01-01-2025, 01:42 AM
(31-12-2024, 10:53 AM)Ali Imran Wrote: In your previous post, you were telling us about our propensity to sin which is inherent in us.
Who made us like that?
(31-12-2024, 12:06 PM)Lukongsimi Wrote: That was how Adam n Eve were deceived into eating the forbidden fruit
if too light ears
Christians have been asked how evil could originate from a good God. If God is perfect and has a zero tolerance for sin, how can there be evil in the world? The force of the question can be illustrated by the dilemma posed by John S Mill below:
"If God desires there to be evil in the world, then He is not good. If He does not desire there to be evil, yet evil exists, then He is not omnipotent. Thus, if evil exists, God is either not loving or not all-powerful. Evil casts a shadow over God's love and power. This is no small dilemma, and answers to it are exceedingly difficult."
There are a multitude of theodicies attempting to explain how God can be just and still allow evil in the world, and the goal is to exonerate God from all blame and culpability for evil. Perhaps the most frequent theodicy to the problem of evil is to anchor the origin of evil to the free will of man.
The Bible tells us that A and E were created good and then fell by choosing to sin. The question is, how could something created good choose something evil. If we say Adam was deceived, we've 2 problems. First, the Bible makes it clear that Adam knew what he was doing was wrong. Thus, the idea of innocent deception or sinning by ignorance are at odds with the text. The second problem is one of guilt and responsibility. If Adam was deceived or ignorant of his actions, how could he be held guilty?
Did Adam sin because he had an evil inclination in his heart? That would explain how he was able to choose evil, but it'd pose the thorny question of where he got the evil inclination in the first place. If God gave him the evil inclination, the responsibility for sin falls back to God. If God didn't give it to Adam, how did he acquire it? What if all the inclinations of Adam's heart were only good ones? Then we still have the problem of asking how an evil choice would come from a good inclination. If Adam had no inclination to sin or to good, how could he choose either one of them? Without desire or disposition, the will has no power to choose. Some search for the explanation for Adam's fall within the dimension of the influence of Satan.
While we can't explain the enigma of evil, that's no reason to disregard the positive evidence for God, for the reality of good and the reality of evil. We may not be able to explain evil, but we're exhorted to beware of the influence of evil.