The Bible describes God as holy, righteous, just, and sovereign. God is capable of preventing evil. So, if this is true, why does God allow evil? Why did God allow Adam and Eve to sin? He must have known what they were going to do. Wouldn’t it have been better if He had just stopped them? The world was already perfect, so why didn’t God keep it that way? We’ve all asked these questions at some point in our lives.
One thing is certain: The existence of evil does not mean God’s dead. Neither does it make God any less perfect. We live in a fallen world, but God isn’t just sitting there and looking at us suffering. There is a reason behind every act of God. Many of the evil that exists in the world today can be traced back to the fall of man. Adam and Eve were put into a sinless paradise, but they rebelled against God in a deliberate act of disobedience and were expelled from Paradise. After the fall in Genesis 3, man’s eyes were opened and they received the knowledge of good and evil, and God cursed man and creation. That is the origin of sin and suffering. But why didn’t God intervene when the serpent tempted Eve? The reason is that God created man because He wanted a relationship with man. And for a relationship to exist, man was given free will. If man did not have free will then there is no way we can truly claim to love God.
For one thing, God could have made a world with no evil in it. However, it would have been one of robots and puppets—creatures who are not capable of expressing love or emotion. Love is only possible for free moral creatures; forced love is not love. In order to love, you must be able to choose and exercise freewill. And free creatures are capable of free choices that bring disease, disaster and death. This is the world in which we live.
Now it’s safe to assume that God knew the fall was going to happen but God had other plans. The way God treats man can be likened to the way parents treat there children. When a kid is playing with fire, that kid may not know the harm that fire causes. And when the parent tries to caution against it, the child may become rebellious and develop hatred towards the parent. But being a parent sometimes demands that you allow a child to play with fire and let them get burnt. This way, he or she will know to stay away from it. This is the same way God treats us as His children. God wants man to know the repercussion of sin. But in order for that to happen, He allowed man to exercise freewill and rebel against Him. But that’s not the end of our faith. God in His mercy reconciled man back to Him through the “second” Adam – Jesus Christ. This is also buttressed in the following passage:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
(John 3:16)
God is not wicked that He will let man perish. He gave his son as atonement for our sin so that we may be reconciled back to Him. So it is not by our works that we are saved, but by believing that Jesus died on the cross and paid our debt in full with His blood. There is no greater show of love than that. There is a time in the not-so-distant future when God will rid the world of evil. We can be sure that in the age to come, the world is not going to be like this one. This one is full of disaster, destruction and death. In the age to come there will be no more pain and suffering. John said it best:
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. … And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:1, 4, KJV).
This is our hope. Our next breath is not promised. This is why we all need to be saved. It’s not about being religious. It’s about living life with the consciousness that you could breath your last breath at any moment, or Jesus comes to rapture His Church.