Did God Create Evil? Isaiah 45-7 Commentary by Mary Katherine May



Mary Katherine May

Did God Create Evil? 

a commentary by Mary Katherine May

 

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace,

and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. 

Isaiah 45:7 (KJV) 

 

Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty. 

~John Huston Finley

In the beginning man (Adam, Eve), knew only God, and because they knew only God they were innocent of all that is not good.  To us in the 21^st century, with the daily news giving the latest display of evil and sin around the world and in our own backyards, we may wonder if values like trust, honesty, and pure motives even exist anymore within the human race.

When the times seems overwhelming, you may want to step back as I do, taking time to place myself squarely in the center of the source of all goodness, the One whom we should know and trust more than anyone or anything in the world, and that is in the presence of God.

Please let me clarify, for there is no escaping from God because God is everywhere.  We may trust only a few people or even have become so brutalized by the world as to trust no one, yet the One who is worthy of our trust and always with us is the one before whom we build barriers—between us and God—barriers that instead of offering protection for ourselves actually do us more harm by blocking God who in his true goodness comforts and heals.  Trusting God, believing with unwavering faith, assures even in the worst of times the knowledge that though perhaps not at the moment but in the end all will be well.

Cast your cares upon the Lord and He will sustain you….Ps. 55:2

He watching Israel slumbers not nor sleeps…Ps. 121:4

Can we in the year 2013 comprehend how it would be to know only good, to live untouched by evil?  What it would we be like if we only related with people who could be trusted without fail, were always honest, who never had ulterior motives, who were unwaveringly faithful and loyal?  If you are like me you long for the day when this will be true, when Christ returns and the world is reborn for eternity, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  How beautiful it is to think on this.  The thought removes the heaviness of living in a broken world.  Its flavor is more delicious than any nourishing food.

The ability to do evil existed before the Creation. In Luke 10:18 Jesus relates that he saw Satan fall as lightning from the sky, which was before God created all that we know. Evil is the attempt to make one’s self as God.  1John 4:8 tells us that God is love. Evil is the absence of love.  Evil is the absence of God. 

Why were Adam and Eve given the choice of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? For by God telling them not to eat of it certainly meant there was a choice.  Why do we have the ability to choose good or evil?  We don’t know for certain why, and mature faith allows us to accept that for which there is no empirical evidence.  God allowed humans the ability to reason, to think, to act independently of each other, to have more than animal instinct as our guide.  Satan in the form of a serpent on that fateful day when Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened to knowing about both good and evil in the moment they ate the fruit of the one tree from which they were told to abstain demonstrates clearly why Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount taught that even the thought of doing wrong is sin.  Sin begins with a suggestion, suggestion leads to thought, and thought leads to action.  Eve succumbed because she didn’t from the start reject the suggestion. Christ experienced this in the wilderness, and used the Scriptures as his tool against Satan’s suggestions.

Sometimes what we want is not what is best for us.  Sometimes we want to know what we are better off not knowing. When doubt about doing something is drawing us like magnetic gravity in the opposite wrong direction of our faith in God to know what is best is when we find ourselves in our own Garden of Eden and in direct contact with the serpent.

God is all knowing, and thus God knows what is good and what is the absence of good, which is not of God.  God himself cannot be both good and not good for one would negate the other. 

Yet God says, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7). What are we to think?  Out of context we could think that God is the author of evil, but that would be incorrect.

If God created evil for the sake of itself He wouldn’t create good out of it as St. Paul tells us in Romans 8: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Using that which is evil for good does not imply that the Author of Good created evil for its own sake.  The Genesis creation story gives no account of anything created other than that which God saw as good.  What God had and has always had is the knowledge of both good and evil, to which the first man and woman made the decision to have also. They were given everything they needed and yet they wanted more.

Though it is good to be aware of how evil presents itself in the world, there is also a reason that we are to remove ourselves from evil surroundings.  There is a reason to keep company with our brothers and sisters in Christ, to read and absorb God’s inspired word, to hear inspirational messages that strengthen our will to be Godly people every moment of our lives.  Because of sin we have knowledge of such things, yet we are not to participate in them.

Do any of us think that if we had been in the Garden of Eden and it was us the serpent invited to eat from the tree that we would have done differently than Adam and Eve?  Would we have had complete faith and trust in God to know what is best for us?  I am not so sure that I would have done any different unless in Eden I had been a tiger, a sloth, an albatross or a zebra who hadn’t been given the ability to think with reason in the same manner as humans.  The proof of how any of us would have acted is found in our actions today, when Satan comes in many forms offering to us that which is not beneficial to a Godly life.

When temptations come your way—and they will, when others think poorly of you when you know you have done what is right and Godly—and they will, when you want to be accepted and thought highly of by others who are more of the world than of God, please remember that just as in the moment when as the serpent came to Eve in Eden offering a choice between staying in God who knows what is best and choosing what will make us feel independently powerful and good is a choice that may last for an eternity.

 

Amen.

Rick and Mary Katherine May operate the internet webstore QualityMusicandBooks.com.

Separation of Church and State for Christians a response to Ancient Faith Today Faith Informing Politics

Separation of Church and State for Christians

Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com

a response to Ancient Faith Today: Faith Informing Politics

The highly charged current American attitudes in relation to national policies among Christians is at least as diverse as the number of Christian doctrines espoused throughout the land.  Though many Christians feel that they are in the limelight of the debate, other religions do agree with biblical teaching on particularly popular issues.

Religion defined as a belief system leaves no one out of the fray when speaking about how separation of church and state, or perhaps instead it should be phrased separation of religion and state, is interpreted in the 21^st century, and thus an ideology that particular groups police for abuse and champion as the utopia they long for is really not an issue at all.  What the point to be debated actually encompasses is how we the people and our elected legislators carry out policy within the framework of such a huge number of diverse theological bases, and how policy compromise may be executed without anyone being placed in the position of denying their core beliefs.

Christians themselves are not in agreement even when determining what it means to be a Christian, and thus it is foolish for any Christian to have the expectation of  a united front in relation to government, voting criteria, and support of elected officials.  I would like to say that Christians are unique among the people in committed faith groups, but there are those believers who do not follow Christ’s biblical teaching of turning the other cheek.  We might then claim that those who resort to violence and pushing other people’s stress points until they react are not Christian at all—yet, are there not those in other groups who would withhold relationship for the same reason?

I don’t have the definitive answer.  In response to the thought provoking discussion I listened to through Ancient Faith Radio hosted by Keith Allen about legislating Christian agenda in our diverse American society between two men who were described as one being a conservative and the other a liberal, I can understand though not necessarily agree with both of them. 

It is perhaps grand and noble to claim generous benevolence toward those with whom we disagree as AmirAzarvan (political science lecturer at Kennesaw State University) did in this discussion—and yes, of course, without being in a police state we cannot possibly govern at least what others publically espouse to be their belief system—yet, when and if we cast our vote based upon our Christian faith and choose against another group’s political agenda, our claim of neutrality philosophically and essentially becomes a lie.  For this reason Azarvan’s concept is in the Christian framework of having love and respect for all is correct, but as he presents it is poorly stated.

On the conservative side of the discussion, William Hinkle (Minority Whip, Washington State) stated that he votes for the candidate that most agrees with his Christian beliefs, and this is perhaps at times the best any of us can do.  The only other option in some cases is to not vote, which then leads to the question of whether non-voters have a right to vocalize any public opinion since they did not have a part in the decision.  In the U.S.A., however, even the right to vote is a free choice while it is required in other democratic countries. 

Regarding the vote, is it now time in America to have a conscientious objector status?  For the Christian, whatever kind of Christian the believer claims to be, the decision of how to vote should be a faith-based decision.  Having respect and love for all people includes casting votes for what we believe is the one true way.  When we say that God is love, then it also follows that to love anyone is through our love for God.  True, I cannot be anyone else’s conscience but my own.  It grieves me when my love for family, friends and others is in conflict with what  conscience is telling me with firm conviction--that I cannot vote for sin despite what name might be hurled at me or how I will be branded by society.  

In conclusion, I am reminded of two Bible verses relevant to this topic. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15 KJV) and For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10 KJV)


 

Day of Atonement Yom Kippur A Word Study for Christians

Day of Atonement: Yom Kippur
A Word Study for Christians

To download this study in Adobe PDF format CLICK HERE.

Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement: A Word Study for Christians
By Mary Katherine May (2 September 2010)

In Leviticus 23: 26-28 God explains to the Israelites the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the LORD your God. Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for God’s chosen people, occurs on the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, ascribed as the day that Moses brought the second set of tablets with the Ten Commandments to God’s chosen people at Mount Sinai …because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the LORD, you will be clean from all your sins. (Leviticus 16:30).

What does the Day of Atonement mean for the Jews? How does it fit into God’s continuing plan for Christians? A better understanding will come to light by looking at how the Hebrew root word translated as “atonement” is used in the Torah--what Christians call the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Old Testament. We will see how this adds to our understanding of what the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ means for Christians, as well as see how this perspective adds to the view of the Holy Bible, from beginning to end as one unfolding of God’s plan for man created in His image.

Yom Kippur
A good place to begin is with kippur, as in Yom Kippur. The holiest day of the Jewish year is spent fasting, in prayer and at the synagogue, confessing sin and asking forgiveness. The prayer of confession for Yom Kippur is named Al Chet, a long prayer that is repeated at least eight times throughout the day. Al Chet is prayed using the corporate “we,” take seriously the responsibility that all share in the well being of the group.

Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins explains, When an individual Jew celebrates, the whole community rejoices; when he weeps, the community shares his grief with him; when he sins, the whole community shares his sin. The group recitation of the confessional is intended to remind us that the failure of the individual is very often the result of the shortcomings of the society or community in which one lives.

Written Hebrew language contains no vowels, and thus kippur is spelled K.P.R. Rabbi Menachem Leibtag offers excellent insight on how K.P.R. is used in the Pentateuch. He explains how derivatives of K.P.R. all point to how protection is provided by the God who loves His people.

• Protective Coating: (Genesis 6:14) In this case, k.p.r. in the Torah refers to the coating (kofer=pitch) that God told Noah to use on the Ark to protect the gopher wood. Here not only the coating (noun) but also the coating procedure (verb) stem for the same root word (k.p.r.)
• Protection Gift: (Genesis 32:20) After a long separation, twin brothers Jacob and Esau are their way to meeting again. Jacob, fearing for his family and for himself due to the circumstances of their parting, sends a gift to appease or pacify Esau, hoping that it will keep his brother from attacking him. Appease (pacify) is translated from k.p.r. (kaphar).
• Ground Covering: (Exodus 16:14) Here k.p.r. is rendered kefore, which the NIV translates as frost on the ground. In essence, the manna that fell so profusely covering like frost on the ground was protection for life, because this is what sustained the Israelites for forty years in the wilderness.
• Protection Money: (Exodus 21:30, Numbers 35:31) Again, kopher (k.p.r.) used once to instruct when money may be accepted in lieu of punishment and when money may not be taken as an atonement for a crime.
• Protective Covering: (Ex. 25:21, Genesis 3:24, Exodus 26:31) Rabbi Leibtag explains the difference between a simple lid for the holy ark in which the Ten Commandments tables were placed, and God’s directions for creating its cover. Kaporet (k.p.r.) is translated in the NIV Bible as cover on top of the ark, yet perhaps the meaning is clearer in the KJV Bible, where the same is translated into English as mercy seat.

Further evidence of the kaporet’s protective nature are the cherubim placed at the two ends of the ark’s covering by directing readers to where keruv (cherubim) are found guarding the way to the Tree of Life.

Kippurim, Kapara
• Sprinkling of blood from the offering as
protection
• Sprinkling of blood as atonement for sin
• A Preparation,
readiness for holiness in the presence of God

Exodus 29. Thus far we have seen how the Hebrew K.P.R. is used to describe God’s protection for the ark that Noah built, people, and for a location: the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. We now turn to a directional rendering, kippurim. God gives instruction for consecrating the priests and rituals for purifying (atoning) from sin, which then sanctifies (makes holy) the Tent of Meeting in preparation for the Lord to dwell among the Israelites. Please notice the order of what happens: > consecration (make holy, prepare, be set apart) > atonement (K.P.R.: cover over, purge, reconcile) > (a) They will know that I am the LORD their GOD (Proverbs 3: 13, 18) and (b) that I might dwell among them (settle down, abide, reside).

Exodus 32. After Moses received the Tablets at Mount Sinai, most of us will recall what happened next—he found the Israelites worshipping a statue—a calf made of gold. Moses went to God, asking that the descendents of Abraham, those who He had promised to make into a great nation, that they not be destroyed for their disobedience. God allowed them to live, though their names were blotted out of the Book of Life. Through Moses’ pleading God granted protection from His wrath, though their sin was not forgotten.

At-one-ment. The reconciliation between God and man brought about by Jesus’ willingness to go to the cross as our substitute is sometimes referred to by recreating the word atonement into at-one-ment, and rightly so, for we are no longer separated from God by sin—but there is more. We are washed in the blood and made whiter than snow--yet it is also protective covering that sustains, gives new life, and keeps us separated from sin. It is the mercy seat, a place of rest, a shelter from the storms of life.

Matthew 25:40b, Matthew 6:10-14. For the Jewish people, the covering of sin (protection from sin) is not the same as forgiveness of sin, but rather two distinct acts. It also must be noted that forgiveness on Yom Kippur accounts only for one year’s sin.

For the Christian, forgiveness implies a freedom, a release, and the ability to move ahead knowing that living within the life of Christ will bring ultimate victory. The Mount Sinai story demonstrates the difference—yes, the sins were covered, but not forgotten. There is forgiveness for sins against God on Yom Kippur. There is the possibility of redemption but only by man’s ability to not sin.

For Christians there is no difference, as any sin is a sin not only against man but also against God. Christ said, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” and “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” (Matthew 25: 41b, 45 b.)

Even so, through Christ there is complete redemption, in Christ there is freedom from sin. In Christ all of the protective K.P.R. is found. In Christ the final kippurim has taken place—the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross is our protective covering and redemption. We now have the ability through the turning over of our will to God to once and for all time grow away from sin, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13) And by Christ’s blood we may claim right now a place with Him in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 2:6) Amen.

Mary and husband, Rick May, own Quality Music and Books, an online Christian music, book and gift webstore, based in Minneapolis, MN.

The Christian in Complete Faith That GOD Is Always Doing His Will

March 22, 2010
A Commentary

Today much of the talk on Christian talk radio, particularly of the Protestant variety, has been on the passing of the health care bill so important to President Obama. Without a doubt healthcare reform is necessary. That the business of health care and our United States government created this problem from the start is also in my opinion absolutely true.

It is not by the initiation of any one president or party. It is the imbalance of who-gets-what-and-how-much. When CEOs of insurance companies are awarded over $100 million dollars upon leaving their post, whether for retirement or other reasons, while denying the availability to have treatment to others is a terrible injustice. That our elected legislators would rather call each other names rather than sit down in good faith and work together for the good of those who elected them is in essence stealing taxpayer money.

Even more out of alignment is the attitude of many Christians, me included at times. God created the world and God created life. God is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Do Christians truly believe that God is in control, or is it true only when circumstances are what we want?

Today I have heard many comments from Christians that sound no different than those who are “of the world.” It would be better for all to commit to a time of prayer every day. Do we say that God is in control, that all works to glorify God, that God will use the bad for His good, but not believe it? One radio spokesperson said today that we “place our hope in the empty tomb” and “not in the government.” That is correct. Yet, does God’s world stop at the borders of Washington D.C.?

We strive to live and do God’s will only when we are not living within God’s will. We supposedly leave all else behind—father, mother, familiar comforts when necessary. What a wonderful demonstration of faith this could have been but for all of the sore loser comments and actions. And yes—it turned into a contest by the manner of opposition.

Becoming that which we abhor and find wrong in human morality and character is an action of great pride. There are no winners, however, because this polarity and lack of willingness to work together makes for no winners—and Christians, humbled by the immense goodness of our loving God, should not be ever the one on top of the heap.

Mary Katherine May
Quality Music and Books