We usually don't have to look very far to find an act of evil in this world. Check the news, scroll through FB or Instagram, or just listen to what the people around you are talking about and you'll eventually find something about murder, sex trafficking, racism, discrimination, war, abuse, scandal, brutality, and many other injustices. Evil is very real, and each of us encounters it to some degree in our lives.
At Summit, I asked everyone to get into groups and discuss three things involving evil: the most evil thing you've ever heard of, the most evil thing you've ever witnessed, and the most evil thing you've ever done. We got answers ranging from the Holocaust to calling names. It can be easy to play the comparison game and say that compared to the Holocaust (when the Nazis murdered millions of Jews during WWII) me calling my little sister a bad name isn't all that evil. When we make these kinds of comparisons, we can start to feel pretty good about ourselves, thinking "I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not as bad as them." The problem is, even if it is only on a small scale, evil is still evil. Bad is still bad. And as we will get into in just a little bit, the Bible tells us that even a small amount of badness is enough to keep us out of Heaven and away from God.
A common question people have when they look at Christianity's teachings about God and His goodness is this: "If God is so good, then how come there is so much evil and suffering in the world?" We call this the "problem of evil". Many people absolutely refuse to believe in God because they just can't understand how a good God could allow so much evil and suffering in the world. Maybe that's one of your friends, or maybe that's you. How could allow cancer to take a loved one? Or war to ravage countries? Or mass genocide like what we saw with Hitler, the Nazis, and the Jews during WWII? They figure that God must not be real or He would have stopped all that. They figure that if God were real then our world would look MUCH different.
The thing is, the Bible answers this very question. The Bible explains the goodness of God, the problem of evil, and why Jesus Christ is so important to solving the problem forever.
You see, "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". This is Genesis 1:1, the very first sentence in the Bible. As you read through the very beginning of the Bible, you get a picture of a perfect world which God creates, and at the end of creating it all, God looks at the world and declares that it is "very good". At this point, there is no evil, no sin, no imperfection, just God and His creation. He has created human beings (Adam and Eve) and made a special garden just for them and gave them free reign to do whatever they wanted, with one exception. There was only one rule, and that was that they were not allowed to eat fruit from one particular tree in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now some people have been like "Why did God do this? Why not just NOT MAKE THAT TREE and remove the rule altogether?"
Here's why: without the option to disobey God, human beings would just be a bunch of robots with no choice but to love God. But love that doesn't have a choice isn't love at all, it is just obligation. In order for humans to experience real love, there had to be the option to not love, to hate (which means to turn away from). God gave them a choice in the garden so that they could choose to love Him.
And here's where we get our introduction to the problem of evil. The humans, Adam and Eve, decide to disobey God and they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good evil (what a mouthful). God had given them a choice to make (to obey or rebel against Him, to do good or to do evil), and they chose to rebel against Him. They chose to do evil, and that choice brought all of the bad, evil, and suffering into God's good world. It created a rift, a chasm, a massive gap between God and people. Originally, we could walk and talk with God, but our choice to turn against Him caused us to be separated - now He is there, and we are here, and there is this huge, impassable gap between us. Since then, people have strayed further and further from God, to do worse and worse things. And even people who want to get close to God can't, because they can't bridge the gap to get across to Him.
The book of Romans in the Bible (New Testament) highlights all of this:
Romans 3:23 - "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Sin is a simple word which describes anything we do that goes against what God says is right and good. Everyone has sinned, which means all of us are stuck on this side of the gap, with no way to get across to God on our own. It doesn't even matter how bad you've been, whether you are as "bad" as Hitler or as "good" as Mother Theresa - all sin is equal in God's eyes, and just one bad thing is enough to completely separate you from God.
Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." When Adam and Eve first sinned, it brought death and suffering into the world - that's where it all comes from, all the evil, the suffering, the death and sickness started when Adam and Eve turned against God. It is the consequence, the result, the "wage" of being against God. But this verse also starts to get us to the answer of "Why Jesus?" - the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Nothing any of us could do could possibly get us across the gap - nothing short of being perfectly good all the time, from before you were even born. On our own, we are stuck on this side of the gap. And that is why Jesus came. He came, lived a perfect life, and took on all the sins of the world when He died on the cross. He offered Himself as a sacrifice for us on the cross and paid the debt that we owed. The cross of Jesus has made a bridge across the gap, so that through Jesus people can have access to God again!
Romans 10:9, 13 - "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved... for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." It is through belief in Jesus, and ONLY in Jesus, that anyone can be saved and have forgiveness for their sins. Jesus said of Himself in John 14:6 - "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 3:16 also explains who all has access to this - "For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life."
Jesus came because God loves us, because He is a good God, and what Jesus did on the cross is for everyone. Literally everyone can believe in Jesus and be reunited with God.
Too often people look at all the evil and suffering in the world and ask how there could possibly be a good God. The reality is that the evil and suffering in the world is the result of people turning against God to go their own way. God is the one who has made a way out. He reached out to us and made it possible for us to get to Him - through faith in Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus is such a big deal, because without Him we would be stuck in sin, suffering, and death.
The Bible also tells us that there will come a day when God will destroy all evil and suffering - He will make it go away forever. But, He is not going to do that until everyone has had a chance to find forgiveness, to come to Jesus. That's why we still see so much of it.
For some application, to those of us who believe in Jesus, we are now on God's side. Which means our job is to do good and bring peace to this world as much as we can. We do this by living the way God has told us to live, and by showing kindness and compassion to others, and most importantly by sharing the message about Jesus.
We should not be contributing to the suffering by gossiping about others, excluding people, calling names, ignoring, lying, cursing, showing hate or anger - these are the actions of those who are against God. So, whose side are you on?
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