When we look at evidences for Christianity, we could not go much beyond our proof of God’s existence before some well-educated atheist brings up the subject of evil. Immediately the atheist wants to ask the question, “Why is there evil?” He would then suggest that the biblical theist (one who believes in the God of the Bible) has a logical contradiction in proving the existence of God. The atheist says our view of God (that He is all powerful and that He is all love, coupled with the fact that evil exists) constitutes a logical contradiction. In other words, all three cannot be true.
What is evil? If we can define what is always good, then anything else is evil. Jesus set out guidelines for the followers of God.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36–40 NKJV)
These can be summed up quite easily: (1) Loving and serving God, and (2) Being a brother to man; these are always good. These are the greatest in the kingdom. Everything else has the potential to be either good or evil.
This brings us to Job. His reaction to the temptation by the devil had a potential to be evil (an unfavorable response to God over the stripping of wealth, health, family and rejection by friends). It was evil what happened to Job, but the focus today is really on his response. Some want to suggest that God was unfair to Job. Thus, He failed in being God.
God allowed the course of this world to prove (test or try) Job in his faithfulness. It was also a reminder to the devil that God is sovereign and knows His creation. Of course, the world and the devil lost. This world is not a hedonistic paradise (here solely for pleasure) but is actually an environment for the soul-making of man.
In God’s design of man, He gives us willpower to make choices. Our whole life is about making choices. Give man a free will to choose his course (a free will to choose God or not), and evil will naturally exist because anything against God or man is, in fact, evil. Then, evil exists not because God made it or allowed it to happen but because man has a free will that permits him to choose to violate God’s laws.
Just because evil exists does not mean it will go unpunished in the end. God will call us into account for the things done in this body—those things that are out of harmony with His will (Matthew 12:36; Romans 14:12; 1 Peter 4:5).
[Editor’s Note: Doing evil has had world-changing consequences and continues to have physical and spiritual consequences. Sins by the first pair in the Garden of Eden brought about physical and spiritual consequences: (1) pain, death, weeds or thistles, etc. (Genesis 3:16-19) and (2) a breach of fellowship with God (Genesis 3:9–11, 23–24). Likewise, sins for which God brought about the universal flood of Noah’s day also changed forever the physical world (1) multiple languages, weather patterns, a reshaped Earth, disease, etc. (Genesis 6–8). The spiritual consequences of sin, then and presently, disrupt fellowship with God (Isaiah 59:1–2). Also, some do evil for which they suffer, while others commit evil upon innocent others. All evil is the result of the misuse of free will, as brother Howard Johnson noted above in his article. Incidentally, there could be no universal evil if there were no universal good, but there could be no universal good without the existence of a universal Lawgiver—God. ~ Louis Rushmore]
