The Mystery of Creation: Chapter 6: Limited Wills: Good vs. Evil

Good vs. Evil

                What, then, can we conclude from all of this?  God is perfect.  He cannot make mistakes.  Therefore, everything that is currently in existence, God planned for it.  However, God would make all things perfect when He made all things.  Because He cannot make mistakes, everything that He made was made perfectly.  Since He is good, He would not make anything that was bad.  Bad would be considered an imperfection.  Therefore, He would only make that which is good, and He would make all things with a desire to be good.  This would create maximum efficiency and perfection because all of His creations would live together in peace and harmony.

                However, since we know that there is good and bad, we can then deduce that something bad must have happened to God’s perfect creation to make things go wrong.  Now, if He is good because good brings harmony and peace and therefore ultimate efficiency, then we know that God must encourage people to be good and He would have created them good. 

                And so, since people suffer and do wrong we know that they must deserve suffering and punishment.  To deserve punishment, then, they would have had to have chosen to do wrong so that they were worthy of punishment.  If people are bad then it can only mean that He has given them free wills to choose to be good or bad, even though He made them to be good.  Since pain and suffering are things we endure daily or almost daily, it is obvious that we are free will agents that chose to do evil so that we deserve punishment.  It only makes sense that God made us good and to be good but we rebelled and chose wrong and we deserve punishment, which is why we receive punishment.

                By creating the definitions of good, God also created definitions for evil.  Because they are opposites, by simply creating good things God ultimately created the concept of evil.  Because He said, “Loving one another is good,” He then also created a law that says, “Hating one another is evil,” because love and hate are opposites.  Because He said, “You should build others up.  It is good,” He also created a law that says, “If you tear others down, that is evil.”

                And so, by creating laws that state what is good, God ultimately created laws that told people what evil was, giving them a choice between the two.  He told them that if they lived good lives they would live in peace and harmony and joy and happiness, but if they lived evil lives they would create chaos and destruction and pain and suffering.

                However, since we know that He knows all things, we know that God planned for this from before the beginning, and He has everything worked out throughout history and time so that whatever end He desires will take place.  Since He is good and loves peace and harmony, it only makes sense that God’s end game, His ultimate motive, is to restore everything to peace and harmony at some point in the future.  He is only enduring this time of our rebellion while He waits for the right moment to usher in a future where peace and harmony, love and happiness, are restored to all creation.