The origin of evil

Question:

If God created everything, why did He create evil?

Response:

There’s a very well known set of questions about how we create cold and darkness and, of course, the reality is that, technically, we can create neither for we have no way of measuring the concepts of darkness and cold. In technical terms, what we call “cold” is simply the absence of heat – we can create and measure heat and we can remove heat – the more heat that is removed, the more “cold” we appear to have, but we can only measure heat, the product of the removal of heat is that which we call “cold”; cold doesn’t actually exist, it’s simply an absence of heat, so when all perceptible heat is removed, we reach an absolute zero which is very “cold”. However, it is heat that is created and removed, it’s not “cold” that is created. The same principle applies to the concept of “dark”, we measure light, not darkness, the product of the absence of light is that which we call “dark”.

Likewise, God is good - He is all that is good in our world ...... love, peace, kindness, joy, gentleness, forgiveness, trust, mercy etc. Thus God never creates evil, He only creates good; but when His goodness is removed, the product that remains what we call “evil”.

Thus God is defined as the source and creator of good, but not of evil. Did God create the devil – the epitome of evil? God created Lucifer as a good being, an angel of immense wisdom and beauty, He created him to do and be good, but Lucifer chose to disobey God’s good and perfect law and will and, as God was removed from his thoughts and actions, what was left in Lucifer was what we call “evil”.

God did NOT create evil, only good; it was only Lucifer’s (Satan) action of rejecting God’s good that introduced or “created” evil.