Why is There Evil? Does God Cause It?
We turn on our televisions or
radios, open our computers or cellphones, and spread our everyday newspapers to
check the daily news, then we see, hear, and read the monotonous usual national reports, so
often horrible as they are: a child of tender age raped, a man shot to death by
an unidentified person riding a motorcycle, a bank robbed the employees thereof
killed, and so forth—so numerous and tiresome to be enumerated one by one!
And so sometimes we skeptically ask ourselves in quest of truth, “Where is God in all these things?” And when we
are furious that it happened to our relatives, we growl, “Why did God allow it, did
he cause it? He is the source of everything, is He not?”
If we encounter these dispiriting thoughts wreaking havoc in our mourning minds, we must first calm down in holy silence and open the light of prayer—even of faith as small as a mustard seed will suffice. My friend, God does not cause evil—never did He cause one, deliberate or otherwise. God is supreme and absolute Good; His sheer goodness is cosmically unfathomable that no mind of man, which is finite, can ever imagine. To unjustly impute upon him the horrors of evil would be an ironic contradiction of His divine nature—an ever good Being. True enough that He is the ultimate source of everything, but never it is that He is the source of evil, for what spring forth from Him are all good being good as His natural quintessence. Scientifically and experientially, the light does not and can never produce darkness, and to say that it does and can is to ludicrously fool oneself!
In the beginning of creation, based on the Book of Genesis, it can be gleaned therefrom vividly the ultimate source of evil, which was two-fold—the heart of man and the designs of the devil. The first sin which was Eve and Adam eating the forbidden fruit was not a story of a mere breaking of a rule. There was something deeper in it. It was a story of man exercising his free will in obedience to an evil call and an evidence that man’s heart can be corrupted. In the story, God gave Adam and Eve freedom as a gift and so they can do anything they wanted, provided not unlawful, for God gave limitation to their freedom—that was, not to eat the forbidden fruit, for they shall die, which was actually the truth; but Eve, unrestrained by any conscientious impediments, freely exercised that freedom by eating the forbidden fruit, listening to the seductive lies of the devil. The sweet words sugarcoated with falsehood were “Eat this fruit and you will become like God.” (Genesis 3:5) And so Eve abided by the evil call—and the first sin, which found its conception from the very heart of Eve, was born. From here, we can deduce that evil, since time immemorial, has been a cooperation between man and the devil. The devil is the seducer, the man the executor—evil therefore is a manufactured product of man and the devil, by virtue of the misplaced exercise of man’s freedom; God has no hand on it.
In the everyday looming wickedness around, it is not God who orchestrates it, but man who is lavishly drowning in sin. However take note of this divine principle: God, the Mainspring of all goodness, conquers this wickedness by supernaturally producing something good out of that evil—to your surprise and amazement. (CCC 312) As St. Paul exhorted, alluding to the nature of God: “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) This is how God mysteriously doing His works—conquering through the grace of love the evil products of man. So if an abominable thing happens to someone committed deliberately by a morally erring person, sin is born out of it, but it is rest assured that something good will come out of it, the answer of which is unveiled by time. It is best exemplified in Jesus’ passion. He died by crucifixion, executed by the Pharisees and the Roman soldiers, but something ultimately good was made out it—the overcoming of death and the salvation of souls.
Nevertheless, there are certain occasions wherein God “permits” evil, I repeat, not directly or indirectly cause it, but “allows” it. (CCC 311) That is when He decides to test the soul of the faithful, which happens in special circumstances. It occurred in the story of Job in the Old Testament where God gambled with the devil anent Job’s faithfulness. God made a go signal for the devil to torment Job in this earthly life. Job lost all his vast possessions as well as his beloved children, caused by the devil as in the Scriptures. But he endured all these trials with extreme patience, in the spirit of mortification, and never did he curse God. Proving his faithfulness, God overcame these evils by thereafter showering Job with graces, children, and fortunes multiple times than before.
Taking all these things to mind, when you see evil occasions, prepare yourself to pray and believe that God did not cause those evil—a child of tender age raped, a man shot to death by an unidentified person riding a motorcycle, a bank robbed the employees thereof killed, and so forth—but are caused by the deliberate and free exercise of human freedom, save some exceptions when God tests the faithful. But take heart! As Joseph said, "What is meant by men for evil is meant by God for good." (Genesis 50:20) Such is the greatest Christian paradox, so hard to comprehend for we are merely finite beings!
If we encounter these dispiriting thoughts wreaking havoc in our mourning minds, we must first calm down in holy silence and open the light of prayer—even of faith as small as a mustard seed will suffice. My friend, God does not cause evil—never did He cause one, deliberate or otherwise. God is supreme and absolute Good; His sheer goodness is cosmically unfathomable that no mind of man, which is finite, can ever imagine. To unjustly impute upon him the horrors of evil would be an ironic contradiction of His divine nature—an ever good Being. True enough that He is the ultimate source of everything, but never it is that He is the source of evil, for what spring forth from Him are all good being good as His natural quintessence. Scientifically and experientially, the light does not and can never produce darkness, and to say that it does and can is to ludicrously fool oneself!
In the beginning of creation, based on the Book of Genesis, it can be gleaned therefrom vividly the ultimate source of evil, which was two-fold—the heart of man and the designs of the devil. The first sin which was Eve and Adam eating the forbidden fruit was not a story of a mere breaking of a rule. There was something deeper in it. It was a story of man exercising his free will in obedience to an evil call and an evidence that man’s heart can be corrupted. In the story, God gave Adam and Eve freedom as a gift and so they can do anything they wanted, provided not unlawful, for God gave limitation to their freedom—that was, not to eat the forbidden fruit, for they shall die, which was actually the truth; but Eve, unrestrained by any conscientious impediments, freely exercised that freedom by eating the forbidden fruit, listening to the seductive lies of the devil. The sweet words sugarcoated with falsehood were “Eat this fruit and you will become like God.” (Genesis 3:5) And so Eve abided by the evil call—and the first sin, which found its conception from the very heart of Eve, was born. From here, we can deduce that evil, since time immemorial, has been a cooperation between man and the devil. The devil is the seducer, the man the executor—evil therefore is a manufactured product of man and the devil, by virtue of the misplaced exercise of man’s freedom; God has no hand on it.
In the everyday looming wickedness around, it is not God who orchestrates it, but man who is lavishly drowning in sin. However take note of this divine principle: God, the Mainspring of all goodness, conquers this wickedness by supernaturally producing something good out of that evil—to your surprise and amazement. (CCC 312) As St. Paul exhorted, alluding to the nature of God: “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) This is how God mysteriously doing His works—conquering through the grace of love the evil products of man. So if an abominable thing happens to someone committed deliberately by a morally erring person, sin is born out of it, but it is rest assured that something good will come out of it, the answer of which is unveiled by time. It is best exemplified in Jesus’ passion. He died by crucifixion, executed by the Pharisees and the Roman soldiers, but something ultimately good was made out it—the overcoming of death and the salvation of souls.
Nevertheless, there are certain occasions wherein God “permits” evil, I repeat, not directly or indirectly cause it, but “allows” it. (CCC 311) That is when He decides to test the soul of the faithful, which happens in special circumstances. It occurred in the story of Job in the Old Testament where God gambled with the devil anent Job’s faithfulness. God made a go signal for the devil to torment Job in this earthly life. Job lost all his vast possessions as well as his beloved children, caused by the devil as in the Scriptures. But he endured all these trials with extreme patience, in the spirit of mortification, and never did he curse God. Proving his faithfulness, God overcame these evils by thereafter showering Job with graces, children, and fortunes multiple times than before.
Taking all these things to mind, when you see evil occasions, prepare yourself to pray and believe that God did not cause those evil—a child of tender age raped, a man shot to death by an unidentified person riding a motorcycle, a bank robbed the employees thereof killed, and so forth—but are caused by the deliberate and free exercise of human freedom, save some exceptions when God tests the faithful. But take heart! As Joseph said, "What is meant by men for evil is meant by God for good." (Genesis 50:20) Such is the greatest Christian paradox, so hard to comprehend for we are merely finite beings!
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