Is Evil a Real Thing?
People use the word "evil" a lot.
At the same time, we live in a culture and time when the teaching of accidental spontaneous origin of the universe and everything in it is the "scientifically" accepted norm and sadly taught to unsuspecting young minds in schools across North America. I put scientifically in quotation marks because there is nothing scientific or logical about the idea that nothing exploded and became everything and that life formed on its own by accident.
Torturing, raping, bullying others, adultery, child abuse and neglect, cheating, lying, stealing, violence, war, hurting other people...come on, we know evil is real.
It's not just a feeling we imagined up randomly from nothingness.
If evil is a real thing, its counterpart "good" must also be a real thing, for without good, we wouldn't be able to grasp evil either. There would be nothing to compare it to. Even just by the undeniable reality of the nature of good and evil, we know there is a lawmaker. The laws are written in our consciences. We know when we are doing wrong.
When we look inside ourselves, if we are honest, we see that gross evil lurking in there, behind every thought, word, and action. We are all evil. Sin pollutes us, makes us diseased and gives us a reason to feel shame.
Sin separates us from the God who made us.
The holy Creator God can't stand the sight of sin. His judgement over it is just and right. It deserves to be punished. A murderer deserves to die. A torturer deserves to suffer. We have in our nature a kind of "eye for an eye" mentality where we know that if we dish it out, we deserve to have it heaped back on our own heads. Some call this feeling "karma", which is the teaching that teaches that if you do bad things to others, bad things will happen to you too.
So when you realize that you do bad things, that you think bad things, that you want bad things, that you've hurt others, that you've been dishonest and unfair, that you've been selfish...what do you do?
Despair? Suicide? Keep doing it and pretend you're fine? Live in denial and pretend to be a good person?
Judgement is inevitable. Whether it will be when the Lord of Creation returns to judge us on the last day, or whether our body's demise takes us there, we will be judged.
If I were standing on my own record, it would be the most terrifying moment of my existence. I would have a reason to collapse and try to sink through the ground.
But the God who made us didn't leave us orphans. He didn't leave us without hope.
God is a God of love and mercy, too. Perfect, holy judgement and love and mercy intersect on the cross.
Jesus, God's Son, became sin for us, bore the wrath of God for us, took our punishment for us, so that when we stand to be judged by the Creator who knows the thoughts of men, we don't need to stand on our own record of behavior. We are gifted the holy, perfect record of Jesus Christ! We are seen as holy! We are given holiness in exchange for our filthy rags of sin!
What love! What grace! What mercy God has shown on us, that we may be called the children of God!
Believing in God's promise, His word that this is so, is the definition of faith, of saving faith that makes us the recipients of God's promise of eternal life.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. 1 Colossians 2:13-15
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! 1 John 3:1
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