10 July 2022
Someone asked me to talk about theodicy. The term refers to any attempt to justify the goodness of God, particularly in relation to the existence of evil.
This is easy: Evil is whatever God says it is. There can be no objective definition of evil. It is inherently personal in nature; it is resistance to God's personal will for you. God says, "this". Evil is saying anything else. But it's not static; what God says is a living thing in our hearts. His will is a personal connection with Him. It is dynamic and real.
So, the way you and I come to understand evil is through a living connection to Him via the Holy Spirit communicating in our hearts. It's revealed in our convictions. These things are not static; they are active and alive. It is in a certain sense responsive to the context. Further, not only is evil not precisely the same thing in all situations, but also it's not the same thing across the whole population of believers.
Granted, there are bound to be similarities, and they manifest in the Scriptures. God is a real person with a divine moral character, a personality. We both get to know Him personally, and regardless how different we are as people, my description of my encounter with God will certainly ring a bell with you. We are talking about the same person, and my description of Him will be meaningful to you in that we are both fallen humans touched by divine election and the Holy Spirit.
The Covenant is the key. If you have not embraced His Covenant, then you will struggle to define things from a human perspective. You'll come up with an academic objective definition of God and evil, and it won't fit all contexts no matter how brilliant and insightful you may be. You can never completely capture it in words. Without the Covenant and conviction, you will not understand God nor how He operates.
Sharing a covenant faith does not always make us come up with the same answers, but it does require us to make room for each other to have a different take in at least some contexts. Our hearts will recognize that a certain level of variation is natural and healthy. We would also realize that there are times when we must draw closer or move farther away from our covenant faith family members.
Some differences are actually God's way of moving us onto the next chapter of life serving Him. We should expect that kind of thing. Faith partners come and go; that's part of what characterizes our human existence. Keep in mind that the inherent nature of human mortal existence is deceptive and false. There can be no true holiness in this life; there can only be holiness in our hearts. Human flesh is doomed to a broken existence. The purpose of faith is not in what we do, but in the holiness of a desire to be at peace with God. It's the heart that matters.
Evil came into existence before the world. That part of the whole question is simply off-limits; we cannot comprehend how evil came into existence. We would rebellious fools for trying to nail it down to our intellectual satisfaction. Evil is the natural consequence of God giving some parts of His Creation a measure of moral freedom to choose. It's inherent in the nature of a moral conscience that some will take the wrong path, because they can either go with God or they can go wrong. Calling the wrong choice "evil" means nothing if there is no choice.
What kinds of things that God has given us freedom to choose is also beyond our human reason. We can gain some grasp of it in our hearts, but it will defy explanation. Evil exists; God's wrath falls on evil. We know that He is both strategically and tactically patient in some contexts and not in others. We know that not every evil garners the same wrath. Sometimes He is patient with us, and sometimes He is quick to punish.
Everything outside a valid covenant relation with Him is evil by definition. There might be some choices non-covenant people make that are salutary in our experience, but nothing removes that non-covenant person from God's wrath. Sooner or later, His wrath will be revealed according to His wisdom and for His glory. Again, life here is inherently broken and cannot be fixed. Only our hearts can be redeemed; our flesh remains doomed. You can discipline the flesh, but it remains flesh.
So, evil exists because there is some level of choice. As long as there is choice, there is evil. Some humans were born creatures of wrath; get over it. You cannot possibly understand it with your reason. God's will is more flexible in some contexts than in others. The key is (1) a living relationship with all the dynamics, and (2) the Covenant is the only path to understand His will and His wrath. The only reason it takes this much blather to explain it is because western minds are utterly foreign to God's Word.
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