The disastrous results of the original rebellion of our first parents is incalculable. Their sin resulted in the moral and spiritual contamination of themselves and all their descendants. Disease and death are the predictable and inevitable realities every generation since the first have suffered. The question almost automatically surfaces: If God knows everything, then He knew the path Adam and Eve would take as well as the horrific consequences that would ensue…a corrupt humanity, resulting in the death of every person of every generation following. Add to their deaths, the mayhem and tragedies of war, famine and disease being the vehicles resulting in those deaths.
Knowing all these things were coming and would be the byproducts of sin passed on from Adam and Eve to every successive generation, why did God make them as He did? And further, why did God ever create Lucifer, whose own fall and disobedience to His Maker resulted in his morphing into Satan, the archenemy of God and man? God, in His omniscience had to have known the misery and chaos Satan would cause, had to have known Satan would be successful in tempting Adam and Eve to follow his path of rebellion against God and His authority. So, why did God even create Lucifer or Adam and Eve as He did? Or, did God not know? But, God knows all. It’s part of His job description. Omniscience requires it. God’s infinitude demands it. There cannot be an ignorant deity behind it all.
So, back to the question of why. Let’s consider God’s alternative. Number one, He could have created angels and man without the ability to rebel and disobey. He could have made them robotic, like a automatons that had no will of their own. Or, secondly, He could create both man and angels with a personal volition, each being given a will to exercise in obedience or disobedience.
With that volitional capacity, there exists the potential for behavior that is beautiful and gratifying but also behavior that is ugly and devastating. Moral beings cannot, in this world, have the ability to engage in one but not the other. Giving created beings the moral freedom to choose a right thing from a wrong thing means there is a true risk as to what the choice will be. While there may be other options that our infinite God had, these appear to us mere mortals to be the only ones. Create beings without wills or ability to do anything but the Creator’s will or create them with a true will of their own and leaving the choices they make to be their own decisions. It’s ironic that man wants a will of his own, freedom to make his own decisions. Yet, he often resents God for having it.
CC 09-01
Published by