The Bible says that God is perfectly good and all-powerful. But that sometimes causes people to ask "Well if God is good then where did all the bad things come from?" And that's our theme in this talk. The theme itself is quite a complicated one and many people have written about it. All I can do is this sermon is try to explain a part of my own reaction.
Firstly, let's see the Bible's claims for God.
The Bible says that God treats the world well: The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The LORD is good to all.
The Bible says that God hates evil: Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.
So God is good in these two senses. The Bible, of course, has much more to say about God's goodness but those ideas give us a starting point.
But can He implement his goodness in this world? The Bible's answer is: yes, because he controls everything. The LORD does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. In other words, God is in absolute control of all that happens throughout the universe.
However, maybe God can manipulate the world but he has to let human beings get on and do whatever they choose. Not according to the Bible: For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. God says he raised up the Pharoah of Egypt according to his plans.
So we can say that God is all-powerful both over the natural world and over the world of people. Again, there is much more which could be said but at least we have a starting point.
But that then brings us back to our question. If God is good all-powerful then where did all the bad things come from? In other words why isn't the world, that Christians say God made, completely good already? Why do we have earthquakes and wars? Doesn't this just prove the Bible is wrong? Either God isn't good, isn't powerful, or maybe he just isn't there at all. Indeed maybe Christians have just made up this idea of good and evil and in fact the way the world is, is just the way the world is.
Well let's begin with good and evil. Certainly the Bible takes them completely for granted, but it's not just the Bible is it? Human beings, and their societies, all over the world reflect this idea of good and evil. I don't mean they all uphold the teaching of the Bible on what is right and wrong. But people everywhere at least believe in the basic idea.
In our personal lives we constantly appeal to right and wrong. Imagine you are driving along the road and stop at some traffic lights. The lights change to red/amber and you're just about to pull away on green when a car races across in front of you. The driver has gone through a red light. And you're angry with that man! He shouldn't have done that! It was wrong! We all believe in right and wrong: we're constantly appealing to the idea.
But maybe someone would say that Christians have just made this up. There isn't really any right and wrong. It's just our feelings. But why do we feel this way? You see if "the world just is the way it is" then when that man drives through the red light all that's happening is that one bit of the world is racing out in front of another bit of the world, and that happens all the time. An apple falls from the top of a tree and hits another apple, knocking it to the ground. Do you accuse the first apple of doing something wrong? So why get angry with that man?
But maybe you would say: "oh but the apple cannot choose to fall down whereas that man at the traffic lights has chosen to go through the red light." So what? What does it matter whether one apple hits another because of gravity or whether one car hits another because a man's brain tells his foot to go down on the accelerator It's all just "the way the world works". But we don't think this way. We are angry with the man. He should be judged for his actions! (And we also know that we ourselves should be judged. We have consciences which nag us about what we do wrong.)
But why are we like this? Because we've been made by the God who Himself upholds right and wrong. Our conscience is a sign of God's standards. It's the people who think there is no God, who have no decent explanation for why human beings worry about good and evil.
However, that still leaves us with if God is good and all-powerful, then why should there be evil? To which my basic answer is: I don't know.
Remember that there are simply many things we don't know about how the world is made. I don't know why we have colours; or solids and liquids. I don't know why the earth is a ball instead of a square. There are endless things that we cannot explain about the world. Why has God implemented the particular scientific laws that we see around us instead of completely different ones? I don't know. All I can say is that God decided that this was the right way to make this world and I'm not clever enough to debate that with him. And that includes the fact that he made a world which includes both good and evil, even though he hates evil.
Let me try to give a small illustration. Imagine you have a friend who is a painter and, during a visit, you notice a bowl of apricots on her table. You know she hates apricots so you assume she's painting them for a still life. But then she tells you she's painting landscapes at the moment, so you ask her "But why have you got that bowl of apricots then?" And it turns out they are for her nieces who will visit later. You have completely misunderstood your friend's plans because there were things you didn't know about her life.
Well how much more is that true with our understanding of God? How can we hope to second-guess our creator's life, unless he explicitly tells us? Knowing God hates evil isn't enough to make it possible for us to explain why he has included it in this world. Rather we need the humility to say "I don't know why things are like this but they are and I'll have to wait until God explains it to me, if he ever chooses to do so."
Secondly, remember that there are many, many things we don't know about history. We only have direct experience of a tiny number of the events of history, and only a little more information about the events outside of our lives. There are literally billions upon billions of things that I don't know about the history of the world.
So how do I expect to make sense of what God is doing in history? God has chosen to work out a plan in history which includes billions of good and evil events, in billions of lives. So how can I judge whether God's overall plan is good or bad?
Let's return to my illustration. You watch your friend start her painting with some strokes of green in one corner, but then you are called away. Weeks later you return and your friend shows you the picture: a magnificent painting of a lake with a stunning blue sky. The painting is full of blues, greys and whites. Yet you saw her start with green and had assumed the picture would be full of meadows and hills. But then you notice why she used the green: there is a reflection in the lake in the bottom right-hand corner.
Seeing only a little of the picture, lead you to misread what it was going to be. And that's our problem with the history of the universe. We have seen a tiny little piece of history and we've jumped from there to thinking we can understand the whole thing. We think we know what God is doing through history. But we don't. Yes, we can say "there is evil in the world", just as you could say "my friend used green in her picture". But we can only know the role that evil has played in the world's history once we can see the whole picture. We need the humility to say "I don't know why God used evil in the history of the world, but he did. And I'll have to wait and see if he explains it one day."
Thirdly, remember our limited experience of time. Maybe God doesn't feel about time the way that we do. We think ten years is a long time. But what if God thinks of one billion years in the way we think of one second? Well then even if evil existed in this world for 10 thousand years, it would barely be a blip in God's timing would it? The proportion of evil compared with the amount of good would be minute.
Come back to my imaginary painter. You notice a tiny red mark on the lake and tell your friend she's spilt some paint. But then she explains that there was a little, red, child's boat floating on the lake, and she included it on purpose in her painting. Now do you see how that small strange thing was planned and that once your friend explains that, then it makes sense in the picture?
Maybe one day this evil world will seem like that little red dot. It will be remembered but it will be tiny compared with everything else. We need the humility to say "I don't know how big a thing evil will seem, once I can stand back and look at all that God has done. I'll have to wait and see"
So my answer to our question is that we need humility: God has chosen to make the world in His way and I'm not in a position to judge Him for that.
But now let's think about ourselves for a moment. You see whatever we cannot know about God, we do know this about ourselves: we know that we are guilty of wickedness and deserve to be punished for it. We know how evil operates in this world. It operates through us – the human race.
And the Bible tells us that God has done something about that. He has entered into this world of sadness and pain and evil, to rescue us from ourselves. That happened through the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there may be many things God hasn't explained about his plan for this world but He has told us that there is a way for evil to be overcome
Which leaves you with one responsibility. Not to spend your days pondering reasons for God's unexplained ways, but rather to respond to what he has told you. Repent of your wickedness, says the Bible, and place your faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Leave behind the questions which you cannot answer and obey the command you can.