Where did Evil come from?

This may seem rhetorical since this does not affect any of us in a manner that will determine our salvation. But it is a matter of sin that we all encountered simply because our biblical parents succumbed to temptation and we too are experiencing the same evil.

If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin, and the patient care of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, the gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments, and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but free from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil. (CCC 309).

Let us go back to the creation account found in Genesis. God is eternal, no beginning and graciously no end. “And so it happened. God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.” (Gn 1: 30 b - 31).

Since everything God made was good there is no possible way that he also made evil. There are many attempts to unravel this mystery but none have arrived at a plausible explanation. If the angels who were given a special place in heaven with the task of caring for humanity in addition to praising God by their heavenly presence one might think they were free of committing sin. However, like human beings angels were given a free will. This is so no one may think that God directed their movements via puppets strings, or mechanically controlled as a robot.

Is free will the manner that we may use to find a way of choosing something greater than obedience to God? It certainly has the imminence to allow this evil entity, whatever we may call it, to appear before us and ask for a decision in choosing to follow this path. When Adam took Eve’s suggestion to take the fruit of the forbidden tree both made a choice to disobey God and therefore fell into the evil called sin.

The everlasting question before us is; if God did not create this entity called evil, where did it originate from? Many place the insistence of sin something that Satan’s original temptation to Eve was because he rejected God and was removed from heaven. Lucifer, Satan’s given name as an Archangel, was created like us, good and pleasing to God from creation. God could not create anything lacking the love of his divinity. He did not create anything evil, nor could his holiness allow such a travesty to occur. Angels and humans were created out of God’s love; therefore there is no semblance of an evil entity to be found in his love.

One word that emanates from free will is the choice to seek something far removed from a created species that also received a mortal soul. Even those who choose to turn away from God have a mortal soul that is eternal. Each soul is eternal with God and belongs with him throughout eternity. Because of God’s goodness and holiness each soul has the opportunity to share those same attributes that cannot accept evil except by using their free will to choose this concept on their own. Those who choose hell are still God’s children, made with eternal love.

As mentioned above from CCC 309, this entity we call evil and its origin remains a complete mystery. Why, we may ask, did God place a mysterious entity before us? If God just created human beings and gave them a free reign without ever finding Christ through mercy at Calvary, we would be like Punch and Judy, puppets to amuse some other species never created. Our free will receives one immaculate miracle; we must accept God’s mysterious manner of creating man with a weak will that would allow him to sin, which the ransom for it was paid by God himself, via Jesus Christ’s Sacrifice, and our willingness to find that mercy of God shall forever be in praise of God who allowed the evil of sin to become our choice to reject it and instead to

Thank God eternally.

Ralph B. Hathaway