Hey Quest-
This is a little confusing so bare with me.
There is a guy in my history class that is atheist and has no problem talking about it openly and explaining why he is atheist. I added him on facebook and found out soon enough that he posts videos from youtube all the time by atheists explaining how God isn't real. I watched one of the videos he posted, only one, and I am so confused. This guy that was talking on the video went on for ten minutes going on and on about things that make no sense about God. I have one question, but it's a pretty big question. When God created man, he knew the exact plan of everyone's life that had ever lived, he knew what was going to happen to everything, right? So he saw that sin would be created and everyone on earth was going to sin except for Jesus. Then why not prevent sin from happening? I don't understand why we would all have sin if God could stop it. Sorry if this is a weird question, i've just never thought about this. I would love for y'all to tell me your input on this.
Thanks!
Allie
Maybe because if we didn't sin, and man had never been exposed to sin, how would God be glorified? I think it's kinda like when people say you don't know what you have until you've lost it. Let's say that the world was created and then sin entered the world. Then God just wiped all the sin out. Well, with sin, people could experience God working through the bad stuff and sin. If there wasn't sin, we would never know the amazing things that God can do. Did that make sense? I could be wrong, but that's sort of how I see it.
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy you asked this! Because of this blog, I feel like I can actually answer this question now (hopefully)!
ReplyDeleteSo this is what cameron had posted way back in September about this topic. I like the way he explained it, so read this if you get a chance (sorry, if you've already read it - I can't remember if you had commented on it)...So here it is:
God made the world perfect.
It was perfect and then we wanted more, which srewed it up.
Ever since the world has been a fallen, evil, place that he can not dwell in.
So satan has become the king of the evil world. We are born fallen. He just guides the sinful nature inside of us. (this is why things are bad... it is a fallen world).
But God loved us so much that he even sent his son into the evil fallen world to die for us.
Now we have a way out of the evil and can live perfectly with him. (IN HEAVEN! Here, Cameron isn't saying that we can live perfectly with Him in this world...that's what Heaven is for!)
So does God allow evil? Absolutely not. He saves us from it every day.
Why doesn't he stop it? Well... he did once and he flooded the earth and killed everything, but he promised he wouldn't do that again.
Now he is just waiting until everyone has had a chance to accept him and then he will come and get rid of all the evil like we want him too. (BUT, the entire world has yet to accept him...that's what we're waiting on)
SO, I totally agree with everything Cameron said, but I have just a little more to add to clear things up (this is all pretty much what alexa said, just slightly more explained).
Because there is evil, sin, and sadness in this world, we are forced to think..."There's gotta be something better than this!" And what exactly is that "better thing?" GOD, of course. "Bad things" in this world force us to search and search and search for something better. AND, if the world was perfect (meaning, if God actually did stop evil, sin, and sadness from happening) where would we be living? In a perfect world. And if we lived in a perfect earthly world we would think, "Wow, this world is so perfect that there must be nothing better than this! It really can't get any better!" And would we search for God and seek Him daily? Maybe not...there would be no need to. I view the evil in this world as a GOOD thing because without it, I would have never found God.
Does that all make sense?! Let me know if there's any more confusion about this. (:
-Haley
I know this was a week ago but it is such a good question that I wanted to express my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteDid God know he was creating evil? If so, why would he not just stop it?
OK, so hypothetically lets say God did create a world where evil did not exist. Where everyone was absolutely perfect all the time and loved God because he made them that way. These WOULD BE ROBOTS THAT LOVED GOD WITHOUT A CHOICE.
So, realistically God created us in his image to be able to choose to love him. THis brings God more glory when we have the option not to but we still do. Therefore when God made us with a choice he allowed us not to choose him. When we don't choose him, we choose the world. This originated with Adam and Eve choosing to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This was the first fall where we did nt choose him. This is where the cycle of depravity and sinful nature comes in.
So in summary, God gave us a choice because it is true love when we make him ultimate above an alternative. This alternative is the orgin of sin and John Piper would say that God knew before he created man, that we would fall and he would send his son to save us.
Ask me questions if you have any more... I love this stuff.