“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” – John 12:24
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death...Death is swallowed up in victory.” – 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54
"The greater the sin, the greater the mercy, the deeper the death and the brighter the rebirth.” - C. S. Lewis
"This story...has the very taste of primary truth." - J. R. R. Tolkien

Friday, January 30, 2009

Evil Points to God

Others would paint things in black and white, saying that God and evil cannot coexist, and since evil does exist, God does not. This idea, however, is plagued with a serious problem. First, there is nothing obviously mutually exclusive about these two realities. In fact, the existence of evil is strong evidence for God’s existence. In saying there is such a thing as evil, a person implies there is an absolute standard of what is morally right and wrong – a standard that divides evil from everything that is good and right and worthy and honorable. How can we condemn an event or act as evil without assuming some moral law? And how can there be a law without someone to set it? How can there be a moral standard without a source for its being? Only God is big enough to define and give reality to moral good and evil. A reality as huge as good and evil requires God as its source. Thus, the existence of evil, and of a moral standard, is strong evidence for God.

One might also put it this way. We can hardly consider the enormity of the moral horrors that have taken place in this world without acknowledging the existence of something truly great and powerful at work, something beyond this world. We can hardly look for a moment at the enormity of good and evil in human history and yet leave open the possibility that the material and physical universe is all there is. No – both the evil and the good that we perceive, like our emotions, point to something beyond a world of matter, towards a single moral source and ontological foundation of incomprehensible greatness – that is, towards God himself.

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