Ever heard one of those seemingly unanswerable questions
like … how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin? Or perhaps, could there ever be a question
God could not answer? Well, the answer to
the first one might be “as many as want to”, but an answer to the second one is
a bit more tricky. For if God is
ALL-knowing and infallible, then how could He be presented with a Mystery too
great for Him to figure out? Yet the
Bible speaks about the Mystery of Iniquity even from God’s point of view. Let’s take a closer look.
A purely logical look at God reveals that He must be made
of, or embody if you will, every good thing.
If God were tainted by any evil in any form He would eventually self
destruct, as this is the natural result/state of evil when allowed to run
freely. Therefore since God has existed
from before our concepts of time and space, and will continue to exist beyond
our understanding of either, He must only embody that which is good – no evil
ingrediants.
This is not because He does not know evil when He sees
it. Nor is it because He is constricted
from choosing an evil path – you could hardly constrain the author of freewill
after all. His lack of evil is due to
both His knowledge of evil’s true nature, and His logical choice not to have
anything to do with it. The English
comedian Eddy Izzard once did a routine set on an airline where a stewardess
walking down the aisle would offer her customers ... “cake or death”. Customers consistently chose cake. God consistently chooses good over evil.
So then if God embodies everything that is good, then any
departure, any deviation, from God would define evil. This is merely extending our logical view of
God to its natural opposite conclusion.
If God is everything Good, then outside of God is everything evil. Makes sense.
So then to better understand evil all you need to do is more closely
examine what we know of God.
God is love. God is
life. God is happiness. God serves others, constantly, no matter how
they react to Him. Just to name a
few. God defines self-sacrifice and
service to others. Then what must evil
look like? Evil is hate. Evil is death. Evil is misery and pain. Evil serves only its own interests,
constantly, no matter how it impacts on the lives of others. Therefore Evil defines selfishness and the
entire pursuit of pleasing one’s self.
The differences are stark, but even the more subtle ones tend to be
profound. Such as; good is always
content, evil is always hungry. Good can
relax, Evil is always hunting. Good
recognizes and supports others, Evil cannot be bothered with others as it has
no time for them.
So the first mystery becomes if you understood the true
nature of evil, why on earth, or anywhere else for that matter, would you
consciously choose evil over good? The
next mystery becomes an even greater one, knowing that evil embodies self
inflicted pain, and having had personal experience with that pain, do we
continue to choose to bring it on ourselves – doing the same self destructive
thing – over and over and over again? To
me this is the definition of addiction.
Helpless to stop self destructive behavior due to an “inability” to act
rationally. But where does addiction
come from? I believe it is part of the
nature of evil itself.
Compare evil to cancer for a minute; cancer spreads and
destroys every good thing it comes into contact with. Cancer is not content to remain still, not
content to remain fixed on a certain part of the body, it seems to want to
spread out and infect as many things as it can.
Evil is much the same way. It is
not content to minimize damages, it wants to spread them out so that not just
the doer of evil is punished with pain.
So are his victims, those that care about both the victims and the
perpetrator, and of course God who loves us all. The ripples of the pain of evil extend quite
a distance.
When Lucifer became Satan, he did not begin his career in
evil by committing murder, adultery, or homosexuality. His launch into evil was far more subtle than
that. He merely posed an unanswered
question to that point in time … what would happen if I stopped serving others
for a minute and served me for a while?
After all, how bad could it be?
The answer, as bad as killing the Creator of the Universe on a cross of
torture by those He was trying to save.
It did not immediately look as bad as all that. It was just a simple question. But its answer should have been self-evident. Remember if God embodies all that is good,
any deviation is bound to define evil, and so it did.
But Satan having known the paradise of serving God, and the
infinite fulfillment of Heaven, chose to forsake it all in pursuit of pleasing
Himself. An empty pursuit with no value
in the end. And so a mystery is born
that I believe even God cannot fully answer – Why – Why would anyone ever do
that? What’s more, why would they do it
again and again and again? But this is
the nature of sin.
One of my favorite texts in the Bible is Nahum 1:9 (one of
the minor prophets, you know those small books right before Matthew). It says that “affliction shall not rise a
second time” meaning that in Heaven at the end of time and our world as we know
it, there will be NO more sin ever again.
It points out that there will be a definitive ending to ALL evil. It means we will never be slave to evil
again. But how? It is not free-will that is extinguished in
God’s kingdom. Free-will has always and
will always be a principle of Good upon which His kingdom is built.
Therein is the point.
While we will maintain our ability to choose good or evil, we will no
longer have ANY desire to ever have anything to do with evil ever again. There will be no more Lucifer’s turning to
Satan’s in our distant future. No more
fallen worlds. No more fallen species to
redeem. We are it. This is all.
The conflict will be over, both in the world between good and evil, as
well as in our hearts and minds. Having
been made free from evil and our slavery to it, we will not ever wish to return
to it.
I submit, if you are unwilling to part with something in
your life that you know to be evil, it is perhaps because you have not seen the
pain that accompanies the evil you are playing with. But know this, evil is by design inextricably
linked to pain, and whatever evil you are engaged in will naturally result in
an abundance of pain in your life and the lives of everyone around you. This is not intended to be a threat of any
kind, instead it is intended to be a definition to be applied to everything in
your life. If it is not good, it will be
a source of pain. The timing of the
delivery of pain, and the amount of pain it may bring may be different with
each evil you entertain. But the more
you indulge evil, the more you give the cancer license to expand, until one day
it dominates your every thought, every deed, every motive.
See evil clearly, and go to God. Go to the source of both forgiveness, and
reform. Only God can change what it is
you want, what it you do, and what you are bound to. Give it up to Him, and let Him rule over it,
and you will be made free from evil.
Having been made free, your choices to return will become less and less
likely, as you are rooted deeper and deeper in His love…
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