Did God create evil — and if not, where did it come from? Because 'free will' isn't as clean an answer as your pastor made it sound.

• LS

  Liam S.1w ago

  I grew up hearing 'God didn't create evil, evil is just the absence of good' like that somehow settled it. And for years it satisfied me. Then my daughter was diagnosed with a rare disease at age four and I sat in the hospital at 2am thinking — absence of good? This is an absence of good? It felt obscene to call her suffering an *absence* of anything. It felt like a presence. A crushing, deliberate presence. I still believe. But I no longer pretend that answer is sufficient.

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• Q

  Quinn1w ago

  The free will defense works for moral evil. It does not work for natural evil. At all. A child born with a genetic disorder that causes unimaginable suffering chose nothing. A tsunami that buries a village chose nothing. Tell me again how free will explains that. I'll wait.

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• F2

  Feli 211w ago

  The most honest thing my seminary professor ever said was: 'Theodicy is not a problem to be solved, it is a tension to be inhabited.' I've held onto that for twenty years. Every tidy answer — free will, privation, soul-making, divine hiddenness — captures something real and also leaves something out. The book of Job ends without explanation. God shows up in a whirlwind and says essentially: I am vast and you are not. Job calls that sufficient. I've decided to trust that response even when I can't intellectually justify it. That's not intellectual cowardice. That's faith.

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• QS

  Quinn S.1w ago

  nobody explaining how Lucifer became Satan. like, he existed before humans. before the fall. before free will was even a factor in human terms. he was in the PRESENCE OF GOD and still became evil. if perfect environment + perfect knowledge + direct divine fellowship doesn't prevent evil, then what exactly does free will explain?

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• K

  Kofi1w ago

  The Isaiah 45:7 argument is honestly one of the strongest things skeptics throw at us and most Christians just... don't know how to handle it. 'God creates calamity' is right there in the KJV. You can't just swap in 'disaster' and act like the problem goes away. The problem is still that an omnipotent being is responsible for everything that exists, including the conditions that make evil possible. Free will explains human sin. It does not explain a universe where children get brain cancer.

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• T

  Taylor1w ago

  so God gets to define morality and also gets to be exempt from it? that's not theology, that's just power with a halo on it

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• A

  Alex1w ago

  What nobody wants to say out loud: if God is truly omniscient AND omnipotent AND created everything from nothing, then evil existing is ultimately traceable to His decision to create in the first place. He knew. He did it anyway. You can call that 'permission' or 'allowance' but at some point the distinction between 'God caused evil' and 'God created a system guaranteed to produce evil while knowing that in advance' becomes paper thin. I'm not an atheist but I think we owe honest people an honest answer instead of semantic gymnastics.

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• D9

  Diego 921w ago

  what gets me is that we would never let a human off the hook for this. if i design a car knowing it will randomly kill children and i release it anyway, i am culpable. 'i gave the passengers free will to buckle their seatbelts' does not clear me. at some point the all-knowing designer of a universe full of suffering owns some of that. maybe not all of it. but some. and pretending otherwise to protect a doctrine feels dishonest.

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• A2

  Avery 211w ago

  I'll say what the post implied but nobody has fully committed to: if Isaiah 45:7 means what it says in the plain reading of the KJV — 'I create evil' — then the question isn't whether God is the origin of evil, it's whether we have the honesty to say so and still worship Him anyway. That's the actual test. Not whether we can clever our way out of it. Whether we can bow before a God too large for our categories and call it faith rather than surrender.

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• JL

  Jordan L.1w ago

  So God created some people specifically to be 'vessels of dishonor' — meaning He designed their damnation before they drew breath — and you find that HUMBLING? I find it monstrous. And I say that as a Calvinist who has genuinely wrestled with this for fifteen years. Even within Calvinism there's a spectrum and the 'shut up, clay' reading is the laziest and most spiritually damaging end of it.

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• M

  Marco1w ago

  ^^^ This is the argument that actually undoes most free will defenses and I have never heard a satisfying answer to it. Angels had free will apparently. Perfect knowledge. Unmediated access to God. And still one-third rebelled. So the free will defense doesn't even explain the first instance of evil, let alone all of human history.

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• Z

  Zara1w ago

  bro really just said 'ontological category' to a grieving mother lol this is everything wrong with theology in one comment

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• R

  Reese1w ago

  If you genuinely cannot explain where evil came from without either making God responsible or positing something outside God's control — which of those two options should actually change your theology more? I'm asking seriously. Because most people just pick whichever one is less uncomfortable in the moment and then act like they've resolved something.

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• R2

  Reese 211w ago

  Calling something heresy doesn't make it heresy. That word has a specific historical function and using it to end every conversation you're losing is lazy. Open Theists are working FROM Scripture. You may think they're wrong. 'Heresy' is a different claim entirely.

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• OB

  Omar B.1w ago

  I'm genuinely skeptical when someone says 'here is the developed theological position' as if developed theology equals settled truth. Catholic theologians also developed the position that Galileo was wrong. Highly developed theology has been highly wrong before. The humility to say 'we don't fully know' is underrated in these conversations.

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• Z

  Zara1w ago

  Evil as privation (privatio boni) is actually a well-developed philosophical and theological tradition going back to Augustine and Aquinas, not just a bumper sticker. Darkness is not a thing — it is the absence of light. Cold is not a thing — it is the absence of heat. Evil, on this account, is the absence or corruption of good. That doesn't minimize suffering; it gives suffering a proper ontological category. The woman above deserves sympathy, not a dismissal of the framework.

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• M

  Marco1w ago

  You're assuming God's moral obligations are identical to a human car manufacturer's. That's the whole question, isn't it? God is not a product designer operating within a system He didn't create. He IS the ground of being. Moral categories themselves derive from Him. You can't judge the source of morality by morality as if they're on the same level. I'm not saying that makes suffering okay. I'm saying the analogy doesn't hold.

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• A

  Avery1w ago

  Honestly? Open Theism handles this better than classical theism does and most evangelicals won't even admit it exists. If God genuinely limits His own foreknowledge — or genuinely gives creatures real freedom that He doesn't override — then evil is a real byproduct of a real cosmos and not some shadow God secretly controls. The cost is that you give up a certain kind of omniscience. Some people can't live with that. I've made peace with it.

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• D

  Diego1w ago

  Angels don't have free will in the same way humans do — this is actually a developed theological position in Catholic and Reformed thought. Angelic will is more immediate and irrevocable. Their choice was singular and total. That's why there's no redemption offered to demons. It's different from human free will which plays out across time. Not saying this fully closes the loop but 'the angels prove free will is fake' is a category error.

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• RR

  Ravi R.1w ago

  ok but free will DOES explain it. if God makes a world where evil is literally impossible, you have robots. no real love. no real choice. the possibility of evil is the price of genuine freedom. been this way since Augustine. not a new problem, not an unanswered one.

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• CT

  Casey T.1w ago

  Open Theism is heresy and this is not me being mean this is just the historical Christian position. A God who doesn't know the future is not the God of the Bible. Psalm 139. Isaiah 46:10. The whole framework of prophecy assumes complete foreknowledge. You don't get to redefine God's attributes to solve an apologetics problem.

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• AR

  Alex R.1w ago

  Romans 9 covers this. God is the potter. We are the clay. He makes some vessels for honor and some for dishonor. Does the clay question the potter? The fact that we find this offensive says more about human pride than about God's character. Job wanted answers too. God's response was essentially: you cannot comprehend the scope of what I am doing. I find that humbling rather than troubling.

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