Good and Evil, God and Evil
by Pastor Walter Snyder

Q1: Did God create evil?

To answer briefly, no, God did not create evil. God's essence is absolute goodness (Ps 136:1),
love (1 John 4:8), and holiness (Lev 19:2). He cannot sin and He abhors sin. To create evil would
be contrary to His own nature. During Timothy's struggles with Christians unsure of what they
could or couldn't eat or how they should worship or otherwise act, Paul reminded him that
"everything created by God is Good. (1 Tim 4:4)"

God, because He didn't create mindless robots, allowed the possibility of His creatures rebelling
against Him. What began among the angels spread to earth. However, the Lord didn't create or
cause evil to come among us. In Romans 4:12 Paul sets us straight: "Sin (evil) came into the
world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men."

Q2: Might skeptics argue otherwise because of an interpretation of Isaiah 45:7?

This passage and others, such as Amos 3:6, could lead some to consider God as Author of evil as
well as good. However, these people misunderstand the sense of these verses. In God's eyes, not
all disasters and calamities are evil. They may be traumatic and earth-shattering, but that doesn't
make them evil.

Consider how you'd view the death of thousands of people whose major offense was listening to
a stubborn and wrong-headed leader. If it just "happened," you might call it tragedy. If someone
ambushed them, leading them into a trap and destroying them, you could view it as evil. What do
you think if God was the One who laid the trap? Yet what He did is celebrated to this day by Jews
and Christians. Of course, I must mean the Red Sea crossing, where Egypt's calamity was Israel's
delivery.

Q4: Can evil justifiably be said to be Gods wrath and punishment against his people? Or
did Jesus dying on the cross stop that wrath?

Now we're at the heart of things---for Jesus is the heart of all Scripture. Jesus' suffering and
death looks like the vilest evil, since only He suffered and died as an absolutely sinless person. Yet
we know the crucifixion as the greatest good ever done, since through it Christ broke the power
of sin, death, and broke Satan.

God is ~Undoer~ of evil. His "wrath and punishment" aren't evil, but are His proper response
according to His holiness. Yet He shifted that wrath to Christ, punishing Him for our sins. Going
back to Romans 4, Paul shows this as clearly as he does evil's origins: If, because of one man's
trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of
grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. (v 17)"

In summary, while sin and death came because of Adam, God holds everyone responsible for his
own sinfulness. Shifting responsibility is the sinful reaction to the Lord's judgment, as shown by
Adam and Eve in the garden (Gen 3:9-13). If we want to blame someone for evil, we should
blame ourselves. To God belongs credit for good and our thanksgivng for His mercy toward us.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from ~The Holy Bible, English Standard Version~<TM>,
© 2001 by Crossway Bibles.

Ask the Pastor, © 2003 by Walter P. Snyder. It may be reproduced in totality, including this disclaimer,
by anyone, provided that no profit is generated by said republication and redistribution. Translations
into other languages should similarly note the United States and any appropriate international
copyrights, as well as God's Scriptural injunctions concerning the property of others.

Walter Snyder is the pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Emma, Missouri and coauthor of
the book "What Do Lutherans Believe."