IS GOD GOOD?

If God is all-good, why did He create evil?
If God is all-good and all-powerful, why didn't He create the best of all possible worlds?
If God is all-good and all-powerful, why doesn't He do something about evil?

DID GOD CREATE EVIL?

Is evil a created thing? Is evil a necessary consequence of free will?

All men are evil and will declare themselves to be so when occasion is offered. Sir Walter Raleigh
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. Joseph Conrad

 

Lack of money is the root of all evil. George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950 Man and Superman [1903], Maxims for Revolutionists
The love of money is the root of all evil. The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy 6:10
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room. Blaise Pascal 1623-1662

 

When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before. Mae West
Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man Works and Days l. 240 Hesiod c. 700 BC
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. Socrates 469-399 BC
But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart. Thomas Hood 1799-1845

IS THIS THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS?

Is God morally bound to create the best of all possible worlds?
If this isn't the best of all possible worlds, is it the best way to the best of all possible worlds?

 

If God hadn't rested on Sunday, he might have had time to finish off the world. Gabriel Garc¡a M rquez (b. 1928) Colombian writer
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Aglo-Irish writer

IS GOD ALL-POWERFUL?

If God is all-good He would do something about evil...If God is all-powerful, He could eliminate evil.
Since evil continues to exist....God can't be all-good and all-powerful.

IS ALL SUFFERING EVIL?

I see on an immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces have each and all played their part in developing and hardening man and giving him the heroic fiber. John Burroughs 1837-1921

 

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. Adam Bede [1859]
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering. Fodor Dostoevski 1821-1881 Notes from the Underground
Suffering is an auxiliary of creation. Pages de Lion Bloy, Choisies par Rassa Maritain [1951]
Man needs to suffer. When he does not have real griefs he creates them. Griefs purify and prepare him. Jos‚ Mart¡ 1853-1895 

 

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Penses [1670], no. 894
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Attributed Edmund Burke 1729-1797.

 

When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil. Mencius 372-289 BC

 

Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects. John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908) American economist
Unearned suffering is redemptive. Martin Luther King Letter from the Birmingham jail. In the Atlantic Monthly [August 1963]

 

Suffering is a vaccine against short-sightedness of the soul. Bill Cobb [1993]

 

There are no valid, sustainable objections to refusing God’s revealed plan for your salvation.

 

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