Overcoming Evil With Good
Overcoming Evil With Good - Foundations of the Church
Genesis 1:1&31; James 1:17
In 1994 a letter to the editor of the L.A. Times expressed outrage not only at the atrocities committed by people in Bosnia-Herzegovena, but also at God himself. A man from Newport Beach wrote this: Glancing at your April 10 paper my eyes fell upon the tragic story “Ordeals Put Off Bosnia Rape Victim’s Healing.” My heart ached for Amira, the 35 year old Muslim woman, mother of two children, suffering the loss of her husband, wandering about the countryside begging to survive. Placed in a detention camp, raped repeatedly by Serb soldiers acting as animal pigs rather than human, the woman became another tragic victim of human wickedness. Where is mankind headed? My thoughts turn to God and ask, “Why, God? Why did you create such monsters? God, are you for real? If this is God’s way of teaching or testing my faith then my beliefs and faith are being shattered with contempt instead. Having just lost my wife to cancer, maybe my feelings are more prone and fragile to be torn apart and my feelings turn more intensely to those who are suffering also. Signed Victor Jashinski.
That was ten years ago and we’ve seen much more evil abound. Wars, natural disasters, disease, 9/11, school shootings, snipers all grab our attention to remind us of the badness that’s in this world. Maybe at some point you’ve looked up from it all and asked, “If God is good, why is there so much evil? If God is good, why is there evil at all? How can we explain the presence of evil without losing our faith in the existence of a good God?
The question isn’t terribly difficult to resolve. When we finish today I think your faith will be strengthened and you’ll understand. God made evil possible out of his goodness. We made evil actual out of our choices. How to respond to evil…
1. Trust in God’s Good Character.
The heart of the issue with evil is God’s character. Some would argue that if evil exists then God must be at least partly evil because he made everything. We’ll see this is not true because evil isn’t a created thing. Recognizing the presence of evil is actually an admission in the belief that there is a good God. For there to be evil there must be a standard of good. If you get upset about evil in the world and then claim that there must be no God, you stating a contradiction. If there is not a good God, how can anything be considered evil? There must be a standard. Otherwise evil is just an invention of humanity and it’s not worth discussing. Nothing is really evil and, therefore, we should not be upset at the atrocities we see in the world.
You know it’s not the case though. There is a good God and He has placed the knowledge of his goodness in your heart. The Bible affirms over and over that everything was created by our good God. Genesis 1:1, 31, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God saw all that he made, and it was very good. (NIV) The New Testament tells us the same thing: James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (NIV)
There is no evil in God whatsoever. He doesn’t have a good side and a dark side like the Force on Star Wars. There’s not Yin and Yang with God. He is completely without evil in his character.
Exodus 15:11 says, “Who among the gods is like you, O LORD? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” (NIV)
The God of the Old and New Testaments is completely unlike the so-called gods of the ancient world. Greek and Roman mythology depicted gods who were little more than humans with supernatural powers. The true Creator is holy. He’s perfect in his goodness.
As you live in this evil world you must constantly recognize his goodness. Reaffirm it as you pray to him. Meditate on it as you study his word. If you’ll establish that foundation in your faith you will not be shaken when trials and sorrow come. You will see his goodness in the midst of evil. God is good. All that he created and all that he does is good. Evil comes into play when we talk about something good that God gave, freedom. A second way to respond to evil is …
2. Don’t Flaunt Your Freedom.
Let me ask you a question. Is freedom good? Was it a good thing that American troops set the Iraqis people free from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein? Did you rejoice when that hollow statue of the brutal dictator fell? Unless you are a fascist you probably answered “yes.” I think we can agree that freedom is a good thing. In the U.S.A. it is so precious that we will give our lives for it. But, look at what happened to one young man:
Ali is a young man with little money and no wife. This is all the incentive he needs to take the ninety-minute bus ride from his village to Baghdad. As soon as he arrives, the 21-year-old Iraqi heads straight to Abu Abdullah’s. There it costs him only $1.50 for 15 minutes with a woman. The room is a cell with a curtain for a door, and Ali complains that Abu Abdullah’s women should bathe more often. But Ali sees the easy and inexpensive access to sexual favors as a big improvement over the days when Saddam Hussein was in power. The dictator strictly controlled vices such as prostitution, alcohol, and drugs. The fall of the regime gave rise to every kind of depravity. In addition to brothels, Iraqis have their choice of adult cinemas, where 70 cents buys an all-day ticket, and the audience hoots in protest if a non-pornographic trailer interrupts the action. Referring to all the newly available immoral activities, Ali grins and says, "Now we have freedom."(Newsweek 12-03)
Freedom is good. We all agree on that. But freedom makes evil possible. God made evil possible out of his goodness. He gave us freedom. We made evil out of our choices.
Why did God give freedom to his creation? He didn’t have to. He could have created automatons which would automatically serve and obey him. There’s a problem with robots, though. They do not have the capacity for a true relationship. They cannot love. To love someone, you must have the freedom to do so. That’s what God did. He gave us the freedom to accept Him or reject Him, to love Him or the hate Him.
You might ask, “Why did god create the devil? He’s an evil being. Isn’t this proof that God made evil?” No. God originally made Lucifer, the one who became Satan, a perfectly good being. The book of Ezekiel contains a prophecy directed at the king of Tyre, but it also speaks to the spiritual being who is misleading and empowering the king, Satan.
Ezekiel 28:11-19 says, “The word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. By your many sins and dishonest trade you have desecrated your sanctuaries. So I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching. All the nations who knew you are appalled at you; you have come to a horrible end and will be no more.’” (NIV)
God made Lucifer good, but he also gave him freedom. He freely chose to rebel against God because he wanted to be God. Isaiah gives us some insight into Lucifer’s state of mind in Isaiah 14:14 “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”
Then God created humanity he gave them the same freedom to choose him or reject him: Genesis 2:16-17, And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
The man and woman, after being tempted by the Enemy, flaunted their freedom in Genesis 3:6, When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (NIV)
Evil is not a created thing. It is the absence of good. Author Greg Koukl describes evil this way: “evil, as a thing in itself, does not exist. Let me give you an illustration to make this more clear. We talk about things being cold or warm. But coldness is not a thing that exists in itself ¡K Coldness is the absence of heat. When we remove heat energy from a system, we say it gets colder. Cold is a description of circumstance in which heat is missing. Heat is energy which can be measured. When you remove heat, the temperature goes down. We call that condition “cold,” but there is no cold “stuff” that causes the condition.
Evil is the absence of good, a privation of good, not a thing itself.”
God didn’t create evil. We did by our choice. God made the good thing, freedom. When we misuse our freedom, evil is the result. But, we’re so used to individualism in America that we don’t grasp how individual sin produces evil. We believe that what we do in the privacy of our own homes does not affect anyone or anything else. This is wrong. There is a connectedness in all of creation. One way to respond to sin is to …
3. Consider the Consequences of Sin.
Adam and Eve simply ate a piece of fruit. It had no magical or mysterious power. Their sin, the original sin seems like no big deal compared to what we see on T.V. every day. Adam and Eve’s sin was a drop in the pond, but the ripples of their sin and ours have evil consequences. Let’s look at what mishandling our freedom by sin really does. Original sin… A. Disrupts our relationship to God. Genesis 3:8, Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. (NIV)
Our reasoning must be damaged when that relationship is disrupted. How did they think they could hide from an all-seeing God? That’s what sin does, even the supposed little one. We hide from God and become delusional in our thinking.
B. Sin alienates us from one another. Misusing our God-given freedom for sin separates people. It did this with Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:7, Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (NIV)
They hid from God and from one another. Sin separates. Think about it. The same source that causes you to bicker with your spouse causes nations to obliterate one another in times of war. It’s sin. And what is sin, but a misuse of the freedom God gave us? Whether you know it or believe it or not, sin also threw nature out of whack.
C. Sin affects nature. Here’s the reason why. When God created the man and woman he gave them rule over the earth. Humanity was originally designed to act in God’s place overseeing the earth. Genesis 1:28 says, God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (NKJ)
We were made in God’s image with the express purpose of having dominion over the earth. Because of our sinful choices that image has been marred and nature itself cascaded out of our control. Genesis 3:17, 18 says, “Cursed is the ground because of you; It will produce thorns and thistles for you. (NIV)
The book of Romans tells us that it was because of human sin that nature, too, was corrupted. Romans 8:20-21, “For creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” (NIV) And of course, our choice of sin also…
D. Ushered in Death and its Preliminaries. Romans 5:12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the entire the entire human race. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (NLT)
God made evil possible out of his goodness. We made evil actual out of our choices. But God in his mercy has given us a way to counteract evil.
4. Exploit Evil to Bring a Greater Good.
God uses the evil, produced by our choices, to bring about a greater good. He uses it to bring a greater good to us and to redeem the world. Romans 8:28-29, And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son. (NIV)
Dr. Kreeft, a philosophy professor for 38 years, gave this illustration about evil. "Look at it this way," he said. "Imagine a bear in a trap and a hunter who, out of sympathy, wants to liberate him. He tries to win the bear’s confidence, but he can’t do it, so he has to shoot the bear full of drugs. The bear, however, thinks this is an attack and that the hunter is trying to kill him. He doesn’t realize this is being done out of compassion.
"Then, in order to get the bear out of the trap, the hunter has to push him further into the trap to release the tension on the spring. If the bear were semiconscious at that point, he would be even more convinced that the hunter was his enemy out to cause him suffering and pain. But the bear would be wrong because his understanding is too limited."
That’s what God does. Not only does God use evil for our greater good, he calls us to exploit evil to do the same thing, God wants us to resist it with faith, hope, and love.
There’s a cartoon of two turtles. One says, “Sometimes I’d like to ask why God allows poverty, famine, and injustice when he could do something about it.” The other turtle says, “I’m afraid God might ask me the same question.”
Our mission in this world is to be the resistance movement against evil. In our personal lives, in our relationships, in our communities, nationally and globally, we as the followers of Jesus Christ are to use our freedom to make godly choices and roll back the affects of evil. We’re so used to a privatized, individual faith in America, relying on grace that we often lose sight of the fact that God calls us to fight evil. Micah 6:8 says, He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God? (NKJ)
There’s one thing to keep in mind when we face evil. Romans 12:17, Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. (NAB)
When Jewish theologian Dennis Prager gives speeches, he often asks audiences to imagine that they are walking down a dark alley at night and suddenly see a group of young men coming toward them. Prager then asks: “Would you be frightened or relieved that they are carrying Bibles and that they’ve just come from a Bible study?”
Prager’s audiences always snicker whether they are atheists or believers. They recognize that these are people who are more likely than anyone else in the world to use their freedom to do good. They internally know that these young men represent a good God who created all things good. They exploit the evil that human choice made to bring a greater good.
God made evil possible out of His goodness. We made evil actual out of our choices. Let’s commit ourselves to use our freedom to love God and His people. Let’s remind ourselves that even the smallest sin, committed in the most private moment affects the intricate fabric of all the created world. Let’s counteract evil with good until the day evil is exterminated by godly choices.