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Why Does Evil Exist? · Relish: a Christian podcast

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Music.
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To flavor, to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
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We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
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Hi, Rowan. How are you doing? Good. How are you, Don? Doing all right.
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Got a pulse. Yeah, that's good.
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We'll see if we have a pulse after we get done with these questions today.
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You've had some good ones. You've been rolling right through them.
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Sort of like Steamroller, though. Yeah.
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Yeah yeah it's been good stuff good stuff it has been well so what you gotta
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well a couple couple episodes ago we were talking about apologetics kind of
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knowing what you believe,
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and i just figured why not bring up some more questions so that it's kind of
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just one question with multiple off of it but sure a lot i think a common question
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is like how can evil exist if God is good.
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And like, why would God have created the tree of good and evil then?
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And why does God let bad things happen to good people?
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Right. And by the time this episode comes out, I will have worked at that on Sunday morning.
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That should be part of the message on January 5 at Kelowna Mennonite.
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All right. So, why did he do it?
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Well, one of the things that I think we realize, even early in the Old Testament,
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is we are proven in our character and faith by the way we approach the world around us.
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And the way we approach the world around us has to do with our responses to,
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the questions of the day, right and wrong, good and evil.
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Would we want all that erased from what we have to live through?
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I mean, really, would we understand that a sweet tart is neither tart nor sweet? It's both.
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It's a taste, right? Well, but doesn't goodness taste better than bad.
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If we watched a community that is influenced more by, say, a mob moves in and
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starts to influence the community, it changes the community over time.
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It changes how they feel safe. We've seen that in neighborhoods,
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in our major cities, great neighborhoods, and all of a sudden something comes
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and changes the dynamics of the neighborhood, and it becomes a slum, a ghetto.
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And it's basically one little choice after another that creates that snowballing effect.
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Well, we could say if God had not put the tree of the knowledge of good and
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evil in the garden in Genesis 2, we wouldn't have this dilemma. But what would we have?
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I mean, would we just live as puppets? Because basically what the tree of the
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good and evil does is establishes a choice whether to eat or not.
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That's basic bottom line of what Eve was being enticed into in chapter three. Mm-hmm.
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And the interesting piece of that is the question was a question of interpretation,
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because the question is not, well, do you think you ought to eat the tree or
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don't eat of the tree? That's not the question.
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The question is, did God really say you would die?
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In other words, the woman says you must not eat of the tree of the fruit in
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the middle of the garden.
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You must not touch it or you will die. And the serpent says,
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you will not surely die, the serpent said, went to the woman,
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for God knows that when you eat, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like
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God, knowing good and evil.
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And so, basically, Satan is reinterpreting what God said.
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Basically, Eve said it verbatim as to what God said.
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He says, you are free to eat of any tree in the garden, but you must not eat
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of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it,
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you will surely die. Eve had it downright.
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But Satan used his interpretation to trip Eve up.
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So you talk about apologetics.
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Yeah, apologetics is very important because apologetics is looking at the same
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scripture and making sure it's interpreted properly.
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And being able to give a rebuttal or an apology, if you will.
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Defending what the text says verbatim.
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And so when the woman saw the fruit of the tree, was good and pleasing to the
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eye and desirable for gaining wisdom, that's really what was her nudge is,
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oh, hey, I'm going to be better after I eat it than I am right now.
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And she also gave her some to her husband who was with her.
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I'm not sure why the husband didn't hear the dialogue between Eve and the snake.
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That doesn't make any sense. But anyway, either he was, you know how guys sometimes zone out.
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Maybe a were a to adamant zoned out you
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know it's a guy thing couldn't but
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anyway it's probably looking at some other creature could
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be yeah there were lots of creatures around what's that skunk doing over there
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yeah but the if he'd have made us without choice okay so if he would have made
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us without choice this basically outlines the fact that eve had the choice whether she eat or not,
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and it was always present in the garden.
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She was not tempted to eat it until Satan re-established different boundaries around the tree.
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Basically, God said, you'll die. Well, I'm not gonna eat it if I'm gonna die.
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And as long as Adam and Eve were saying, well, I'm not gonna eat it, I'm gonna die.
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They didn't eat. But when Satan re...
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What am I trying to get the word? The word put it in a different frame.
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Reframed the question. Yeah. When Satan reframed the question,
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then they felt free to do it.
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Or Eve at least did. Adam may not have been paying attention.
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Wish he would have. Yeah.
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And so that goes down through history as, okay, are we going to believe God and take God at his word?
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Because basically death was introduced at this point.
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Yeah, it was. I mean, they got to almost 900 years old before they died,
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which considering us, that's a lot longer.
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But death was introduced, just like God said, just like God said.
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Evil was introduced. God hadn't even talked about that when he said, don't eat.
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But he knew what was going to happen.
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But basically, every temptation we take and reframe in our way,
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without God's way, we're at danger of being taking, reframing the situation.
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And so, evil, I would say the responsibility for evil rests in our laps because
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we, like Adam, make those same kind of decisions day by day, moment by moment.
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And we have to be responsible for the actions because they're reactions,
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actions that we've made by our decisions.
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Now, so evil is not so much God's fault as it is ours.
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Kind of like that free will choice that we see through. Because if he wouldn't
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have, there would have been no tree, then there's no other option other than just being good.
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Yeah. We just go behind. Yeah.
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Continue to reflect God. And in fully reflecting God, God's the chief decision maker.
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I mean, he created, he didn't have to create, but he made the decision to create.
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Just like, you know, we have make decisions on what we're going to do.
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And in that way, we're like God. We have that freedom. We have that creative talent.
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And we have the ability to see things like God does.
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If we give ourself a chance, not sure.
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We always even think that's a goal to think like God does to get a sense of POV. I love POV.
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Because it is a great teaching tool. So how would we do if we were taking God's
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point of view on everything?
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Just give up our point of view, your point of view. We're going to see everything
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from God's point of view.
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I guarantee it would transform our thinking.
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Yeah. That's something different to think about. It is. It's provocative.
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I've been trying to do that to think of, well, to see people like God sees people.
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To take his point of view when somebody walks in my office and see what God
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maybe hopes for in that individual, why God created them uniquely that way.
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What's the value that God has for them, not only in their present state,
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but in the future state that God wants to take them to.
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I mean, if they give their life to Christ and in that transformation, who would that they be?
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Who would God make them to be as he transforms their life?
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That's the kind of stuff that I get up, get ready for.
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I mean, look forward to as a pastor working in congregations in the community.
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Lives transformed. Yeah. I think you got the first two parts of that.
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This third part wasn't really as closely related.
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Okay. But yeah, like kind of off the first two, well, like when you said evil
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was more of like because of us rather than because of God.
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I think they would often,
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or like non-believers would often associate having evil
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and having God like that since there is evil then there therefore isn't a God
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and but I think that it like further backs that there is a God because his like
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the free will choice is like relevant throughout everything and then having,
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having a choice from the very beginning yeah it's like and and the fact that
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God there's a difference between those two aspects God wants the best the most
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creative the most redeeming,
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most renewing.
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But when you talk about evil and what Satan wants to do, it is corrosive,
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it's destructive, it disassembles, takes apart good things.
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It's totally opposite forces. And which force do you really want to be part of?
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A creative force, a constructive force, nations have been built by faith, basically.
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And so I see God as a positive And Satan as a negative I'm not really Too excited
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about getting Connected to the negative To the destructive part Yep,
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So that The third question here Why does God let bad things happen to good people And I'll kind of,
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Just help it out Make it more clear Like bad things happen to everybody Bad
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things happen to everybody That's kind of
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The way the question's worded is kind of deceiving, but sort of how we think about it. Yeah.
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And so we think, well, if you're a really good person and you've invested in
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the kingdom, surely nothing ever will go bad, right?
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Yeah. Yeah. Because it's sort of like I've taken a fire insurance policy out.
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I believe in the right God and I believe the right things.
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So God, don't let anything happen to me.
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But in reality if you look at the book of job yeah
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that's exactly the reason the bad things happened
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to job the bad things happened to job because
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he was a righteous man and god was saying hey look at my servant job and and
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satan says yeah but it's if you if you took all the blessings away he'd turn
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away yeah and so god says okay take the blessings away and satan wipes out his family,
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wipes out his fortune, destroys his home.
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I haven't quite figured out whether having the wife he had and what she said
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is part of the curse or not.
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But anyway, and still he would not curse God. He still worshiped and praised the Lord.
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So then we get to chapter two and God is still proud of Job,
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if you will, if God can be proud of anybody, but it seems that way.
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Then Satan says, ah, you let me strike his body. then he'll curse you.
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And God gives a stipulation on this.
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So you can bring illness to his body, but you cannot take his life.
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You save his life. And so he gets these sores and he's pussy all over and he's
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scraping with potsherds and these sores and he's miserable.
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And his wife says, curse God and die. This is pretty bad stuff.
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Then he has his three friends, which aren't very friendly.
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And he goes through all that. All this is because, not because he sinned,
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but because God was proving how righteous and how deep Job's faith went.
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Yeah. So that after all this is proven, of course, there's just some other things
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going off in 38, 39, 40 when God starts to respond back, but God restores him more than he did before.
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And Job intercedes for his friends who were messed up, and they're saved.
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I think that that illustration of Job is why Paul writes in chapter 5, verses 1-5,
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Therefore, since we've been justified through faith, in other words, we're righteous,
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we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained
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access by faith into this grace
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in which we now stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
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Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering
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produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.
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And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our
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hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom God has given us.
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I will never forget after michael
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died and we took the
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casket to kansas and i could
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not sleep i don't know something about my son dying maybe interrupted my sleep
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that night i went out in the pasture at my parents house and shouted out to
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god i don't understand i've invested so much i'm going to seminary.
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We've invested this kind of money. I've given my life to you, Lord.
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How on earth could you let my son die?
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And God does not mince words. All he said is, my son died too. And I fell to my knees.
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I don't think he could have said anything stronger that would have put me in
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my place than those three words.
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I think we need to understand that these sufferings that we do in the flesh,
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be it cancer or whatever diagnosis or heartache, pain.
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My wife's grandpa buried three of his children before his death.
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And he said, I don't know what's harder.
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Because he was within months of dying himself. He just couldn't,
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didn't know what was harder, looking at his own death or watching his children die. It was hard.
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And, but these things are definitely marks of our Christian character.
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Job was seen as righteous because even in the most dire circumstances,
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when everything was taken away from him, he still had his faith in God.
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The same is true for us today.
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We, the proof in our pudding is how we go through adversity.
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Yeah. James would say the same thing. James 1, verses 2-4.
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Consider it pure joy when you endure sacrifices,
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trials of many kinds, because you know that testing every faith develops perseverance,
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and perseverance must finish its work, leaving you mature and complete, not lacking anything.
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In addition to that, I'd point everybody to Hebrews 12, verse 2,
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where it talks about Jesus, for the joy set before him endured the cross.
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That's not something I'd look forward to. But because of what he was going to
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do on the cross for us, Jesus endured it.
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Did I answer that question? I think so.
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That's why bad things happen to good Christian people.
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So it shows that the faith we have in God is there for a reason.
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Yeah. Another great answer.
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It gets me thinking about a lot of things.
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Yeah. And faith is such a precious commodity.
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It is indeed.
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Good job. Good questions. Wow. It was really one, but Don made it.
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It was one question, but Don made it three.
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It's a gift. It's a gift. What can we say? It's a gift.
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Some of us have it. Some of us have it. Yeah. And some of us rather wish he didn't.
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Oh, good, Rod. All right. Well, thank you guys for joining us again.
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We'll see you next time. Lord willing.
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Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
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Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
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and is calling to us in our daily lives.
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Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.