Does God really create evil?
"Evil" here is from the Hebrew ra'. This Hebrew word is never translated "sin," but always as something bad, unpleasant, or objectionable. Therefore this word describes not sin, but the results of sin.
Both the Hebrew and the Greek words for sin in the Bible carry the idea of missing the mark. God has an ideal for His universe, in which order prevails. This ideal is ex pressed in the Ten Commandments, which are a revelation of His character. The orderliness of God's uni verse is not that produced by automatons ; it is based on freely willed obedience. If all His creatures had chosen to be obedient, peace and harmony—the antithesis of Isaiah 45:7—would now prevail. However, since some did not so choose, the unpleasant effects of sin are the result.
God is responsible for evil to the extent that He set up the conditions of cause and effect. Man's aim at God's goal of perfection and order has been thrown off by sin and selfishness, yet God keeps His target before us in the Ten Commandments. The closer we come to hitting that target, the more peace we enjoy; the more we miss it, the more evil we suffer. Thus God can say that He creates the possibility for both peace and evil, as an inescapable consequence of a universe built on principles of order and causality.
Who, then, is responsible for the introduction of sin into the universe? God did not create it, for He is the essence of perfection and peace and light. Notice that shalom (peace) is the antithesis of evil in Isaiah 45:7. Yet the quality of love, also one of God's attributes, led Him to make His creatures capable of both love and hate, of trust and distrust. Only beings with the potential for both love and hate can truly love.
Since God is love, all that He does or creates is contained in the circle of His love. This is where He planned for us to be and to exist, for we are made in His image. To leave that circle is sin. Scripture often represents God's law as a wall or hedge of protection for His people against all evil.* In this wall are ten gates. When one leaves the circle of God's love, he must open one of these gates, for sin is the transgression (Latin: trans-across, gradi-to step), or stepping across, of God's law. Christ never stepped across. He abode in the circle of God's love (John 15:10). To unite again with God in harmony with His plan, or "mark," for us, we must come back in and close the gate behind us. Lucifer stepped across and went out into outer darkness, where he entices us to come out with him, but God, by His love, seeks to draw us back where we belong (Jer. 31:3). We were made in God's image, and He longs to restore that image.
So God is perfection by His very nature. With Him is peace. Outside of Him is evil caused by passing over the wall, separating ourselves from God and all good.
We do not know how long peace prevailed in heaven before Lucifer activated his potential for distrust and hate. Neither do we know how long Adam and Eve lived on this earth before they chose to distrust God and dispute His sovereignty. They enjoyed God's peace until they exercised their option to step from light to darkness, out of the circle of love and peace to the "outer darkness" of evil.
To choose sin, which God did not create, always leads to evil; that is, to that which is unpleasant, objectionable, and malignant, which law of cause and effect God did create. In that sense, it can be said, God creates evil, but only in that sense.
Our thoughts decide our character. For this reason we must guard carefully the avenues to the soul, which are the five senses. Our character is determined by what we think. This law of the mind was created by God.
Though we may have activated our option to sin, God has not closed off the possibility of our return. He helps us, by His Spirit, to steady our aim. By His grace we daily over come sin, reenter the circle of His love, and experience the peace that He created and intended for us.
