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Does God have input in any occurrence of evil? There is a strong belief that evil happens without God’s input. So, it may seem that in the context of Romans 8:28, with God involved, evil things which happen may be part of the scheme of things which lead to things ultimately being good according to God’s Purpose.
Since God is our Creator, we accept as being good anything which God has a hand in doing, even things which, if done by anyone else would be seen as evil without a further understanding of the situation. Take the slaughter of newborn babies in Bethlehem, shortly after the birth of the Baby Jesus. Taken in and of itself, such an event is pure evil, since a) babies are presumed to be innocent, so b) to kill that which God created is evil.
According to Matthew 2:17, the slaughter of the babies is in fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah 31:15 which says, “Thus says the LORD: ‘A voice is the heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’”
From whom do prophesies originate? 2 Peter 1:21 says “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” So, prophesies that are recognized as such in the Bible, originate from God. And the inference of 2 Peter 1:21 is that prophesies are the Will of God. Which leads us back to Bethlehem with two questions...1) Is the slaughter of the firstborn males up to age two in Bethlehem an act of evil, and 2) If so, is such evil the Will of God?
After all, did God not command us to not murder? Since God permits us to reason with Him, as we were permitted to do in Isaiah 1:18, how are we to understand why God would will, as expressed in prophecy, the slaughter of those babies in Bethlehem, when we consider also that God stands for the goodness of His Creation, and for the goodness of his creation to go forth and continue.
What happened in Bethlehem is not like what happened in places like Sodom, written in Genesis 18 and 19, where the Lord, contrary to Genesis 32, saw that not even ten righteous people could be found there, so He proceeded to destroy it as He said He would. There is no mention in the Bible of not even ten righteous people being found in Bethlehem when the babies were slaughtered, is there? Can we not presume there were at least ten righteous people there at the time?
Consider the place of Nineveh. God appointed Jonah as a prophet, to prophecy to the Ninevens that they will be destroyed because of their evilness. God very well would have destroyed Nineveh, but when the Ninevens atoned for their sins after being told by Jonah that they would be destroyed, God relented.
Was Bethlehem a place of evil like Sodom and Nineveh, that its babies were to be slaughtered? Where is the goodness in such an act? To be certain, God did not personally slaughter the babies; that was engineered by King Herod. Did God harden Herod’s heart, like He did the heart of the Pharoah Ramses II, enough to get Herod to slaughter those babies? We have that possibility, since the last Verse of the Book of John infers that not everything is mentioned in the Bible. Indeed, at least, what is the Bible but a selected collection of the Word of God, in which, upon the consideration of what is to be included in the Bible and excluded therefrom, there were things that did not survive the cut?
At the end of the day, our faith in God, as suggested by Romans 8:28, demands that, at the very least, God knows best, and the same standards of evil that apply to man does not apply to God. Indeed, in the realm of our faith in God, evil itself does not apply to Him. This seems to be the only earthly rationale that would make sense in terms of our faith in Him.
Since God is our Creator, we accept as being good anything which God has a hand in doing, even things which, if done by anyone else would be seen as evil without a further understanding of the situation. Take the slaughter of newborn babies in Bethlehem, shortly after the birth of the Baby Jesus. Taken in and of itself, such an event is pure evil, since a) babies are presumed to be innocent, so b) to kill that which God created is evil.
According to Matthew 2:17, the slaughter of the babies is in fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah 31:15 which says, “Thus says the LORD: ‘A voice is the heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’”
From whom do prophesies originate? 2 Peter 1:21 says “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” So, prophesies that are recognized as such in the Bible, originate from God. And the inference of 2 Peter 1:21 is that prophesies are the Will of God. Which leads us back to Bethlehem with two questions...1) Is the slaughter of the firstborn males up to age two in Bethlehem an act of evil, and 2) If so, is such evil the Will of God?
After all, did God not command us to not murder? Since God permits us to reason with Him, as we were permitted to do in Isaiah 1:18, how are we to understand why God would will, as expressed in prophecy, the slaughter of those babies in Bethlehem, when we consider also that God stands for the goodness of His Creation, and for the goodness of his creation to go forth and continue.
What happened in Bethlehem is not like what happened in places like Sodom, written in Genesis 18 and 19, where the Lord, contrary to Genesis 32, saw that not even ten righteous people could be found there, so He proceeded to destroy it as He said He would. There is no mention in the Bible of not even ten righteous people being found in Bethlehem when the babies were slaughtered, is there? Can we not presume there were at least ten righteous people there at the time?
Consider the place of Nineveh. God appointed Jonah as a prophet, to prophecy to the Ninevens that they will be destroyed because of their evilness. God very well would have destroyed Nineveh, but when the Ninevens atoned for their sins after being told by Jonah that they would be destroyed, God relented.
Was Bethlehem a place of evil like Sodom and Nineveh, that its babies were to be slaughtered? Where is the goodness in such an act? To be certain, God did not personally slaughter the babies; that was engineered by King Herod. Did God harden Herod’s heart, like He did the heart of the Pharoah Ramses II, enough to get Herod to slaughter those babies? We have that possibility, since the last Verse of the Book of John infers that not everything is mentioned in the Bible. Indeed, at least, what is the Bible but a selected collection of the Word of God, in which, upon the consideration of what is to be included in the Bible and excluded therefrom, there were things that did not survive the cut?
At the end of the day, our faith in God, as suggested by Romans 8:28, demands that, at the very least, God knows best, and the same standards of evil that apply to man does not apply to God. Indeed, in the realm of our faith in God, evil itself does not apply to Him. This seems to be the only earthly rationale that would make sense in terms of our faith in Him.
