God created evil

[BSM1]

According to the Bible (Isaiah 45:7) God creates evil. Why do so many people, especially evangelical types, find this so hard to understand and accept?

 

[mycorrhiza]

According to the Bible (Isaiah 45:7) God creates evil. Why do so many people, especially evangelical types, find this so hard to understand and accept?

Because they have the modern omnibenevolent version of the Biblical God which is far from historically, or scripturally, accurate .

There are many things that Christians believe in that has no scriptural basis, like Satan being able to do things without God's permission, or Jesus being white with long hair, or the anti-Christ being a single person.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

According to the Bible (Isaiah 45:7) God creates evil. Why do so many people, especially evangelical types, find this so hard to understand and accept?

Because, paradoxically, "God is love".

 

[Thief]

Evil?...as in doing harm?

Or evil as intention.... deliberate and destructive?

So if you were God and saw a need to destroy something, to prevent further spread of it...
that would be evil?

If you were the devil and temptation is your tool to keep Man from entering heaven....
that would be evil?

So maybe, allowing the devil to tempt is evil?

Then if you fall to temptation you get to blame God?
as if you never had any freewill?

So many questions....

 

[Gjallarhorn]

Evil?...as in doing harm?

Or evil as intention.... deliberate and destructive?

So if you were God and saw a need to destroy something, to prevent further spread of it...
that would be evil?

If you were the devil and temptation is your tool to keep Man from entering heaven....
that would be evil?

So maybe, allowing the devil to tempt is evil?

Then if you fall to temptation you get to blame God?
as if you never had any freewill?

So many questions....

Free will is a meaningless concept, on par with "colorless green ideas".

 

[Pegg]

According to the Bible (Isaiah 45:7) God creates evil. Why do so many people, especially evangelical types, find this so hard to understand and accept?

evil means 'calamity'

God has brought calamity on mankind, yes. So in that way he has created evil.

But this verse is not saying that evil is some sort of living entity that was brought into existence by God. Evil is an action. And anyone can bring an act of evil or calamity upon another.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

According to the Bible (Isaiah 45:7) God creates evil.

No. The better translation (given parallelism and counterposition) is:

I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe.​

... as found in the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh and the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NSRV). It's also interesting that the Catholic New Jerusalem Bible offers:

I form the light and I create the darkness,
I make well-being, and I create disaster​

The Hebrew word 'ra' - here counterposed to 'shalom' - has various meanings and the preferable one depends heavily on style and context.

 

[josh120775]

According to the Bible (Isaiah 45:7) God creates evil. Why do so many people, especially evangelical types, find this so hard to understand and accept?

In Genesis, it says God created everything out of nothing. By default, God HAD to create evil and allow it to exist, otherwise the opposite of good would just be nothing, as God wouldn't have created an alternative.

 

[Pegg]

In Genesis, it says God created everything out of nothing. By default, God HAD to create evil and allow it to exist, otherwise the opposite of good would just be nothing, as God wouldn't have created an alternative.

evil doesnt 'exist'

if you do something bad to someone, you've performed an act of evil...but once you've completed the evil act, the evil is no more. Its only an action.

 

[BSM1]

In Genesis, it says God created everything out of nothing. By default, God HAD to create evil and allow it to exist, otherwise the opposite of good would just be nothing, as God wouldn't have created an alternative.

We have a winner!!

 

[BSM1]

This leads to the obvious next question-What is the difference between good and evil?

 

[Pegg]

This leads to the obvious next question-What is the difference between good and evil?

good seeks to upbuild, evil seeks to tear down

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

In Genesis, it says God created everything out of nothing.

That is not necessarily true.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

We have a winner!!

And we have a great example of selection bias.

 

[BSM1]

good seeks to upbuild, evil seeks to tear down

Don't you think that each person has to decide what builds up and what tears down?
What I might consider evil, you might see as good or normal. Case in point, honor killings. Hopefully all of us here has decided that killing your teen-age daughter for wearing lipstick is wrong, evil. However there is obviously a large population on this earth that consider honor killings not only good but divinely required. My point is that good and evil are highly subjective and totally defined by us.

 

[Iti oj]

evil doesnt 'exist'

if you do something bad to someone, you've performed an act of evil...but once you've completed the evil act, the evil is no more. Its only an action.

I like this pegg.

 

[BSM1]

That is not necessarily true.

What else did God have to work with but nothing and not nothing (God) at the moment of creation?

 

[josh120775]

That is not necessarily true.

Which means something existed in addition to God. Wouldn't that make it also God, so now we have 2 Gods?

Or are you referring to matter simply existing along with God, and God just molded it like putty?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I actually want to now what you're referring to.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

In Genesis, it says God created everything out of nothing.

That is not necessarily true.

What else did God have to work with but nothing and not nothing (God) at the moment of creation?

S/he never told me. I am addressing what I believe to be problematic translations of Biblical Hebrew. I prefer the JPS Torah which renders the opening lines of Genesis as:

When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, ...​

with the following commentary:

2. unformed and void

The Hebrew for this phrase (tohu va-vohu) means "desert waste." The point of the narrative is the idea or order that results from divine intent. There is no suggestion here that God made the world out of nothing, which is a much later conception.​

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I'm not trying to be argumentative, ...

And I am simply pointing out that you and BSM1 may be misreading the text.