We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Why Did God Allow Evil?
Is it possible to force people to love? Powerful people may be able to force others to do just about anything. Through psychological or physical torture, they may succeed in forcing them to curse their own children to deny their faith. They may even succeed in forcing others to act and say loving things to them. But no one can force another person to actually love them.
But God created us, someone might respond, so he need not coerce us to love him. He could simply create us with an unquenchable desire to love him. In this case we would choose to love God simply by virtue of how we were created. I suggest that this supposition also conflicts with our experience.
Consider this analogy: Suppose I were able to invent a computer chip that could interact with a human brain in a deterministic fashion, causing the person who carries the chip to do exactly what the chip dictates without the person knowing this. Suppose further that I programmed the chip to produce “the perfect wife” and inserted it in my wife’s brain while she was sleeping. The next morning she would wake up as my idea of a perfect wife. She would feel, behave and speak in a perfectly loving fashion. Owing to the sophistication of the chip, she would believe that she was voluntarily choosing to love me in this fashion, though in truth she could not do otherwise.
Would my wife genuinely love me? I think not. Proof of this is that I (and hopefully all husbands) would eventually find this “love” unfulfilling. I would know that my wife was not experiencing these loving feelings or engaging in this loving behavior on her own. In reality, I would simply be acting and speaking to myself through this sophisticated computer chip. My wife’s behavior would not be chosen by her, so she would not really be loving me at all. She would become the equivalent of a puppet. If I want love from her, she must personally possess the capacity to choose not to love me.
If God desires a bride made up of people who genuinely love him (see Jn 17)—who do not just act lovingly toward him—he must create people who have the capacity to reject him. He must endow agents with self-determination. They, not he, must determine whether or not they will love him and each other. And this, I submit, explains why God created a world in which evil was possible. If love is the goal, it could not be otherwise. God chose to create a world in which evil is possible only in the sense that he chose to create a world in which love is possible. The possibility of evil is not a second decision God makes; it is implied in the single decision to have a world in which love is possible. It is, in effect, the metaphysical price God must pay if he wants to arrive at a bride who says yes to his triune love.
—Adapted from Satan and the Problem of Evil, pages 54-55
Image by RocPX via Flickr
Category: Q&A
Tags: Evil, Free Will, Love, Problem of Evil, Satan and the Problem of Evil
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, The Problem of Evil
Related Reading

How do you respond to Romans 8:29-30?
Question: Romans 8:29–30 says that everyone God foreknew he predestined. You deny both that God foreknows and predestines individual believers. So this verse seems to refute your open view. Answer: First, as many exegetes have noted, the sort of “knowing” Paul intends in this passage is not merely intellectual knowledge, but rather an intimate affection.…

Did God Cause the Polar Vortex?
When is this polar vortex thing going to end? It’s March, and even in Minnesota we expect to see temperatures warmer than this. With all of the sleet and cold in the south, it seems like schools are closing more than they are open. While this is not a catastrophic event like a hurricane, tsunami,…

The Greatest Mystery of the Christian Faith
God has always been willing to stoop to accommodate the fallen state of his covenant people in order to remain in a transforming relationship with them and in order to continue to further his sovereign purposes through them. Out of love for humankind, Scripture tells us, Jesus emptied himself of his divine prerogatives, set aside…

Podcast: Doesn’t Jesus Violate the Free Will of Demons When He Casts Them Out?
Greg discusses the free will of demons and speculates on whether God is ever violent towards spiritual entities. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0163.mp3

A Jesus Kind of Church
The church can only be the conduit of God’s love if it stops judging others (See yesterday’s post). This means that it will stop being concerned about its reputation in the eyes of those who practice this religious judgment. The only reputation we need be concerned with is to have the one Jesus had. He…

Love and the Other Attributes of God
If we keep our focus on Christ, we see that God’s power and God’s love are not two separate attributes, as many people assume. As I often state, love is not merely something God does; love is what God eternally is. Everything God does, therefore, expresses perfect love. God’s power, therefore, is simply an aspect…