Why does a benevolent, omnipotent God permit Evil?
Why does a benevolent, omnipotent God permit Evil?
So humans can conquer it!
So humans can conquer it!
David Grioli
19 December 2020
An omnipotent, benevolent God and Father, Author and Origin of all that exists in space and time, created all things with potential, in fact potential is the major substrate of all matter, and for matter to matter, God endowed sapient creatures both spiritual and physical with free will.
Why permit evil?
Evil is a potential opposite of Good, just as darkness is a potential opposite of light, heat and cold and so on. This is why the biblical record states at Isaiah 45:7 “ I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” How is this so? For light to exist, darkness as a potential must also exist and for good or peace to exist, as stated in the above scripture, evil as a potential must perforce exist. Let us now consider some examples to flesh out the implications this truth will have on our answer to the question of Evil?
As for light, it is a reality, where as darkness can be said to be the absence of light, hence not a substrate of reality. Light can be examined and quantified as to speed and function although it exhibits a somewhat mystifying quality of wave and particle in potential and is fully dependent on an observer to collapse it’s wave function and be fixed as a particle in space and time. Darkness however is not a reality, it is a word we use to describe the absence of light, we can not study darkness in a laboratory nor attribute to darkness any qualities or functions, therefore it is used metaphorically as a symbol of Evil or non existence. Why do we say a symbol of non existence? If we follow this analogy of light and dark, heat and cold, the potential opposites to any reality can not manifest unless their concomitant reality is absent. Where heat can be studied and quantified energetically, cold can not, because cold is the absence of heat and as such is not a substrate of reality. Therefore the conclusion we draw is that cold, heat death and ultimately equilibrium equate to non existence. If you have no heat you reach equilibrium and energy returns to its’ original state of potential.
So let’s now apply this to a moral landscape where Good, Justice, Peace and Love exist, where sapient beings choose, of their own free will, these metaphysical norms as foundational substrates of their societies, these norms or qualities will inevitably lead to a long, happy and healthy life. Let us not forget that for these positive qualities to exist they must hold the potential for an opposite such as Evil, Injustice, War and Hate. Just as the positive qualities underpin life and existence, so too, in opposite fashion, their negative states underpin death or non existence, for in a state of Evil, Injustice, War and Hate, death or non existence is inevitable, and rightly so, because these negatives must conduct life entropically to a state of equilibrium or potential, full circle, back to where it all started.
If sapient creatures are endowed with free will and if that free will is to be genuinely expressed, then it logically follows that humans must be allowed to choose either positive or negative realities and also suffer the consequences of their choices so as to learn as children do from the positive and negative reenforcement of each choice they make.
Now that we know that God creates Good and in order to preserve Goods’ potential Evil must also exist in potential, we must introduce free will so as to grant matter, in the form of conscious humans, the ability to collapse potential states into a concrete reality. If one chooses darkness for instance as his perpetual state, life will automatically decay and ultimately he will cease to exist. If one chooses light as his perpetual state then life will flourish. So too if one chooses Good over Evil life will flourish, whereas in a perpetual state of Evil life will inevitably be extinguished. Moral decay leads inexorably to extinction. Evil is necessary in order to preserve the potential of Good. Another way of looking at it is that Good and Evil are one state of potential just like light is potentially wave and particle. When free will is introduced into the equation the potential state can come into being and the potential will collapse into either Good or Evil in accord with the direction of the will. Just as with light, the particle will occupy a position in time and space only once the wave function of light is collapsed by a conscious observer. Consciousness manifests the potential of light, wave or particle into matter or conversely conserves the potential, while free will manifests the potential of Good and Evil into life or death.
We have reached a point in our discussion where we need to simplify this topic and render it accessible by way of an illustration:
Any empowered benevolent parent wishes only the best for his children. For instance, a benevolent father may choose to gift his children a charmed life by shielding them from all and any potential obstacles such as dangers or evils. He may create the perfect conditions for the children to flourish out of harms way. Yet what do we commonly call children that have everything in life given to them without having to eke out an existence? Spoilt! One sure way to spoil your children is to give them everything they want. In fact you would be setting your child up for failure, rendering him extremely fragile if you did so. However because our father is a truely benevolent father and not a benevolent tyrant, our father prefers that his children live in this safe place not because they are constrained by him, but rather because they choose to freely. Also our loving father needs to prepare his children to be judicious and choose wisely for themselves so they may became autonomous in their own right and not mere marionettes. To do so he must make them aware of the potential in matter that is to say the natural world and what matters that is to say the moral landscape. Now the children are ready to enter the world of potential as responsible adults. It is inevitable that the children will be faced with the potential for evil as it is concomitant with good, hence a loving father must allow their children to face the monster of evil in the depths of darkness where it resides so they can slay this monster and be victorious, if they fail the monster will devour them and if they succeed the monster will never rare its’ ugly head again. The children will emerge from the experience stronger than when they went in, this may entail that the childlike innocences in them be sacrificed so as to grow into the fullness of an adult, to be perfected, tried and tested in the crucible of human experience so to speak. Even if the children were to die in their efforts to make good choices in the face of evil our benevolent father can bring them back to life and must do so if he is just, why because his children of their own volition conquered the evil, even at great cost to themselves, in the full knowledge that good must be chosen over evil if they wish for their brothers and sisters to prosper and for life to flourish. Of course our loving father will reward his children for making the right choices in the face of such a monster and having come off victorious he will grant them the plenipotentiary powers to manifest their own safe and harmonious world where no monsters will threaten their peace ever again.
Jesus Christ is our human brother and he chose to exercise his free will in order to create good in the world and once faced with monstrous evil he chose freely to die for his brothers and sisters leaving them the perfect model to imitate so that they too could be inspired to choose wisely. Jesus was tortured, humiliated and falsely charged with the ultimate ignominious charge of blasphemy and this from some of his own brothers and sisters no less. Jesus carefully listened to the instruction his Father gave him and could see from all the suffering around him what it means for humankind when we choose badly and allow the potential of evil to manifest in our societies. For his bravery, loyalty and great love for Father, brothers and sisters, God resurrected him to immortal life and set him up as king of the kingdom where peace will prevail eternally. God permitted Evil so that the Human Jesus could willingly conquer it, thus establishing once and for all, that humans choose good as their potential state, where everlasting life can flourish to the glory of their Father in heaven. God’s reward is to know that his children love Him freely and willingly in the knowledge, that He has, always did have and will always have their best interests at heart. The relationship is now perfected and God can rest easy knowing His children have learnt the most important lesson of all, how to use the precious and greatest gift he ever bestowed on any creature, Free will.