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.