“Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty” – this wise quotation of Ann Rice, a famous modern author, has a slightly thick meaning. The problem of evil is one of the most controversial subjects in Christian morality. Sound argues, and discussions on this point even led to –of theodicy, the new branch of theology. Theodicy tries to explain the existence of evil in our world and the reason why God created it. Numerous theories are attempting to find answers to this question.
One of the most popular approaches is a free-will defense. This theodicy explains the nature of evil as originated from the nature of human beings themselves created so by God. The good God made human beings alike himself, meaning that humans are perfect. However, to become the whole creatures human beings had to possess free will to have a choice and to be able to make it.
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Thus, for contrasting the goodness God allowed the evil to exist. As a result, human beings are free to decide and to choose thoughts, words, and deeds, and finally, too many people appear to choose evil instead of good while making their choices. The main weakness of this theory is that it only can explain the existence of so-called moral evil that comes from human beings and their choices. This theodicy is unable to justify natural evils, like an earthquake, or personal disasters, like blindness or paralysis.
The other popular theodicy turns to the logical necessity of evil. The defense of evil as a logically necessary phenomenon has rather reasonable thought. According to this theory, God initially did not mean to create evil at all. Evil appeared independently due to actions of human beings. However, some evils should not be considered as evils, like pain (while giving life to a child for instance). Such type is called first order evil, meaning the primary and most simple evil for a human. This kind of evil often leads to good. Thus, the phenomenon that may be viewed as evil by a human being may appear not to be so. Very frequently humans err and suffer from illusions. They may not tell good from bad, hence the problems of evil. This approach is tightly connected with a free-will theory of evil and even originates from it.
In general, the problem of evil has very deep roots and has its history in the Christian world.
Indeed, sometimes it is very difficult to understand how could the omnipotent God allow evil to present among human beings. Someone thinks that evil itself is an evidence of absence of God as for God could not have let evil exist at all. On the other hand, God wanted his children to be not the foolish robots acting only good, but the clever independent creatures with a fair right of choice.
Therefore, free will of human beings has a very serious essence. And each of us may choose to act both good and evil. It is our own choice that demands a great responsibility, and nobody can do it for us. Not even God.
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