The thought that came to my mind was knowing the stories of the Bible, knowing evil existed but the discussion of sin and devil is nowhere in our conversations. There is no connection with what is occurring with God and devil because that language has been removed from the home, schools and the community. We no longer think of us fighting against sin and the devil - us, me as sinner contributing to that evil whether by committing the sin, hiding others sins whether to protect them them from consequences or to protect the institution, or not discussing sins - the renaming of what is true/ right. I know that talking with a friend recently and trying to bring the Word into our discussions that it’s was then she said to me “the devil and evil is really here in our everyday lives trying to change our thoughts, actions etc. we just haven’t been calling it that or looking at scripture to see it has never gone away. The Bible isn’t just stories … “
No the same evil, satan, is still working the same now as then and God is still in charge. We just need to faith and return to His Word and prayer for guidance and in repentance.
Please expand more how God is acting in the world- that is most often what I hear because they can’t see His power. My thought is they/we are looking for God in human ways not like a faithful servant like Job did.
If when you use the term us to mean "Christians", in no way should evil surprise us. Anyone who knows the story of Adam and Eve and original sin knows that evil began in the Garden. I also feel as though humans (all) have awareness of evil. When things are wrong.
God challenges us to grow, as parents challenge their children to grow; yet children are unable to truly see that which their parents know, just as today’s parents could not see what their parents knew when they themselves were children.
Myopia is a mortal penance for sin, and its effects blind us from recognizing that everything we experience is a blessing from God, including our sufferings, and that every experience we are graced with is equally miraculous and deserving of our thanks and praise.
God is Alpha and Omega - we should simply accept our subordinate position and relative lack of understanding as inherent; instead, we question, we debate, and we analyze.
I heard once that whenever you hear something bothering you,try to flip it around to see the positives.So,that same Pastor has said,"How can we ever expect good things in the fallen world".Its so comforting that only due to the grace and mercy of our Lord that good things happen.So ,I guess we should not be suprised by the evil but instead thank the Lord for every good thing that happens in this fallen world.
This might be a little beside the point, but when I came back to Jesus after being a prodigal daughter a few years ago, he gave me the following picture related to God’s wrath and why Jesus had to die for us. This picture relates to the world after the fall and is borrowed from chemistry. Let’s say the absolute HOLY God is water and we SINFUL Men are oil. These two elements do not mix because of their nature. There is no way for them to come together. We men put ourselves in this position by our own free will. This is where Jesus comes in as the MEDIATOR/catalisator in our picture as dishwashing soap and dissolves the barrier between GOD and us. - if we ask him for help us and repent of our sins. This is admittedly a profane way to put it, but it helped me a lot. As Jesus said, only God is good - demonstrating that the rest must be intrinsically evil.
Genesis 3 explains why evil comes to exist, but many people think the rest of the Bible is less clear about why evil still exists. Why has God not eliminated evil from the world in the time since Genesis 3? Scripture does speak to these things. I think your thoughts about an abstract God vs. God as a personal being with a purpose and plan for the salvation of the world are helpful. It is Christ who gives us an image (Col. 1:15) of who God is and guards us against our own imagination of the abstract God. In Christ, we see suffering and evil used by God for a purpose and because God has made good come from the evil done to Christ, we have a reason to trust that He can bring good from the evil we experience as well.
I went to college for law-enforcement. A year later I had a job as a police officer. I was in another state and I left there and came back to my home state and got into Corrections instead of law-enforcement.
(It was a better fit for me.). And so began my career; the next 30 years of fighting evil.
And I learned that prison is like a small nucleous of us on the outside culture -, but in prison, evil is intensified, and good is there and overcomes evil even though it’s corrections officers are evil. And what all corrections officers suffer through in their prison career is other officers who mess with you or bother you intentionally, or jealous of you, or think that you shouldn’t be an officer, but nevertheless, it’s basic evil towards you, so you get it from inmates who you have control over and can restrain their evil, but from the officers who you work with, although not all, thank goodness, you experience and feel they’re evil. Isn’t this our world: evil is being restrained. When I worked in prison, I could very very clearly and easily see that evil was being restrained, and it wasn’t because of us although we played a part. It was God. God protected me in many dangerous situations and I by myself or even with other officers were outnumbered by hundreds and yet were kept safe even, in violent situations. It was God.
And in the world today, there is evil. And we Christians are numbered much much less than the world population, but God restrains the evil.
And God uses the police in our society to help restrain evil and bad, and the majority of people don’t realize all the evil that they are fighting and restraining through the power of God. And the same in our prisons, when you realize all the ish and yuck and evil, that man is capable of- being kept under control by just a few officers, by physical control and barriers, by officers and staff maintaining a good culture,,,, it all helps, but if it we not God holding back all evil in society- we would be over run. If God allowed the devil his way,,,?
But God is in control, he is merciful, loving, kind, gentle, long suffering, compassionate, joyous, patience, heals us, helps us, watches out for us, does not give to us what we deserve ( we are all evil in our nature- but when Jesus speaks to us and we believe by his mercy and grace- we become renewed in our minds, and there begins our sanctification,,,,, our overcoming of this world and evil. And we are baptized/ Jesus overcame this world and evil and we are participants with him thru Baptism- through belief and baptism as Mark 16:16 explains,,,,,
I have recently had this conversation with an agnostic who believed that evil in the world is simply the absence of morals. Similar to the “blank slate” or tabula rasa theory of John Locke, the easy thing to blame is society.
If I am born in innocence without depravity, the evil I do can be placed on the influences around me. According to him, we need to practice good morals and be “the better person.”
When asked who determines what a “good moral” is, that’s where this thinking falls apart. Without the baseline of Gods Law, goodness becomes relative to what each individual wants it to be.
Instead of taking every thought and making it obedient and captive to Christ, we can fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others and the practice of self righteousness- exactly what our Old Adam wants us to do.
God be praised for Christ esteem and the trials of the cross in our lives!
The world, the flesh and the devil(s) want us to keep our noses out of the Word because as Ephesians tells us, it is the best weapon we have and only effective weapon we as humans can wield (with the power of the Holy Spirit). The more we know the Word, the better we know Yahweh. The more we understand/believe the Word, the more resilient we are against the tides of evil, and nothing should surprise us! We may mourn the presence of evil and the effects it has on the world and ourselves, but we don't need to live in despair. This is the "power" God's Word gives us.
Even God Himself, as Jesus, took time to mourn the death of John and Lazarus.
We know who wins and we have an idea of how to combat evil in our day-to-day lives, even. To be as wise/clever as vipers but innocent as doves: this is a gift to us who remain in the Word.
The thought experiment you proposed has a few possible holes: it seems we are assuming the person within this "box" is near-perfect in character, to not assume evil on the outside, never having experienced their own weakness of character.
Also, it's hard to get around the idea of isolation not driving this poor soul mad :). But I can dismiss those thoughts and appreciate the very valuable point you are trying to make.
Good stuff. I've seen this with many good friends out there "fighting the good fight" specifically working tirelessly to defend the RIGHT TO LIFE. No doubt, a noble cause! But I've seen this fight consume folks so much that it becomes a new kind of gospel to them.
In thinking of evil, it leads me to the creation event in which God made everything good, and very good, then He rested. There was nothing made that was not good. However, we have the limited freedom to live in the world and do pretty much what we want with it. We add preservatives to His beautiful food that cause cancer and digestive problems, pasteurize milk and make it undigestible, we make chemicals and pollutants that cause cancer and other illness, all to make it a "better place". Then we hurt people, thrive on pridefulness, and we withhold forgiveness. With this in mind, I believe everything that is evil in the world, is man's perversion and mis-use of the good that God made. I'm not sure I answered the question directly, but I think the mis-understanding lies in blaming God for everything that happens, rather than blaming man and the devil, that deform and mutilate everything that was perfect.
If the person in the box reads the Bible without the gift of faith there is no predicting what they might think. Conversly, reading with faith will direct in the way of truth and knowledge of how the world is currently under God’s curse.
reading the Bible, you may come away with a understanding of how evil entered the world and yet you can get glimpses of the goodness of God. the only explanation of the horrors of this world is that we live in a fallen broken world, and that it is not the world that God intended for us but the one that he knew would happen. By our sin through Adam, we prove over and over again that we are corrupt and so many times fall so far less than what God would have for us... therefore he came up with a plan to send his Son to do what we could not do and then, that Son stepped in to our place to pay for our evil ways and all the ways that we fall short. Our trust is in his Word and the promise of our Baptism (his baptism for us and how he calls us through the hearing of his Word). It is the only way to make sense of your thought experiment. If we do not have his Word, his Baptism, we are truly lost and looking out that window is terrifying with no HOPE. Praise be God that He provides our escape plan and can show us glimpses of his Love on this side (inside the house looking out). Gott ist Groß
As I think about this question, my thinking is more drawn in a different direction. We are ingrained with sin. There is no way to think any other way. My thinking goes to what happens when we look outside of that box and see perfection? Can we even comprehend that? Would we be able to even gaze upon it with our sin-stained eyes? If you are talking of some strange paradox of if we’ve never been exposed to the sin of this life, then I would imagine that we still wouldn’t be able to comprehend what is taking place. I think we would shudder in disbelief that human beings could be so vile and that nature could be so unforgiving. But then, we would know of God and his love and would be in total disbelief that he could even give a passing thought to helping such vile creatures. And that is is why Lutheranism is so wonderful. We understand that we are sinful and that God hates sin and therefor us. BUT-Jesus intervenes. When God looks at us, he only sees his son, who he loves. And that is pretty great!
I agree with your assumption that the Word of God describes the origins of evil and what God has done to deliver us. However, most people I know are not surprised by evil or suffering; after all, they live in that reality. The question I encounter most frequently is, "If God is Almighty, then why does he allow evil to exist?" Or, "Why did God allow the devil to tempt Adam and Eve, which led to the Fall of humanity?"
My response has been that God chooses to deal with us under the Gospel, which means he did not create his creatures to be robots, but to worship Him freely by receiving (having faith in) His Word and provision. The flip side of that is that the gift of Himself and His Word are rejectible (unbelief). Unbelief or a rejection of God and His Word led to evil. To restore His creation He sent forth His Son, the Word Incarnate, to redeem us by His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.
A quick reaction: Assuming you've had (and read) the Bible, you know God is good and does not change. Therefore, if His creation has become corrupt, it begs the question, "Who did this?" and "What is God doing about it?" The Bible answers those questions quite clearly. Thanks be to God for His Son, Jesus Christ!
It’s easier to imagine the case where I’ve been reading the Bible while in my room. I think I’d be petrified to open that window. I’d be hyper aware of all of the evil deeds going on out there and thinking of my room as protecting me from it. But I’d also be very concerned about what it means for me and how I would be expressing the evil in me. I have a vivid memory before I went to Kindergarten of being sent to my room by my mother one afternoon for doing something wrong. I don’t remember the sin but I remember being so forlorn that I couldn’t be good; I hid in the closet and cried and I remember telling myself that if everyone in history had been sinless until me that I would be the first sinner. And I was in a Lutheran tradition that didn’t teach (or maybe I hadn’t heard/recognized it yet at that age) the assurance that our churches preach. If I were always alone in that room, I’d be concerned about how that evil was expressed in my life.
But if I didn’t know what was in the Bible yet I had deduced that there must have been a powerful God who created me and this room, then I can imagine being so excited to get out and see what else had been created. I wouldn’t consider myself sinful, so how could I expect sin? And when confronted by it, would I see it as sin or as something from by the powerful creator? I imagine that I would either decide that this is how it’s meant to be by the creator. Or, if I concluded that the world had gone awry, then I would assume our creator had made this and then left us and doesn’t know what’s going on — like the old loyalty that Russian peasants had to the Czar and to the communist General Secretaries.
The thought that came to my mind was knowing the stories of the Bible, knowing evil existed but the discussion of sin and devil is nowhere in our conversations. There is no connection with what is occurring with God and devil because that language has been removed from the home, schools and the community. We no longer think of us fighting against sin and the devil - us, me as sinner contributing to that evil whether by committing the sin, hiding others sins whether to protect them them from consequences or to protect the institution, or not discussing sins - the renaming of what is true/ right. I know that talking with a friend recently and trying to bring the Word into our discussions that it’s was then she said to me “the devil and evil is really here in our everyday lives trying to change our thoughts, actions etc. we just haven’t been calling it that or looking at scripture to see it has never gone away. The Bible isn’t just stories … “
No the same evil, satan, is still working the same now as then and God is still in charge. We just need to faith and return to His Word and prayer for guidance and in repentance.
Please expand more how God is acting in the world- that is most often what I hear because they can’t see His power. My thought is they/we are looking for God in human ways not like a faithful servant like Job did.
If when you use the term us to mean "Christians", in no way should evil surprise us. Anyone who knows the story of Adam and Eve and original sin knows that evil began in the Garden. I also feel as though humans (all) have awareness of evil. When things are wrong.
God is not myopic.
God challenges us to grow, as parents challenge their children to grow; yet children are unable to truly see that which their parents know, just as today’s parents could not see what their parents knew when they themselves were children.
Myopia is a mortal penance for sin, and its effects blind us from recognizing that everything we experience is a blessing from God, including our sufferings, and that every experience we are graced with is equally miraculous and deserving of our thanks and praise.
God is Alpha and Omega - we should simply accept our subordinate position and relative lack of understanding as inherent; instead, we question, we debate, and we analyze.
As do our children.
And should that be any surprise?
I heard once that whenever you hear something bothering you,try to flip it around to see the positives.So,that same Pastor has said,"How can we ever expect good things in the fallen world".Its so comforting that only due to the grace and mercy of our Lord that good things happen.So ,I guess we should not be suprised by the evil but instead thank the Lord for every good thing that happens in this fallen world.
This might be a little beside the point, but when I came back to Jesus after being a prodigal daughter a few years ago, he gave me the following picture related to God’s wrath and why Jesus had to die for us. This picture relates to the world after the fall and is borrowed from chemistry. Let’s say the absolute HOLY God is water and we SINFUL Men are oil. These two elements do not mix because of their nature. There is no way for them to come together. We men put ourselves in this position by our own free will. This is where Jesus comes in as the MEDIATOR/catalisator in our picture as dishwashing soap and dissolves the barrier between GOD and us. - if we ask him for help us and repent of our sins. This is admittedly a profane way to put it, but it helped me a lot. As Jesus said, only God is good - demonstrating that the rest must be intrinsically evil.
Genesis 3 explains why evil comes to exist, but many people think the rest of the Bible is less clear about why evil still exists. Why has God not eliminated evil from the world in the time since Genesis 3? Scripture does speak to these things. I think your thoughts about an abstract God vs. God as a personal being with a purpose and plan for the salvation of the world are helpful. It is Christ who gives us an image (Col. 1:15) of who God is and guards us against our own imagination of the abstract God. In Christ, we see suffering and evil used by God for a purpose and because God has made good come from the evil done to Christ, we have a reason to trust that He can bring good from the evil we experience as well.
I went to college for law-enforcement. A year later I had a job as a police officer. I was in another state and I left there and came back to my home state and got into Corrections instead of law-enforcement.
(It was a better fit for me.). And so began my career; the next 30 years of fighting evil.
And I learned that prison is like a small nucleous of us on the outside culture -, but in prison, evil is intensified, and good is there and overcomes evil even though it’s corrections officers are evil. And what all corrections officers suffer through in their prison career is other officers who mess with you or bother you intentionally, or jealous of you, or think that you shouldn’t be an officer, but nevertheless, it’s basic evil towards you, so you get it from inmates who you have control over and can restrain their evil, but from the officers who you work with, although not all, thank goodness, you experience and feel they’re evil. Isn’t this our world: evil is being restrained. When I worked in prison, I could very very clearly and easily see that evil was being restrained, and it wasn’t because of us although we played a part. It was God. God protected me in many dangerous situations and I by myself or even with other officers were outnumbered by hundreds and yet were kept safe even, in violent situations. It was God.
And in the world today, there is evil. And we Christians are numbered much much less than the world population, but God restrains the evil.
And God uses the police in our society to help restrain evil and bad, and the majority of people don’t realize all the evil that they are fighting and restraining through the power of God. And the same in our prisons, when you realize all the ish and yuck and evil, that man is capable of- being kept under control by just a few officers, by physical control and barriers, by officers and staff maintaining a good culture,,,, it all helps, but if it we not God holding back all evil in society- we would be over run. If God allowed the devil his way,,,?
But God is in control, he is merciful, loving, kind, gentle, long suffering, compassionate, joyous, patience, heals us, helps us, watches out for us, does not give to us what we deserve ( we are all evil in our nature- but when Jesus speaks to us and we believe by his mercy and grace- we become renewed in our minds, and there begins our sanctification,,,,, our overcoming of this world and evil. And we are baptized/ Jesus overcame this world and evil and we are participants with him thru Baptism- through belief and baptism as Mark 16:16 explains,,,,,
I have recently had this conversation with an agnostic who believed that evil in the world is simply the absence of morals. Similar to the “blank slate” or tabula rasa theory of John Locke, the easy thing to blame is society.
If I am born in innocence without depravity, the evil I do can be placed on the influences around me. According to him, we need to practice good morals and be “the better person.”
When asked who determines what a “good moral” is, that’s where this thinking falls apart. Without the baseline of Gods Law, goodness becomes relative to what each individual wants it to be.
Instead of taking every thought and making it obedient and captive to Christ, we can fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others and the practice of self righteousness- exactly what our Old Adam wants us to do.
God be praised for Christ esteem and the trials of the cross in our lives!
Interesting thought experiment.
The world, the flesh and the devil(s) want us to keep our noses out of the Word because as Ephesians tells us, it is the best weapon we have and only effective weapon we as humans can wield (with the power of the Holy Spirit). The more we know the Word, the better we know Yahweh. The more we understand/believe the Word, the more resilient we are against the tides of evil, and nothing should surprise us! We may mourn the presence of evil and the effects it has on the world and ourselves, but we don't need to live in despair. This is the "power" God's Word gives us.
Even God Himself, as Jesus, took time to mourn the death of John and Lazarus.
We know who wins and we have an idea of how to combat evil in our day-to-day lives, even. To be as wise/clever as vipers but innocent as doves: this is a gift to us who remain in the Word.
The thought experiment you proposed has a few possible holes: it seems we are assuming the person within this "box" is near-perfect in character, to not assume evil on the outside, never having experienced their own weakness of character.
Also, it's hard to get around the idea of isolation not driving this poor soul mad :). But I can dismiss those thoughts and appreciate the very valuable point you are trying to make.
God bless and keep you, Pastor!
Good stuff. I've seen this with many good friends out there "fighting the good fight" specifically working tirelessly to defend the RIGHT TO LIFE. No doubt, a noble cause! But I've seen this fight consume folks so much that it becomes a new kind of gospel to them.
+pax+
In thinking of evil, it leads me to the creation event in which God made everything good, and very good, then He rested. There was nothing made that was not good. However, we have the limited freedom to live in the world and do pretty much what we want with it. We add preservatives to His beautiful food that cause cancer and digestive problems, pasteurize milk and make it undigestible, we make chemicals and pollutants that cause cancer and other illness, all to make it a "better place". Then we hurt people, thrive on pridefulness, and we withhold forgiveness. With this in mind, I believe everything that is evil in the world, is man's perversion and mis-use of the good that God made. I'm not sure I answered the question directly, but I think the mis-understanding lies in blaming God for everything that happens, rather than blaming man and the devil, that deform and mutilate everything that was perfect.
If the person in the box reads the Bible without the gift of faith there is no predicting what they might think. Conversly, reading with faith will direct in the way of truth and knowledge of how the world is currently under God’s curse.
reading the Bible, you may come away with a understanding of how evil entered the world and yet you can get glimpses of the goodness of God. the only explanation of the horrors of this world is that we live in a fallen broken world, and that it is not the world that God intended for us but the one that he knew would happen. By our sin through Adam, we prove over and over again that we are corrupt and so many times fall so far less than what God would have for us... therefore he came up with a plan to send his Son to do what we could not do and then, that Son stepped in to our place to pay for our evil ways and all the ways that we fall short. Our trust is in his Word and the promise of our Baptism (his baptism for us and how he calls us through the hearing of his Word). It is the only way to make sense of your thought experiment. If we do not have his Word, his Baptism, we are truly lost and looking out that window is terrifying with no HOPE. Praise be God that He provides our escape plan and can show us glimpses of his Love on this side (inside the house looking out). Gott ist Groß
As I think about this question, my thinking is more drawn in a different direction. We are ingrained with sin. There is no way to think any other way. My thinking goes to what happens when we look outside of that box and see perfection? Can we even comprehend that? Would we be able to even gaze upon it with our sin-stained eyes? If you are talking of some strange paradox of if we’ve never been exposed to the sin of this life, then I would imagine that we still wouldn’t be able to comprehend what is taking place. I think we would shudder in disbelief that human beings could be so vile and that nature could be so unforgiving. But then, we would know of God and his love and would be in total disbelief that he could even give a passing thought to helping such vile creatures. And that is is why Lutheranism is so wonderful. We understand that we are sinful and that God hates sin and therefor us. BUT-Jesus intervenes. When God looks at us, he only sees his son, who he loves. And that is pretty great!
I agree with your assumption that the Word of God describes the origins of evil and what God has done to deliver us. However, most people I know are not surprised by evil or suffering; after all, they live in that reality. The question I encounter most frequently is, "If God is Almighty, then why does he allow evil to exist?" Or, "Why did God allow the devil to tempt Adam and Eve, which led to the Fall of humanity?"
My response has been that God chooses to deal with us under the Gospel, which means he did not create his creatures to be robots, but to worship Him freely by receiving (having faith in) His Word and provision. The flip side of that is that the gift of Himself and His Word are rejectible (unbelief). Unbelief or a rejection of God and His Word led to evil. To restore His creation He sent forth His Son, the Word Incarnate, to redeem us by His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.
A quick reaction: Assuming you've had (and read) the Bible, you know God is good and does not change. Therefore, if His creation has become corrupt, it begs the question, "Who did this?" and "What is God doing about it?" The Bible answers those questions quite clearly. Thanks be to God for His Son, Jesus Christ!
I’ve been thinking of your question.
It’s easier to imagine the case where I’ve been reading the Bible while in my room. I think I’d be petrified to open that window. I’d be hyper aware of all of the evil deeds going on out there and thinking of my room as protecting me from it. But I’d also be very concerned about what it means for me and how I would be expressing the evil in me. I have a vivid memory before I went to Kindergarten of being sent to my room by my mother one afternoon for doing something wrong. I don’t remember the sin but I remember being so forlorn that I couldn’t be good; I hid in the closet and cried and I remember telling myself that if everyone in history had been sinless until me that I would be the first sinner. And I was in a Lutheran tradition that didn’t teach (or maybe I hadn’t heard/recognized it yet at that age) the assurance that our churches preach. If I were always alone in that room, I’d be concerned about how that evil was expressed in my life.
But if I didn’t know what was in the Bible yet I had deduced that there must have been a powerful God who created me and this room, then I can imagine being so excited to get out and see what else had been created. I wouldn’t consider myself sinful, so how could I expect sin? And when confronted by it, would I see it as sin or as something from by the powerful creator? I imagine that I would either decide that this is how it’s meant to be by the creator. Or, if I concluded that the world had gone awry, then I would assume our creator had made this and then left us and doesn’t know what’s going on — like the old loyalty that Russian peasants had to the Czar and to the communist General Secretaries.