Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Why Did God Create Evil?

Some time ago I posted something on the subject of why did God create Satan. At the time, I pointed out that God created Lucifer as an angel, but that Lucifer became evil later. Someone else pointed out to me that the Bible actually says that God created evil. So, it gets more complicated. Why did God create evil? It occurs to me that perhaps the best illustration comes from an old children’s movie.


Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (the 1971 film, not Charlie & the Chocolate Factory from 2005 based on the same book) was an interesting film, to say the least. A lot of the special effects don’t look nearly so good today as they did almost forty years ago, but the film still holds up pretty well. TBH, I thought Deep Roy in CatCF made a better Oompa Loompa than the guys they had in the original. Jonny Depp made a passable Willy Wonka, but Gene Wilder was better. Also, it seemed to me that Tim Burton (who directed CatCF) missed the point of the movie (although I could be mistaken—I understand that Roald Dahl, who wrote the book, hated WWatCF).


In any case, in both films, Willy Wonka has been reclusive for many years, but for whatever reason, he decides to include golden tickets in five candy bars manufactured at his chocolate factory. Each child who collects a golden ticket is invited for a special tour of the factory. Also included is a sample of a new candy called an everlasting gobstopper. Each of the five winners is approached by a creepy, mysterious man named Arthur Slugworth, who tells them that he is the head of a rival candy factory, and that the everlasting gobstopper threatens to put him out of business, unless they sell him their sample, and his people can reverse engineer it before Wonka puts it out on the market. During the tour, each of the five children, in turn, breaks one of Willy Wonka’s rules, and is eliminated from the tour (WARNING: Spoiler Alert! Don’t read the rest of this until you have seen the movie unless you have already made up your mind that you aren’t going to watch it). Charlie’s grandfather gets angry at Willy Wonka, and tells Charlie that he should sell his gobstopper to Slugworth. Their family is not well off, and the money that Slugworth has offered would make a tremendous difference. Even watching the movie (the first time) I couldn’t help but wonder, does Willy Wonka expect these children to be perfect? Charlie considers, but, decides that Willy Wonka is right, he did break the rules, and he can’t expect any special treatment. In order to eliminate temptation to change his mind later, he makes his way to Willy Wonka’s office, where Willy Wonka looks absolutely crushed, as though he can’t believe that none of the five children could follow a few simple rules. Charlie apologizes, and returns the everlasting gobstopper. Willy Wonka’s whole demeanor changes instantly, and gets very excited that one of the children actually did the right thing. It turns out the Wonka had a pretty good idea that none of the five children would be able to follow all of the rules for the entire length of the tour, but he wanted to see if any of them would take responsibility for their own actions. He names Charlie as his heir, Charlie will inherit the Chocolate factory, and introduces Charlie to his assistant, Arthur Slugworth, who shows Charlie the other four gobstoppers. At this point, we realize that Slugworth was part of the test (and, of course, prevented the gobstoppers from falling into competitors hands to be reverse engineered). I hope that the Biblical parallels are obvious…


The point is, if there were no evil, how would we know to choose the good? If we only do good because we have no other options, what have we really accomplished? If there were no Satan tempting us, then we would have no battles, and we would have no victory. Of course, Satan is not God’s assistant, but he does God a service by providing us with choices. If we want to be the heir, though, we will fight Satan’s choices, and stick to God’s.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Being Judgmental

Last week I mentioned that we Christians sometimes come off as judgmental, and that we put too much emphasis on what a person outside the faith is doing or not doing other than coming to Christ. I neglected to mention that when a person (whether they are of the Body or not of the Body) commits sin, and we just stand by, as condoning that sin, then we become partakers of that sin. We have been commissioned to warn people about the wrath to come.


When the adulterous woman was taken before Jesus, He did not (directly) prevent her stoning, although he was certainly more compassionate towards her than her accusers; He did tell her to go and sin no more, which made it clear that her earlier behavior was not acceptable (although one would hope that her narrow escape from a death by stoning would have made that point abundantly obvious). At the same time, He didn’t browbeat her about her past sins, in fact, He said, “Neither do I condemn thee.”


When he was at the Pharisee Simon’s house for dinner, and the woman (was it the same woman? I suspect that it was, but the Scriptures don’t say) anointed His feet, Simon found fault with Jesus, supposing that Christ didn’t know what sort of woman was touching Him. Of course, Jesus did know what she had been, but, unlike Simon, He was aware that her repentance was genuine; she was no longer what the Pharisee thought she was. Unfortunately, even those of us that call ourselves Christians often have more in common with Simon than with Christ. We are very limited in what we can see and sense. Many of us have been fooled more than once by people who have offered repentance as a pretense in order to gain, and then betray, our trust. I can forgive such a betrayal, but it is very hard for me to ever again extend trust to such an individual. We look at people with our human eyes, and we see their human faults, and, well, let’s be honest about it, we pass judgment, even though we know we aren’t supposed to. What we are supposed to do is meet people where they are, and help them to see what they could be.


I have talked before about Rahab the Harlot; out of all the people living in Jericho, she was the one who showed some measure of righteousness, if only because she feared God. When the two spies went into Jericho, they didn’t pass judgment on her for her profession, they understood that she was in the same predicament as the rest of the people of Jericho; if they didn’t repent, they would all die in their sins. Of course, Rahab showed by her actions that she feared God, and she was ready to change her entire life.


I’m trying to show that there are ways to convey that certain behaviors are not acceptable (most people have a pretty good understanding of what those behaviors are anyway) without being judgmental. People outside of Christ don’t need judgment from us, they will face righteous judgment in the next life anyway; what they need is mercy (hasn’t God showed each of us more mercy than we deserve?). They do need to be warned, but that should be done as compassionately as possible. Having said that, let me also point out that some people are going to need their cages rattled before they will be ready to accept a warning. Sometimes the most compassionate thing to do is to let compassion go by the wayside and let the sinner have it with both barrels, but, that’s the exception rather than the rule. We seriously need to pray that God would allow us, and help us, to see people the way that He sees them.