Why Does God Allow Evil?

Traveling almost 700 miles over two days from North Carolina to New York for the Thanksgiving holiday will really show you the good and evil in people. Watching how people drive and interact with other drivers will show you the evil in people’s hearts. God forbid you pullout in front of someone to get out from behind a tractor trailer or if you happen to be going a bit slower than they want to be going.

It got me to thinking, “Why does God allow evil into the world when He could just get rid of it so easily?”  I mean you watch the news and that’s all that they show. People killing other people, people hating each other and because they believe something different, or just the fury of nature with the fires in California. Couldn’t He just fix all of this?

Of course He could. But God created us with free will which allows us to choose between good and evil. If God wanted there to be no evil in the world, He would have had to create us like robots that are programmed just to do as they’re told. God didn’t want robots, He wanted His creation to actively choose to follow Him and by doing such, He gave mankind free will to choose.

However, with free will, man has the ability to choose evil instead of good. Even the created angelic beings have the free will to choose to serve God or not to. Satan and a third of the angelic host chose not to follow God and instead revolted against Him and were ultimately cast out of heaven. If angels, who served God directly and had access to Him, were able to freely choose evil over good, so man, who hasn’t seen God directly, can also choose the same path.

Evil exists because God loves us and wants us to choose to have a relationship with Him. How weird would your relationship be with your spouse if they were forced to love you instead of choosing to do so. I don’t believe that would be a relationship worth being in and that’s not the relationship God wants to be in with us. He wants us to actively pursue and love Him just like He actively pursues and loves us.

This free will has a negative consequence called evil. Evil exists not because God can’t get rid of it or cannot control its existence, it exists because God loves us so much He wants us to freely choose good (Him) over evil (Satan). What, or who, have you chosen?

Have a great day and God bless.