Why are we here? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is evil just around the corner? Historic Old Testament God thinking says that evil in our world is our doing, evil reigns upon and within us as the deserved fruit of our sin. This understanding is rooted in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the first bit into that dammed apple. Evil is a daily occurrence among us and it is our fault, as humans we have earned our sad evil state.
The story
is, however, Plato language and may not be the whole story. If the presence of
evil in our world is a God judgement, this sinful miserable sinner of a hominoid
would have been dead long ago. Another Old Testament God thinker, Job, also
disagreed. In his story, Job experienced the loss of everything in this world except
his next breath while maintaining his innocence before God. He demanded of God
to know why he was experiencing such crushing evil? No answer.
While reading on this subject, I was again driven to the google search bar by the fancy word, theodicy. A theodicy is our God thinking about the presence of evil in our world. The understanding that God could not or would not get His hands dirty creating a world with even the possibility of evil is ancient storytelling. Why was there even a tree of good and evil in the Genesis story at all? Could it be that evil is a necessary part of God's plan for us. Maybe, God put together this world to accomplish His goal for His creation and not our petty goals.
Maybe, God did not birth His creation in a puff of magic; maybe God is a bottom-up construction engineer. Why should we then complain?
G. Goslaw
Landers, Ca.
