Is God fatalistic; Where does evil come from?
In Him (Christ) we
have obtained an inheritance, having predestined according to the purpose of
Him who works all things according to the counsel of his own
will.
-Ephesians
1:11
Isaiah 46:10 says this of God, “declaring the end from the beginning
(emphasis added), and from the ancient times things not yet done, saying my
counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose”.
The despot Gentile King of
Babylon Nebuchadnezzar declared to the known world at that time regarding the sovereignty of God, “all the
inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing, and He does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the
inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His hand or say to Him, “What have
you done?” (Daniel 4:35).
Regarding the judgment on the
nation of Assyria Isaiah says this, “The
Lord of hosts has sworn as I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have
purposed, so shall it stand” (Isaiah 14:24).
The lot is cast into the lap, but
it’s very decision is from the Lord (Proverbs 16:33).
Proverbs 21:1 says, “The King’s heart
is in the hand of the Lord, and as the rivers of water, He turns it whichever way
He chooses”.
These verses clearly tell us is
that God is a determinative being. He does not leave anything to “chance” or
“luck”. As a matter of fact, neither of these things exist in God’s economy.
Chance and luck are two phantoms, apparitions, false gods that many worship
when gambling in Las Vegas, or playing the Lotto – scratch offs.
Chance and luck are two non
personal man-made forces that humans hang their mental and emotional hats on to hope for a positive outcome. It’s the
case of the classic song, “Que Sera Sera” – “What ever will be will be”! That
is fatalism or indeterminism.
Those who do not believe in/or
trust in the Lord only have chance and luck to lean on; so in essence they have
nothing, because chance and luck are nothing. Something or someone has to exist
to have causality in the universe and since chance and luck are nothing, they
can cause nothing to occur.
Someone has called God the “Uncaused-Cause”.
What that means is God is eternal, nothing created God because He is self
existent, and that everything that has happened and will happen is by His
divine decree – alone.
So, in answering the question,
“Is God a fatalist?” The answer is an emphatic no!
To be a fatalist God would have
to be a casual impotent observer of the events of life. He would have to be
dependent on “the fates”, or chance
and/or luck. He would have to be at the crap table rolling dice and relying on
non existent forces to determine His outcome. He would not be the direct cause
of whatever comes to pass in this world.
There are plenty of objections to
God being not only in control of all things, but the author of everything that
occurs.
Is Predestination fatalism? If God has predetermined the destiny of all
things, how are my choices really free?
It is a massive
mistake to pair predestination with fatalism. Why? Well, once again fate is a
man-made-ghost; in religious terms idolatry, a false god. Things do not happen
by chance, good or bad luck, or by coincidence. Just because we can not make
sense of so many things that happen in life, does not mean they were not
pre-planned in the mind of God. Of course, this idea of predestination becomes
a thorn in our side when it comes to all the evil that occurs everyday. Humans
look at sick and hungry children in the world and declare it sad, evil and bad
luck. Senseless wars as God not being in control. For if He were in control,
why would He allow or cause such
horrific things to occur? These calamities are why many choose to disbelieve in
God.
So, for most of
the world, it is better for them to resolve in their minds that God exists, but
is not in control of all things; He is just
a casual observer[i], or
that He does not exist at all and everything is left to blind, ignorant chance; the sovereign deity
and object of worship of unregenerate humanity.
Predestination
on the other hand exists because of an antecedent cause; that cause is God
Almighty. Predestination could never exist without God, so certainly predestination
and fatalism could never be related. Fatalism isn’t even dead. It essentially
was never conceived and born except in the minds of sinful men which are
reprobate (Romans 1:28).
What is the
meaning of predestination? Well the prefix “Pre” means before. Destination
means and end of a journey or basically where someone is headed. So, in
relation to God when it comes to all things, God has predetermined them; that
is before time, God determined all things that will ever occur, good and evil.
Okay, I must now
answer the question, “Are our choices free if God has already determined what
is going to happen?” The answer I give may not satisfy the reader, but I will
give I hope a thoughtful reply to a valid, and very difficult question.
The problem with
almost everyone’s definition of free is that we believe we have free choice
without divine intervention or interruption. We want freedom indiscriminately
without responsibility or accountability. The writer of Proverbs says this, “the
heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs
16:9). Simply put, nothing is done in this life without God’s direct or
indirect involvement. We all have the
ability to freely choose, but that does not mean that God can not intervene to
navigate a change in that choice in the direction He wants it to go.
So yet again,
the opponent of this reasoning will say, “since God has determined already what
will be, why does it matter what I do? I can’t change my direction in life
anyway”.
That is not true.
We change our minds daily, yet God being omniscient knew we would change our
minds on a multitude of decisions in our lives. As a matter of fact, God has
weaved the changing of our minds to freely choose another path into his overall
plan. God not only knows what we will actually do, He knows the multitudes of things
we ever think about doing. God knows
all things actual, and possible.
The heart of the
matter is God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. We have to discover how
to keep these two realities in their proper tension. For instance, just because
God has decreed everything that will come to pass does not absolve man the
responsibility to obey God’s commands.
We read in Psalm
41:9 the prediction of Judas betraying the Lord by David nearly 1,000 years
before Christ came to the earth. The fulfillment of this prophecy occurs in
John 13:18 at the Last Supper before Jesus is crucified. Now, the question
would be raised by many, “how could Judas be blamed for betraying Jesus when it
was predetermined by God that he would”?
Judas acted as a
free moral agent. Yet he chose to consciously sin and betray Jesus. God used
Judas as his instrument of betrayal of his Son so that He could be crucified
and die for His people. For that is why Jesus came (Matt 1:21; Luke 19:10).
But, that in no way makes Judas less culpable for his act of treachery. What
Judas did, he did for evil, but God used Judas sin and evil for good (Genesis
50:20).
The result of
Judas betrayal led to Jesus crucifixion
which ultimately led to the salvation of innumerous souls.
Our choices are
always free. By virtue of the fact that we have the ability to choose is
freedom. God has not prohibited our free choice because he has pre-planned all
of destiny. But, what we must understand is that our choices are always subservient to God’s choices, and
sense God already knows all the choices we will ever make, He already before
time circumvented any choice that would deviate from (if possible) His master
plan. Even our willful sins are woven somehow into God’s ultimate will and
purpose. Nothing we do catches God off guard. If that is not free choice, I do
not know what is.
So if God is using evil to accomplish His plans, does that make God the
author of evil?
In the book of
James we read, “Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God
can not be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one. But, each person is
tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire or lust” (James
1:13-14).
God is not the
creator of evil. Evil is not a created thing. It is simply the absence of good
like darkness is the absence of light. God mysteriously ordained evil in His
overall plan. Let me be clear, God
Himself is not evil. Evil denotes wickedness, maliciousness, depravity, et
al. These descriptions encompass people
and the evil that they do. Evil believe
or not serves God. He uses evil in the overall fulfilling of his plan on earth.
God uses evil for good which is antithetical to it’s nature. Remember the words
of Paul in Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,
those who are called according to His purpose”.
Evil is never
good, but evil in the hands of God will serve good purposes because God is
good. God uses the evil men do to fulfill His will. Men choose to commit evil, but God never approves of it.
God grants the allowance of evil, because we are free moral agents, able to
make choices, but that does not mean God has authorized or approved the evil that
men do in any way. He hates it, and for his holiness sake, He must judge it.
We see that
clearly in the Garden of Eden. God commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.[ii]
For God said, in the day you eat of it you will surely die (Genesis 2:16-17).
Adam freely chose to disobey God and
eat. Adam’s choosing to sin was never approved by God that Is why his sin along
with Eve’s were judged and they were expelled from the Garden (Genesis 3:24).
I like to think
of it this way, if evil did not exist, we would be robots; we would be good by
default without the ability to choose between good and evil. We would be
emotionless creatures. There would have been no need to send Jesus Christ to
die for our sins because there would have been no evil. That was never the plan of God.
God decided in eternity past
for sin to pollute the entire human race so that He could show the extreme
wonders of His grace, and glorify himself (Eph 1:7;2:6-7). Yes, that was God’s
plan.
Paul said in Romans 5:20a, “where sin abounded, grace
abounded all the more”. The virtue of good is far greater than the force of
evil.
God is
purposeful, not fatalistic. He created His plan in eternity past and by the
means of His providence[iii]
is fulfilling His plan day by day. God
does not leave things to chance, luck or fate. As mentioned earlier, those are
man-made deities that do not exist. Evil is outside of God, but unfortunately evil
is in man due to original sin. Man inherited an evil nature as a result of that
sinful act by Adam. Where did evil come from? The Bible actually does not tell
us; it’s a mystery. Some would say it came from Lucifer. The Bible says that
iniquity was found in him (i.e. the
devil, Ezekiel 28:15; Isaiah 14:14), not that sin or evil originated from him.
The best definition I can give for evil is the absence of what is good,
righteous and pure. It is the residence of
wickedness living in you. Evil is anti-God. God deals with evil every time
He deals with us so God knowing we would fall, because He ordained the fall
also ordained the evil that we would be burdened with all our lives. Let’s be
honest, the idea that God deals with evil this way naturally disturbs us, but
this is how He has chosen to deal with sinful mankind.
These truths
transcend the mind. Here is our saving grace. Here’s the doxology:
“Oh the depth of the riches both
of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and
unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became
his counselor? Or, who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him
again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things (emphasis added).
To Him be the glory forever. Amen (Romans 11:33-36)!
NOTES
[i] The
idea that God is not in control or author of all things is a heresy known as
Openness Theology.
Meaning God is “open”. God in this view does not know
things until they occur like humans.
This would also mean God is bound by time. This view is
blasphemous because it robs God of one of his
Essential attributes; omniscience. If God is not
omniscient, then he is not God.
[ii]
This Genesis 2 reference lets us know that evil (at least conceptually) existed
due to fact that there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This proves that evil existed
before man was created. God created everything before He created man on day 6.
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