Spirituality Column #744

February 17, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Evil 'I', Part 1

By Bob Walters

“The devil made me do it!” – Flip Wilson as Geraldine, 1960s comedy routine

“We have met the enemy, and he is us!” – Pogo, 1970 comic strip by Walt Kelly

That’s The Evil “I”, as in, “I” am part of the problem.”  It helps answer a question that arose recently in Sunday school: "If God created everything, why did He create evil?"

I offered a knee-jerk, defense-of-God response about human free will and its necessity to discover love.  Unless we love out of our own volition given to us by God (i.e., voluntarily), we can know only coercion, slavery, or convenience, not love.

Evil, I was trying to say, was more of a free-will, collateral damage thing, not a punishing, intentional God thing.  I’ve been thinking about that question all week, and while that’s not a terrible answer, it’s terribly incomplete.  It occurs to me that if we examine the Bible and then examine ourselves in a mirror, evil may not be so much a created, outside affliction as it is an internal, unnatural, and humanity-wide condition.

Does the devil create evil and make us do evil things?  Or do humans just habitually make miserably bad choices due to pride, fear, greed, jealousy, power, lusts – all egregious misuses of our free will.  Satan is a creation of God, yes: an angel expelled from heaven for denying God’s will and himself wanting to be God. 

But God didn’t originally create Satan to be evil, at least I don’t think so; the Bible is silent on that one.  However it happened, Satan freely grew into it.  Nor did God create humanity to be evil: Adam and Eve were pure in paradise.  Fallen Satan tempted them with two of the worst lies on record: 1. God’s word and will are not firm; and 2. obedience to God’s commands is optional.  Adam and Eve bought it, God cursed them, all humanity, and Satan; evil has been the world’s greatest problem ever since.

Why did God do that?  First, let’s look at who God is; i.e., how we typically describe Him.  God is good, just, loving, creative, trustworthy, faithful, in control, merciful, and oh yeah, don’t forget this one: God is righteous.  Oh boy, is He righteous.

Some folks would put “wrathful” on that list, but I think “wrath” is God’s reaction, not God’s nature.  Just like Satan wasn’t evil before he disobeyed, God wasn’t wrathful before His righteousness was challenged.  Throughout the Old Testament, while we see God’s wrath on full display, we also see God’s will and righteousness on full display. Sometimes it’s truly hard to imagine how humans could possibly tell the difference.

Think of all the people God protected.  Think of all the others – foe and friend alike – He destroyed.  Think of how He hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus) against freeing Israel from bondage so God could unleash His glory on full display – which to the Egyptians would have looked a whole lot like evil: signs, plagues, Pharaoh’s army drowning in the sea, and, not to mention the loss of much of the nation’s labor force.

This is not about “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”  God’s righteousness is not a matter of debate or perspective; at least, it shouldn’t be – not among humans, especially faithful humans.  God is righteous all the time; that is truth.

We blame Satan for evil in the world, but on closer inspection it is humanity’s misuse of free will and its woeful decisions to listen to Satan’s lies that reveal evil.  It is a faithless dodge to say, “The devil made me do it.”  No, we do it to ourselves.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) continues next week: God’s stunning consistency.