Where did evil come from?

General Christian Theology
temporal1
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Re: Where did evil come from?

Post by temporal1 »

lesterb wrote:Someone asked me recently how it is that evil started in heaven. Satan and the angels fell into sin before Adam and Eve did, so the first sin was actually in heaven itself. How does that mesh with our generally accepted ideas about heaven?

Of course the followup to this question would be, if it happened once, what keeps it from happening again? After we all get there?

I'd be interested in any good thoughts.
is it possible to get caught up with the wrong questions? :?
for me, a watershed moment in grasping "how God works," came when studying Hosea, reading how God, deliberately and harshly tested Gomer, with one singular intent: to bring her fully to Him, in obedience and love.

this isn't the only example in scriptures. it was the one that "grabbed" my attention.

God allows suffering, but, He has one intent: to bring us to Him.
God allowed His Son to suffer on earth. His intent? - to bring us to Him.

in the presence of God's Light, evil and suffering fade and are forgotten.
we will not understand in full. but, we can understand that much. if only we will.
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Most or all of this drama, humiliation, wasted taxpayer money could be spared -
with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


”We’re all just walking each other home.”
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haithabu
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Re: Where did evil come from?

Post by haithabu »

Maybe this question is akin to asking where darkness comes from.

Darkness is not a thing, it is the absence of a thing. So is evil I think at least in one sense - the absence of relationship with God. God created us (and presumably the angels) to be in relationship with Him. But for a relationship to be real, it must work in both directions. It requires a response by each party to the other which in turn implies a voluntary aspect to the response. How, how much or even whether to respond at all. Which brings us back to the aspect of choice as a necessary condition to any relationship worthy of the name.

But I think there is another dimension of evil beyond mere absence. As implied in the descriptions of the wicked in the Bible (including the devil/Lucifer/Antichrist) it is a state of mind or will which is obstinately turned away from God and towards one's self. It is a positive denial of the need for relationship with God. And how a perfect or sinless being may get there is a mystery.

However I think that perfection which is never tested is not true perfection, just as obedience which is never tested is not true obedience. It remains potential rather than actual, or like a muscle which is never exercised. It may be that by placing the tree of knowledge within the first couple's each while at the same time prohibiting it, God was inviting Adam and Eve to step forward in their relationship with Him into a place of conscious obedience.

Along that line I think of the passages in Hebrews which tell us that Jesus was perfected by His experiences. (Hebrews 2:10 and 5:9) How could the perfect, sinless Son of Man be made more perfect? Well according to the latter passage he was perfected by learning obedience through what he suffered. Again, the idea of the potential being perfected by becoming actual. Jesus' obedience, which was fully present in potential form even before he emptied himself and came to earth, was perfected by being fully enacted in the face of the most severe testing.

But where there is a test, there must be the potential for failure. Both Satan and Adam/Eve failed that test. The real question in my mind is why did Satan fail beyond redemption and Adam and Eve did not? Is it possible for disobedience and rejection of God to go so far in one direction that one passes through a one way door from which there is no return? Hebrews suggests that it is.

Satan fell from a much higher place of knowledge of God than did Eve, so his fall may have involved a greater degree of willfulness. He also is deathless, so he may have had a much longer time to pursue a "long disobedience in the same direction". In view of the mischief that we can get up to within our 70 year span, what devils might we humans become if we could live forever without being saved? Or even if we lived only 900 years? In that respect, maybe death is a mercy, because it forces us to face the consequences of our rebellion against God before most of us get to that point.
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Josh
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Re: Where did evil come from?

Post by Josh »

Good to see you posting again, haithabu.
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haithabu
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Re: Where did evil come from?

Post by haithabu »

Thanks Josh. :)

I check in regularly, but not every topic grabs me to the same degree. This one happens to because it is a question every unbeliever seems to ask.
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francis
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Re: Where did evil come from?

Post by francis »

I concur with haibathu's point, it reminds me of Augustine's Confessions where he describes sin as twisting one's soul away from God. Thus we're capable of choosing good and bad, but only one of those points toward God.
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