S1|E3: Free Will and Badness

[Bell] Follow your dream, they say. But most often our dreams lead to nothing more than frustration and failure. Look out for number one, they say. But you can have it all and still be miserable. Get over it, they say. But pain suppressed is still pain. Be yourself, they say. But sometimes it's hard to know who you really are. We all want answers to the ultimate questions. Can they really be found? I'm Gabriel Miller and this is the purpose of your life. [Music] Even though we may be able to see the benefits of pain, even though we may be able to see growth from pain, that doesn't mean the pain itself is good. And especially those who have had more pain than gain in life have every right to ask, why couldn't we have had a world without pain? The answer may surprise you. At one time, we did. According to Jewish and Christian beliefs, when God created our world, it was pain-free. In fact, it was evil-free. He called it good. What happened? Through man's disobedience to God, evil entered the world and pain had to follow. So then why did God allow evil? Why do we have to live in a world with pain? It's an age-old question and the one that traps more non-fulfillers of purpose than any other. If God is good, why does evil exist? Well, now we have to put some more meat on the bones when it comes to our discussion of God. So far, we've just kind of thrown out a general notion of a higher power somewhere out there. But now we're really narrowing this down to the God of the Bible. The Jewish and Christian God is the main subject of our story. That story is told in the Bible and the part of the account we need to hear now comes from the beginning. The Genesis. Genesis opens by telling us that God created time, space, and matter. He created the universe, including our world and everything in it. He made the land and the sea, plant life, and animal life. And he wrapped it all up by creating humanity, beginning with the first couple, Adam and Eve. It doesn't say anything about the creation of angels, but from other portions of the Bible, we find that God also created angelic beings and heavenly hosts. We also learned that a third of these creatures, who apparently were created with free will, chose to rebel against God. We now call these fallen angels demons and their prince, the devil or Satan. God planted a garden in Eden, and he placed Adam and Eve there. He put two special trees in the garden, the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he instructed Adam that they were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He also clearly indicated the consequence for disobedience. You will die. We assume from the story that Adam was responsible for passing this crucial information on to Eve, and we are told that she did indeed get the memo. So the plot is set. God gives the first couple one and only one boundary. They had one line they were not allowed to cross. Obedience to God in that moment amounted to one thing. Don't eat fruit from this particular tree. Up until that point the world was good. A third of the angels were bad, but their realm was not of this world. They had no dominion on planet earth, and they could not receive dominion here without the willful disobedience of man to seed it to them. So the world was good. Pain-free. Disobedience-free. Sin-free. Well, we've just come across a new word, haven't we? Sin. Sin is anything that takes us out of the will of God. Sin is anything that opposes God. Sin is what removes our ability to commune with God. So there's no sin in the world in the beginning, and there's no pain or death either. The world is good, but it doesn't stay that way for long. Tempted by a Satan-possessed creature called the serpent, Adam and Eve do eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they disobey, they sin. And as God warned them, sin necessarily led to death. Not only death, but also a world of pain. We refer to this as the fall and the curse. The fall of man led to the curse of man's world. Okay, so the question is, why did God make the world in such a way that evil or disobedience or sin was a potentiality? Why didn't he set up the garden with no rules so there would be no way of breaking them? No possibility of sin? Or why didn't he just create people with no free will who would just sort of robotically do what he said? The answer is love. God is love. God created out of love, and he created humans as beings capable of love. Well, love isn't really love if it's forced, if it's not willfully given. Robots can't love. To love is to choose to honor and cherish and sacrifice for another. It is born out of one's own volition. I could choose to not love you, but instead I choose to love you. If there's no choice, it's not really love. And think about God as the recipient of this love. God created us because he wanted us to experience the awesomeness that is himself. But he also created us because he wanted beings who would freely choose to return the love he bestowed on them. He already made rocks and plants and animals. He had plenty of other creations that brought him various levels of glory. He created us because he wanted lovers. Well, there was a trade-off. By making a world where his creations had free choice, he opened that world up to the possibility that people would choose disobedience, pain, and death. But it was worth it to him. Did he create evil? No. Did he want evil? Of course not. Did he know evil would result? Absolutely. Did he already have a plan in place to clean up the mess? Yes. Could he have done anything to change the outcome? No. Not without creating robots instead of humans. Are you saying there are things God can't do? Yes. We say God is all-powerful, but there are definitely things God can't do. He can't do anything that is contrary to his nature. So he can't lie because he is truth. He can't grow because he is infinite. He can't change because he is immutable. He can't learn because he is all-knowing. going. In a world where man has the free will to choose disobedience, there's nothing God could have done to stop evil, pain, and death from gaining access. That's why we live in a world with pain. It's the price we pay for our power of choice. You get to choose God or evil. So do I. And at some point in every one of our lives we've taken sides against God. Pain isn't God's fault. It's ours. Well, the story doesn't end there. It's not like God is helpless when it comes to the problem of pain and death. Creating free will beings was more important to God than was eliminating all possibility of evil. And the result was that pain and death entered our world. But that doesn't mean God has no plan to solve the problem. In fact, the problem of pain and death has been solved, is being solved, and will ultimately be solved. We're talking about purpose. The concept of free will adds a new layer. The fact that free will is an innate human characteristic means you have the power to choose how your life will be lived, whether it takes you toward your purpose or away from it. You don't need money or power or status to move toward your purpose. You don't need a specific job or a particular educational background or a special network. But there is one thing you do need in order to be capable of choosing the right course of action. Because there's one big problem that still stands in your way. You're not good. No offense. I'm not pointing a finger. I'm not good either. No one is. No one is righteous. No not one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. These words were recorded twice in the Bible, first in the Old Testament, and later quoted by the Apostle Paul in the third chapter of Romans. This biblical claim counters every other major religion and flies in the face of conventional wisdom. The world says humanity is basically good. The Bible says humanity is fundamentally bad. Paul goes on to explain the mechanism that caused this universal badness. Through one man sin entered the world he writes in Romans 1512 and death through sin thus death spread to all men because all sinned. A little later he indicates that we were made sinners by this one man's disobedience. This means that not only has everyone personally committed sin at some point and on some level, but because of the original sin of Adam, we were all born sinners. We are not only sinners by our actions, we are also sinners by our very nature. Adam passed down to us the sin gene, so to speak, a spiritual genetic marker. We are all bad. We are all unrighteous. And the wrath of God is directed toward all unrighteousness according to Romans 118. Because of our individual sins and our sin nature, God's wrath is locked and loaded and aimed at every one of us. Because sin requires death. Whatever is opposed to God cannot continue to live unchecked in perpetuity. Well, this is what we call in Christian circles the bad news. Feeling our purpose entails in part, living a life pleasing to God and none of us has an innate desire to do that. So even now as you are feeling drawn to fulfill your purpose by running to God and submitting to Him in your brokenness, you need to understand that it is He Himself who has drawn you because you were incapable of drawing yourself. I hope this begins to give you a glimpse of the goodness of God. It was while we were yet sinners, Paul writes in Romans 5, while we were in fact the enemies of God that He set in motion a master plan to rescue us at unimaginable cost to Himself. So your bad, I'm bad, we're all bad. And there's nothing we can do to help ourselves. But God has made a way for us to become good and to take the first real step toward fulfilling our purpose. This is what we call the good news. Let's talk about that next time. The purpose of your life is written and produced by Gabriel Miller. Cover art is by Sam Petty. Music and sound design by Gabriel Miller. Additional music in this episode by Edvard Greg and me, Samantha Miller. The podcast is mastered by McVable Mastery. The purpose of your life is a production of all people's ministries. Thank you for listening. Thank you.