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Did God create Evil? At a certain college there was a professor with a reputation for being tough on Christians. At the first class, every semester, he asked if anyone was a Christian and proceeded to degrade them and mock their statement of faith.

One semester, he asked the question and a young man raised his hand. The professor asked, "Did God make everything young man?" He replied "Yes sir HE did!" The professor responded, "If God made everything, then HE made evil." The student didn't have a response and the professor was happy to once again prove the Christian faith to be a myth.

Then another man raised his hand and asked, "May I ask you something, sir?" "Yes, you may," responded the professor. The young man stood up and said, "Sir, is there such a thing as cold?" "Of course there is, what kind of a question is that? Haven't you ever been cold?"

The young man replied, "Actually, sir, cold doesn't exist. What we consider to be cold is really an absence of heat. Absolute zero is when there is absolutely no heat, but cold does not really exist. We have only created that term to describe how we feel when heat is not there."

The young man continued, "Sir, is there such a thing as dark?" Once again the professor responded, "Of course there is." And once again, the student replied, "Actually, sir, darkness does not exist. Darkness is really only the absence of light. Darkness is only a term developed to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally, the young man asked, "Sir, is there such a thing as evil?" The professor responded, "Of course, we have rapes, murders and violence everywhere in the world. Those things are evil." The student replied, "Actually, sir, evil does not exist. Evil is simply the absence of God. Evil is a term developed to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. It isn't like truth, or love which exist as virtues like heat or light. Evil is simply the state where God is not present, like cold without heat, or darkness without light."

The professor had nothing to say.

I usually don’t just like to copy entire pieces from other works, but this was too good not to share. The above story was found at bibleone.net and there are other versions with more or less details that exist as well. In one account of the story that I read years ago, it was reported that the student was Albert Einstein. No matter who was responsible for this revelation, it is an important truth for all of us to understand. If you’ve ever wondered how there could be so much evil in the world if God is truly good, this story may help you begin to understand the relationship between the two. Evil, like coldness and darkness, is not really a created thing. It’s simply how we choose to describe the lack of something else.

I believe it would be accurate to say that evil, or the absence of God, is only made possible by God’s love for us. I know that those of you who consider yourselves Calvinists have a problem with the idea of “free will” because it puts way too much stock in the sinner’s ability to choose anything good, but it is my personal belief that forcing someone to love you back is not an act of love. Since God IS love, it only seems logical to me that He would give those He loves a choice to love Him back. Even if I were to agree that God “predetermines” those who will be saved, I’d have to believe that He would predetermine that EVERYONE be saved (2 Peter 3:9) and that many will reject what God has predetermined. As the complete embodiment of love, God lets the rejection happen. It is my belief that this is why God created hell. There needed to be a place where those who chose to reject God in their lives would be guaranteed His absence for all of eternity. We could discuss what hell is physically like, but the only truth about it that matters is that GOD IS NOT THERE.

Could you imagine existing anywhere without God’s presence? Fortunately, we live in a world now where both God’s presence and His absence are available to us. Some of you are probably throwing your shoe at the computer screen right now because I just said that “God’s absence is available to us” and that really messes with our minds theologically. Let me explain. I believe there is nothing we can do to take God’s presence away because we don’t have that kind of power over Him. However, based on His loving nature, I do believe that God will leave us alone when we reject Him and be right there waiting for us with open arms when we return to Him and invite His presence back into our lives. In the parable of the lost son (prodigal) in Luke 15, the father, out of love for his son, lets him go regardless of how much it hurts the father. Then, he runs to him and allows his son back into his presence when the son repents. But it didn’t change the fact that, for a season, the prodigal chose to live without his father’s presence thinking it would be a better way to live, only to end up poor, hungry, desperate, and miserable.

I believe that God gave all of His created beings the freedom of choice out of His love for them. This would include the angels, which would then include Satan. Isaiah 14:12-15 tells us of Satan’s original place in heaven as “morning star, son of the dawn” (this is where we get the name Lucifer, which is Latin for “morning star” or “light-bearer”), his desire to “raise my throne above the stars of God”, and his consequence of being “cast down to the earth” and eventually “brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit”. Satan decided that being under God’s authority IN His presence wasn’t good enough, and was subsequently cast out of it. He believed he could live higher than God’s presence if he went his own way and persuaded others to join him. His miscalculation is evident throughout the Bible, as even though he exists out of God’s presence, he still falls under God’s authority.

My point for all of this is to show that evil, the absence of God, existed in this earth even before Adam and Eve sinned, so we can’t expect it not to affect us regardless of how much we repent or overcome our sin issues. Satan had been cast down to the earth, and had taken his place as the deceiving serpent in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had the presence of God, and could have chosen to stay in it rather than join the serpent out of God’s presence for that moment of deception. Because they chose to sin, evil went from being something that had existed outside of our bodies to something that became part of our biological makeup. Jesus was without sin, yet even he, as a human being, was tempted by evil. His flesh had the same temptations that we do, temptations that do not exist in the ultimate presence of God in heaven.

The great news for us as Christians is that evil, whether it’s the absence of God in us or others and whether it’s momentary or affects us our entire lives by the actions of others, is only temporary. Revelation 12:12 gives us a temporary reason to cry, and a lasting reason to hope. “Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short”. We must keep an eternal perspective. The devil, who epitomizes evil and the absence of God, only has a SHORT time to affect us. It may last our entire lives, but in the scope of all eternity, that’s still REALLY SHORT. Like Katie said at the close of Monday’s blog, we have the guarantee of an “evil-free eternity”, because we will be always in the complete presence of God. That very guarantee is what gives us power over the effects of evil TODAY!