If God\u2019s so good, why does evil exist? Good question, and a question that theologians, philosophers, and even skeptics have dealt with for centuries.<\/p>\n
Several possible answers have been proposed, but each one seems to spark more questions.
And, we\u2019re not going to be able to exhaustively answer that question here today either.<\/p>\n
What we will do is provide a bit of a framework to help us understand how a good and loving God
could allow evil and suffering to be so prevalent in our world.<\/p>\n
The problem that we face really boils down to three statements, which at first glance seem to contradict each other. You could take any two of them and have no problem, but when you take all three together, that\u2019s when you need to think a little harder.<\/p>\n\n\n
Three Statements that Appear Contradictory:
\n A. God is all good.
\n B. God is all powerful.
\n C. Evil exists.<\/p>\n\n\n
These three statements don\u2019t seem to go together. If we ask, if God is so good and evil exists, why doesn\u2019t He do something about it? Our answer could be, He must not be able to, in which case He must be powerless.<\/p>\n
But if we say, God is able to eradicate evil, why doesn\u2019t He? Our answer could be, He must not be so good after all. And that\u2019s the dilemma. Kind of a Catch-22.<\/p>\n
So, let\u2019s look at these statements again, one at a time. We\u2019ll go through the first two fairly quickly
and then spend a bit of time on the third.<\/p>\n
A. Is God all good?<\/p>\n
Men and women throughout history would answer this by saying yes, without a doubt. God is entirely good: <\/p>\n
* He provides for our most basic needs, and chips in for a lot of our wants, too.
* He blesses us with life itself.
* He gives our lives meaning and purpose.
* He embraces us with His love and tender mercy.
* And many people, including me, would say from personal experience that God is good. No question. He loves me and has never given me any reason to doubt that.<\/p>\n
The Bible itself would say that God is good, without any hint of evil.<\/p>\n
James 1:17 (ESV) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.<\/p>\n
1 John 1:5 (ESV) This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.<\/p>\n
Psalm 34:8 (ESV) Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!<\/p>\n
Is God all good? YES<\/p>\n
So today, give praise to an all good God.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If God\u2019s so good, why does evil exist? Good question, and a question that theologians, philosophers, and even skeptics have dealt with for centuries. Several possible answers have been proposed, but each one seems to spark more questions. And, we\u2019re not going to be able to exhaustively answer that question here today either. What we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3608"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3608"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3610,"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3608\/revisions\/3610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/southsidealive.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}