The interesting question is how do we even know what evil is?  How do we know when we're "being bad"? The next time some philosopher asks this question, you might inquire "What do you mean by evil?  Can you define it?"  Some may say boldly, "Evil is all relative...what is evil to one person might not be to another."  This is an evasion.  Ask for specifics!  You'll be surprised to find that, if the philosopher is honest enough, he'll fall back ultimately on evil as defined by religion.  The nature of this question requires the definition of evil as God sees it, anyway, since God has been brought into the picture!  To define evil otherwise is irrelevant to the question.  Yet he'll dismiss religion as nothing more than "superstitious nonsense", a mere outcome of us talking monkeys evolving and living in social groups.   To consider First Cause (of the universe) is brushed off as a "Russian doll".    Or, he'll say that the thing we call a soul is just a by-product of streaming brain function from one moment to the next, that it stops at death.  Near death experiences are dismissed as awareness of brain death..  And to receive a revelation from God, much less write it down, now that's "crazy"!

        So why ask the question at all?  The agenda is simply to strip you of your competing world view and supplant it with relativistic materialism.  It's supposed to make you a better thinker and scientist, limiting observation to what one sees, hears, touches, tastes, or smells, extended by technology, of course, sort of like an amoeba, going about its activities, absolutely oblivious to humanity's existence, for example, because it can't sense it.  To be atheistic makes not for superior thinking, it's thinking skewed by self-centeredness, rigidity and despising higher power.  The closest modern philosphers come to acknowledging a higher power is to speculate that we may hardly exist, or have any significance at all, except as "bits of information" in a virtual reality composed by a "higher artificial intelligence."   As C.S. Lewis put it in Perelandra  we are invited to listen to "...the enemy's talk which thrusts my world and my race into a remote corner and gives me a universe, with no centre at all, but millions of worlds that lead nowhere or (what is worse) to more and more worlds for ever, and comes over me with numbers and empty spaces and repetitions and asks me to bow down before bigness."   

        If all else fails, the question is to put you in the judgment seat against God, because, after all, if God is "good" and "all powerful" then He should never allow evil to exist at all...moreover, to believe in such a God could tag you as "soooo stupid", unfit for scientific endeavor!  This is a smoke screen.  You might counter, "Well, having admitted what evil is,  and since you say there is no God, are you not accountable for your own evil?  Further, if you know what it is....why can you not stop doing it?  Why do you permit evil?" 

The Great Divide

        So the answer to this question is supported by your belief.  It takes just as much faith to believe in the theory of evolution as in creation.  One way says life and consciousness sprang out of inert matter, in a kind of spontaneous generation (a belief held in the Dark Ages by the way, and never you mind how the matter got there).  It's for us to scratch and sniff the cosmos, never arriving at truth because truth is relative as well, it morphs with each new finding.  Or, it is for us to see absolute truth does not exist, to quest for it is for an "immature mind", and that there is no right or wrong, just opinions, the weightier the better, to prove one's point.  This point of view is rooted in Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, forgetting what Einstein said, "Relativity has to do with physics, not ethics." 

       The other way says absolute truth exists in God, that life and consciousness have existed and will always exist in God, and that everything is "from God, through God and to God."   And, it says not only can we come to know truth, it is for us to live in it.  So then, it's always a matter of faith, that is, accepting someone's word as true.  If faith is "irrational", so what?  What's wrong with that?  We point to a lot of other stuff in the universe (even numbers) and call it irrational.  The bottom line is, where do you put your trust?

        I've thought it out and can give you an answer.  Read on, but be aware, I'm working off a Judeo-Christian foundation, that is,  that what the Bible says is true, that God exists, that God created us, that He speaks to us, and cares for us personally. But don't worry, there's no chapter-and-verse, no holier-than-thous.  Here's a plain and simple definition of evil:  "It's going against the will of God, it's sinning."  Most people understand.  They have a conscience, at least at the start.  So then, my short answer to the question is:  "Evil is permitted to show God's attributes as holy, just, merciful, loving and mighty.  He is not an absolute Tyrant as He stands accused.  We are so short on the time-line, that we can't see the big picture.  But the promise is, evil will be expunged and we shall be changed, our memories purged, and we will know sin no more."

Where did Evil Come From?

        I asked a philosopher once, "In light of evolution, where did morality, concepts of good and evil, come from?"   He said, "Honestly, I don't know."

        Our scriptures say, God made conscious beings long before planet Earth and its inhabitants.  Among the first intelligent, self aware beings, was one very close to God, so intelligent and so close to perfection, that "he sealed up the sum".  His name was Lucifer, or light bearer.  Lucifer first wanted to be like God, then he wanted to be god.  He wanted to diverge from God's will and have his way.  He looked inward and lost sight of what he was.  He became very self-centered and proud.  But God had said, the wages of sin is death  (annihilation).   Lucifer therefore argued his point to other intelligent, self aware beings something along these lines:
 

• If the wages of sin is death, then we must obey Him or die.  We have no Free Will!
• If we don't want to obey Him, and He is all powerful, then we are just oppressed and He is an Absolute Dictator!
• We can overthrow God, make up our own rules, and take charge of Our Destiny!
• We've got God in a catch-22, because if we disobey, and He annihilates us, then He indeed is the Tyrant we said He was!
• But if He allows sin, then He's weak, unholy, He's betrayed Himself and His word about punishment is Mud.
• We shall win Our Due:  Tribute, Triumph and Obeisance!

        Apparently the argument, however it went, was compelling enough that one third of the intelligent, self aware beings agreed and took Lucifer's side. There was war in heaven, where God is said to reside.  But they were "cast out" of that place and into our dimension.  God didn't annihilate them immediately, He rendered judgment and a doom upon them.  They forfeited their connection to God.  Everything they touched tainted, withered and died.  Their promises of freedom turned out to be bondage.  They became evil, incapable of good, their existence a living nightmare.  Lucifer became known as Satan, "the Accuser".  But he goes by many occult names, Abraxis, Abbadon, "the Destroyer".  The Bible calls him "a liar and a murderer from the beginning".  Do you wonder why Lucifer, such an intelligent being, wouldn't change his mind?  He can't and he won't.  Pride, self-love and obstinacy have such a deep, tight grip on him, he absolutely has no desire to change and  must  prove  his  point! 
 

The Dilemma of Evil

        How then would God still keep His word about the consequences of sin, without becoming all Satan accused Him of?  Being all-knowing, God knew Satan would do this, long before the world was formed.  He gave Satan enough rope (time and space) to hang himself.   Satan appeared to the first humans, Adam and Eve, as something unlike any other, serpentine, irridescent and speaking!   He called into question God's intentions, that God was withholding a good thing from them, wisdom for starters, and enticed them to go ahead and just take it .  He said, "You surely won't die....you can be like God, knowing both good and evil."   From Satan's point of view he was right...as usual!  After all, had he been annihilated by God?  No...not yet!  Satan, you see, never accepted that he is doomed, reserved for future judgement.  Instead, he views God's patience as weakness and a token of his own eventual, clever victory.   And, did Satan know about good and evil?  Of course.  Then, as now, Satan was perversely putting himself on a par with God.  The more in agreement with him, against God, the better.  What a triumph, to get the first humans on his side!

        Adam and Eve listened to Satan.  They deliberately took something forbidden,  an action with deadly consequence which God had warned them about beforehand.  It wasn't just out of curiosity, a quest for knowledge that somehow went awry, like Pandora's Box or the Sorcerer's Apprentice.   Theirs was open rebellion for self-advancement...in your face, God, we don't take Your word.  For the first time ever, they felt shame and fear, and they hid from God.  They saw their ideal life unravel.  Their perfect bodies began to deteriorate, and the blood, sweat and tears of life as we all know it set in.  Their first son killed his younger brother out of jealousy and envy.  And finally, after a life span that far exceeds ours today, Adam and Eve died.

        You may think, "Well...let's just suppose for a split second and for the hell of it, if this is so, why then should I die because of something someone else did?"  And now, this is where evolution and creation theories come to a clash, it's because we are all Adam and Eve's descendants.  We are either "in the first Adam," or "in the last Adam (Christ)".  We are all born into the first Adam.  The family legacy is pride, self love, obstinacy, no immediate connection to God, can't help but sin, and will certainly die.
 

The Plan

        But God's plan, not a contingency plan by any means, but one that was laid before the foundation of the world, was to bypass Lucifer and his crowd, and lay the judgement for human sins on His own son, a savior, a messiah, to deliver humans from judgment and sharing Satan's doom and place of torment.  The son would have to be born on earth, go through all the trials of life without sinning, give the message, be sacrificed and die the death.  He would stand in for human sinners, he'd take the rap and pay the penalty.   Pause for a moment, consider, how can the One cover a myriad of sins in a myriad of lives back and forth along the time line in the eye of God?   What could that possibly mean?   It speaks of the immense power and intense purity of that person's life and blood atonement.   He would be the only person on earth who'd ever endure "undeserved suffering".  Then, if the sacrifice was acceptable, the son would rise from the dead, and give eternal life to all who'd repent (turn around and go in the opposite direction) and believe in him, and he would judge sin at the end time.  End time you say?  Oh, yes.  There will be an end time, an end to sin...and then justice, final, no plea-bargain second-chance justice, will be served.  Sinners will be sealed up in a place of torment called "the lake of fire".

The Proposition

        Does the possibility of judgement and a place of torment bother you?  Would you brush it off as "belief in witches?"  Do you find yourself defending the citadel of an implacable ego, where deep down it's "right" without considering another point of view?  Would you dismiss the Old and New Testaments as "superstitious nonsense"?  If so, be aware that there are at least 330 prophecies in the Old Testament pointing toward a redeemer that were literally fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ.  By the law of compound probability, each forecast diminishes by 50%. Therefore, the odds that these prophecies would come true, let alone coalesce in one person hundreds of years later, are less than nothing.   But they all did.  No one human being could possibly have controlled or manipulated circumstances like these.  Your only logical way out is to say Jesus Christ is a either a myth, or God..."foolishness to the Greeks...but life eternal to those who believe".

        Do you find God's methods distasteful?  Be aware what Christ said, "There's no other name [way] under heaven by which men might be saved."  Jesus is not some kind of  "imaginary friend".  Nor will God deny His nature.  He won't be wished away.  Jesus said to the Sadducees, a sect of  Judaism in his day which said there is no life after death, "You do greatly err."  God will put evil down like it never happened.  But you can make it out alive.  God also says, "My thoughts toward you are thoughts of peace and not calamity, that you might have a future and a hope."  Believers have the promise they will be with Him and "be like Him" for eternity.  In this way, God is shown not only to be holy and just, but merciful, powerful and very glorious.  He forgives, and yet judges sin in every respect.  He is vindicated on all counts.

Questions or comments to:
S. L. Finkey 
Keaau, Hawaii
last update:  05/08/2008

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Biblical references on the subject

Why the Modern Church Has a Problem