this time as a king in all his glory, to exercise justice upon evil and evildoers, and to make an end of all sin and suffering.

Wrap Up

Can a child blame their parents if the parents raise the child well, taught them everything they need to know, and then the child goes and lives a life in rebellion to their parents’ teaching and get themselves into trouble? Of course not! Neither can we blame God when it is we who are doing the wrong thing.

When performing CPR, it is common for ribs to get broken due to the chest compressions being performed. Unfortunately this is a collateral damage that results from attempting to save a life and cannot be avoided. In the same way, there is also unavoidable collateral damage that results while God fixes the problem of evil. It is not God’s fault. He didn’t cause evil. The members of the human race are the ones who have rebelled against the true principles of love and become selfish in nature. God is the one working to fix the situation, and while He does that in the best way possible, we have brought the collateral damage upon ourselves.

If God were to exercise his supernatural powers and eliminate all sin, suffering, and evil right at this instant, where would you end up? All have sinned. All have acted in selfish ways. All have done evil and caused suffering to someone else. Would you not also be eliminated at the same time then? God wishes to save us from being destroyed along with Satan and the rest of evil, and so He calls us to repent of our sins (our disobedience to God) and our selfishness, and choose to leave Satan’s side of the rebellion and join up with God again.

What will you do?

Continue to be on Satan’s side? Continue to sit on the fence? Or will you choose to get back on God’s side?

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Do you still have unanswered questions about the existence of a good God in a bad world? Feel free to contact us and ask.