Compiling God's Code

…and your grandfather said, ‘Suffer little children to come unto Me’: and what did He mean by that? how, if He meant that little children should need to be suffered to approach Him, what sort of earth had He created; that if they had to suffer in order to approach Him, what sort of heaven did He have?
Absalom, Absalom
William Faulkner

For me, sometimes, when I think about God, I often wonder about evil in the world and how God relates to that evil, and with recent events, such as the shootings in Colorado, I couldn’t help but think how this happens in a world overseen by a God; I’ve read blogs and even heard conversations where people hold back from believing in God because trusting in a loving God that “allows” such horrific acts of violence just seems illogical, and I bet, maybe, that many people contemplate evil and God, so I’m probably not alone in this situation. Is God evil? Or at the very least, is God apathetic to evil deeds?

After prayer and reflective thinking, I usually end up back where I started, which is… what, you didn’t think I would tell you the end now, did you? No, I’m taking you along the journey I call my thought process so that you experience firsthand the junk that swirls in my brain. How else are we going to have a dialogue about evil and God? Well, I guess we’re not having a dialogue, but we could, if you and I were at a dinner table somewhere or, to use a modern example, chatting on Facebook. Right now, it’s more my words and you just reading.

So, before you can even wonder if God is evil, you first have to determine if God is even capable of evil. We say that God is love, so that’s a start, because love is an action and an emotion, so if someone is capable of love, I guess he or she could be capable of evil or at least anger. So, first we’ll see if God is more than just love, because then he would have the capacity for evil, and then, we will need to define what is evil? Maybe we are just misinterpreting life as evil? From there, we can finally then make some generalizations about God and evil. You might want to stop reading now; I’m warning you. The journey is about to get bumpy, and I’m a usually never in control of my thoughts, so if you decide to go on, just enjoy the ride and keep your hands inside the car. 🙂

Is God more than just love?

I don’t know, but when I pray, God’s little voice in my soul says “yes,” so for me, the answer is a yes, but that’s too easy. We need to see how God has been perceived by our fellow humans, so we must look to the Bible for the answer, and I believe it also reveals that the answer is yes. Right now, I’m not looking at whether or not God committed evil in the past, but rather, does the bible show other emotional sides of God?

Two chapters of the bible have troubled me because, for me, they kind of point to an imperfect God, but in the context of this question, they answer it perfectly. With the first chapter, I recently discovered these verses as I was listening to the bible over my radio in the car on my way to work. Now, I’ve read this part of the bible before, and I’ve never noticed this, and I’ve never even heard it discussed in church or in any bible classes or, for that matter, anywhere. This is verse 35, from 1 Samuel, chapter 15 (ESV). And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. Regretted. Read that chapter; God regrets making Saul king, and he says it more than once. I’m not going to get into the ramifications of the word “regretted” as it pertains to God’s omniscience, but if you wonder if God is capable of more than just love, this chapter of the bible certainly states that he is capable of regret.

The second chapter is one that I’ve known about for some time, and I’ve also heard and read other people’s thoughts on the matter, but this is in the Gospels, in Matthew, chapter 27, verse 46 (ESV): And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I’ve always thought that verse was powerful and very, very human because it shows fear. Depending on how you view Jesus, this can be interpreted several different ways. I believe Jesus is a part of God in human form on this Earth, so if that is the case, then that part of God had fear, and even if you admit that was all human for Jesus, he knows God, and he knows what must happen to him, so, again, why display the fear?

What does all this mean? God is more like us than we tend to believe. That doesn’t make him imperfect. That brings him closer to us. That makes God even more probable to exist. Personally, I don’t like the image of a God with no emotion; that seems too much like a robot and nothing like we tend to exhibit as humans. Granted, God’s emotional maturity level far exceeds our level, and we are incapable of understanding his emotional maturity, like a 6-year-old child is unable to comprehend his 70-year-old grandmother, but I like knowing that in a certain situation that called for fear, being crucified on the cross, a small part of God exhibited that fear, just as you or I might in that moment of dying alone.

Now, two examples from the bible written thousands of years ago are hardly enough evidence to draw a conclusion that God is a complex essence with emotions similar to you and I, so you can take that for whatever its worth to you; I’m not writing a dissertation on the emotional level of God, so two examples will have to suffice, but there are countless others such as Jesus in the temple (Mark 11:15-19). I already believed that God is an emotional entity, and when I read Samuel’s experience or Matthew’s gospel account, my little voice is satisfied that it’s within the margin error of being correct because other people have had the same observation about God. So for the question, is God more than love, the answer is yes, and if God is capable of regret and fear, then God could exhibit anger and commit “evil.”

What is evil?

Determining what is evil is open for interpretation; for example, I don’t find homosexuality evil, but obviously Chick-fil-a has a problem with it, and while I find killing people for a crime they committed pretty evil, many people, especially my fellow Texans, are perfectly okay with it. As you can see, deciding what constitutes an evil act will vary among us all, and no matter what I type here, someone will disagree with me, and I know that someone might quote the bible for some arguments about what is evil and what’s not evil, but I have a hard time using laws written over a thousand years ago when people were ignorant to the ways of this world. Besides, these examples above involve human activity, so let’s consider the bad stuff that happens in the world outside the scope of humanity.

A tornado is not evil. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods, fires are not evil. Cancer and disease are not evil. Sharks, lions, dogs, bacteria, and all other living creatures are not evil. Physics and physical events are not evil; natural events and actions create the world we live in today. While all these actions devastate humanity and at times seem cruel and horrific, a tornado tearing apart a neighborhood is no more evil and bad as the sun rising each morning. I thank God that I have never had a child die from cancer, but life moving along, surviving, evolving, changing, growing, and dying is the way God designed this universe to operate, and the millisecond before the big bang exploded to begin the generation of our world and life, God knew that creation as well as destruction had to coexist for the process to be successful.

and with the action now, I’ll strip your pride
I’ll spread your blood around, I’ll see you writhe
Your face is scarred with steel, wounds deep and neat
Like a devil dancin before ya, smells so sweet

Am I evil? Yes, I am
Am I evil? I am man
Am I Evil?
Diamond Head

And now we get to the heart of all evil – humanity. We might disagree on the specifics, but I think we can all at least say that we have the capacity to perpetrate the evilest of deeds upon each other, animals, this planet, and this universe. When I envision evil, I think of what we do to ourselves and each other. Sometimes, I don’t even know if there is a devil, because people, alone, are capable of such evil acts; maybe we are the fallen angels. I don’t know. You might be able to argue that one man killing another man is survival of the fittest, which is evolution, but if it is only that simple, people have taken murder to an art form, and it becomes so much more than just survival. That’s where the evil takes hold. I believe there is evil in this world, so we must decide now if God plays any role in that evil.

Is God evil?

Nope. After all that, God is not evil. God is so much more than we can ever understand, and he might have the capacity for actions we would define as evil, but that goes against the laws of the universe. God is love and maybe regret, fear, anger and more, but if the other aspect of God is logic and law, evil contradicts those laws because the universe is not evil; it is perfect. It took perfection to ensure that life existed. Yes, we are a part of the universe, but we fail to follow logic, and we certainly fail to follow laws. I approach it from the science end because that’s the nerd that I am, and this is what makes sense to me; we each will have our own reasons why we think God isn’t evil, so let’s just end it that, but that doesn’t mean our time has ended here because even though God might not be evil, you have to wonder why God would allow evil to exist in his universe.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
David Hume
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epicurus

Yes, I see evil; I have no doubt about it, but to answer the questions above, again, it’s all relative, just like time, and if you look at this life as a journey on the wheel, our time here, right now, on this spoke, is not the end, and whether I die peacefully in my sleep, or I die at the hands of a madman with a gun in a dark movie theater, the journey isn’t over. From God’s perspective, just like with time, it is all less than the blink of his eye. Why doesn’t he intervene with evil? God knows the truth, and he takes in the big picture. Horrific actions seems evil to those left to deal with it, but to God, and those who have moved on to another spoke, it was the same means to an end.

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:1-8
English Standard Version (ESV)

For the most part, the world just turns and shit happens, and God doesn’t dabble in most of it because he set the wheel in motion by pushing it down hill. It won’t ever stop even if we do, and it has nothing to do with us; we are caught up in it, and sometimes it bounces our way and sometimes it bounces right on top of us, and sometimes, God nudges us out of the way, but you can be certain, that when the wheel crushes us, he lifts us up, dusts us off, heals our wounds, loves us, and then plops us right back into the thick of it.

1 I love you, O Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.
Psalm 18:1-3
English Standard Version (ESV)