by Frank Baugh

Created on: August 10, 2009

We hear from our pulpits how God is a loving God. It is preached to us every Sunday across the land and the air waves. God loves us - he loves the repentant sinner - he loves to save us. That's a good thing. So, though, since there is this good, loving God that is, according to all the authorities, all powerful, omnipotent and omnipresent, how come there is such a thing as evil allowed to exist in God's kingdom? The answer is simple and logical: because God allows for evil to exist - evil serves a useful purpose.

One of the first spiritual lessons that I ever learned was the spiritual concept of school. I never was very fond of school when I was growing up, but I saw the sense to it. It is a good thing for us to learn so we can do useful things like read and, indeed, write, cipher and deduct, learn the lessons of the past and try not to remake the mistakes. I learned the concept early on that the idea of education was to teach and test the application of the teaching. Teaching was not a bad thing always, though it could edge on being boring according to the subject matter, but testing on the other hand was where things got rough. I hated tests and hated the pass-fail system. But, tests are necessary to complete the education process, not only as a means of determining a student's proficiency in the study but as a honing process in the application of what is being taught. It is through trials that we are honed like a knife against a sharpening stone into the proper edge to be a useful tool.

Evil is like that sharpening stone against which we are sharpened to become sharp, useful tools for our God. As The Bible says in James 1:2 (ESV) - Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. James goes further to say in James 1:12 (ESV) - Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

So evil, trials and temptations are not such bad things when they can be viewed as what they may ultimately be: tests to make us into tools useful to God.

Also, consider this: what is good without evil. It is undefined. Evil defines good as much as hard defines soft, as much as dark defines light, as much as wrong defines right. Without pain we could not know pleasure. Without evil we could not know good. One is useless without the other. God designed it this way because it works.

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