The Existence of God and The Problem of Evil

In philosophy classes The Belief In God is often challenged in ways that make it out to be a logical absurdity. For example, we are told, if God is all powerful then can he create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?

Then there is the idea that everything has a cause, but God is the cause of all, or the First Cause. Then you are asked, well what caused God? How could He cause himself? What caused him to cause himself? And so on.

Let's take a specific example. 'God has put all things under his feet.'

Now remember that word 'all' means all! [Have you ever heard someone teaching error and supporting it by carping on the word 'all'? That is continually repeating that 'all' means all.]

So if God has put all things under his feet, then he must be under his own feet! Is God standing on his head or what? What kind of God is this anyway? Then comes the laughter and ridicule from 'those who profess themselves wise'.

Well for one thing, He is a God who expects you to use a little common sense. Here in this verse from First Corinthians He spells it out, giving us an example of using common sense. [A little common sense is a wonderful antidote to the errors that straightforward logical thinking, i.e. man's wisdom, lead to.]

For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. (1 Corinthians 15:27)

Now after reading this, can you insist that 'all' always means all, or does common sense tell us that there are some 'obvious' exceptions?

Then there is what the philosophers call The Problem of Evil. If God is Good and he is the Creator, they why is there evil. The stock answer is free will. The free will of man allows for evil to be chosen, and man has to deal with the results. This just puts the question off a bit. Next you are asked well why is there free will if it produces evil. And How do you know there is free will, maybe it's all pre determined and if so then God is the ultimate cause of evil! Then the so called problem of evil becomes blaming God for the evil in the world. So you find people abandoning a belief in God when it should be obvious that He exists.

Now we are going to look at these matters and see first that there are limits to what God can and will do. And secondly we'll see that we can't accuse God of evil because we simply cannot judge things in many situations because there is no way for us to know all the facts. So the simplest and best course is to trust God and not depend on our own minds to figure everything out.

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