why has god permitted wickedness? (page 2)

The details of the answer are multi-faceted. I think they all boil down to showing the difference between Law and Lawlessness. Selfless Love vs Selfish Pride. One builds up and one tears down. One leads to eternity and the other leads to self-destruction...IMO

peacefulpete

Of course there is no terrific mystery if a person comes to terms with the fact that humans are primates with acute self awareness. All the wasted time trying to find some philosphical loophole to pull God out of.

simplesally

Mormonism, I believe, says there is wickedness so we can recognize goodness.

gumby

All the wasted time trying to find some philosphical loophole to pull God out of.

And all that wasted time evolutionist spend trying to pull a damn monkey out of their hats.

Gumby

Lehaa

In order for us to truly have free will, God has to allow the possibility that a person exercising their own free will could commit evil/wickedness. It's not that he likes it, but you can't have one without the other. If we were all only allowed to do good, then in effect we are not free to exercise all of our will completely.

Yes but does any one truly have free will. It has to be controled buy our up bringing or the environment around us.

It's far from simple. I know it's something that i've been thinking about a lot.

logansrun

Check out John Hick's "Evil and the God of Love" for a look at some Christian theodicies.

B.

gitasatsangha

Wickedness is pretty hard to define universally. One person may find using prostitutes to be wicked, while another may find it a perfect arrangement. One person may think that any form of violence is wicked, while a woman using her family's shotgun to save her family from attackers in her home, feels vindicated by an act of violence. A person may find stealing wicked, until their family is starving and they see no alternative.

We have judges handing ten commandments plaques in the same courtrooms where sentences of execution are given out. That shalt not kill.. unless the Jury says its justified.

So what is wicked. Everyone has some idea. Maybe the "and if it harms none, do what thall wilt and that shall be the whole of the law" Crowley thing is the only definition that works, but even that has its problems.

So if people can't figure out some simple rules on what is wicked (bad) and what is not, apparently this all pervading invisible supergod didn't exactly give clear instructions to everyone. If one accepts the JW position, then GOD just gave an enigmatic law code to some obscure people just off the Mediterranian coast, and then scrapped THAT whole definition of Good a thousand years or so later. Meanwhile, everyone else in the world was apparently deprived of knowing waht was wicked, and so they practised wickedness. That bastids!

Most people want to do "good", to lead happy lives and leave some sort of legacy on for their descendants. This sort of throws the whole concept of the Witness god out the door. We are, as a human race, I think, too fixated on this idea of God.

simwitness

I always like the JW response

"He allows satan time to prove that we cannot lead ourselves"

And yet all wickedness is blamed on satan...

And we are either following god or following satan.

Seems like regaurdless of who we follow, we are never "leading ourselves"...

Reality is that "evil is in the eye of the beholder" and civil societys have rules to follow... these rules are made by man, and follow a cultural flow... what once was good (slavery for example) is now evil.

One has to look beyond the extremes to see that good far outwieghs the evil in this world.

I am more concerned about a "God" that permitts sickeness and suffering... allows cancer and disease, even unto the "innocents" of the world.

truthseeker1

The premise is that "god was all powerful, all knowning and all good..." If that were true, then he wouldn't permit evil. So that premise must be false because evil exists. So If there is a god, he is not what the above statement says. He could be all powerful, all knowning, but not really all good. He could be as neutral as switzerland, making cool pocket knives up in heaven.

I gotta get me one of those holy pocket knives.....

why has god permitted wickedness?

Valis

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