Prologue

A guy talks with his girlfriend about meeting her for a date tonight. She was pleased with the idea and was so excited. After the class, she went home and start buying ingredients to prepare the meal. The guy didn’t finish his studies so he would come back home later. On the classroom, he met a new girl, very pretty & attractive. His heart was really beating hard for her. She came to see him, and ask him if he would be available tonight. On the spot, he suddenly, saying “yes”. Leaving the classroom, he forgot his cell phone on the desk. He brings her to the most fine-dining restaurant in town. During that time, his girlfriend is waiting for him, trying to call him. It doesn’t work. She was worried. His Facebook is offline. So she went to the classroom to see if he was still there. At her sadness, she realized that he forgot his cell phone, and had a selfie picture with the new girl. Tomorrow morning, the guy came back to class, realized that his phone was missing. His girlfriend was waiting for him at the door. Full of shame, he realized that he was cheating on her. He then burst into tear, knowing that his girlfriend will leave him forever. His girlfriend also got some tears. She was lovable enough to accept to forgive the pain he made to her. Their relationship is restored.

The problem of evil goes back to the root with human’s desire, within our own heart.

1. God loves us
2. God gives us freedom to respond
3. Since He gives us freedom, He can’t guarantee that everything will go well all the time
4. Man can choose alternatives to God
5. He can make the decision to pursue idols for self-interest
6. If man chooses God, he must deny himself and love & serve others
7. There’s no mercy without evil
8. Since God loves us, He offer mercy for the sinners who rejected Him & His will
9. The existence of God is compatible with existence of evil

The human heart is empty. We want infinite things, but can only be fulfilled by finite things. So we seek for alternatives, things to satisfy our craving heart.

God has put eternity in our heart to seek Him (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Only in Him can we truly find satisfaction (St Augustine).

God is all loving, so He can’t force you to love Him back too. I can’t force a woman to love me, she has to freely decide to love me, otherwise, it would become slavery or dictatorship.

1. If there’s no objective moral law, free will don’t exist
2. There is objective moral law
3. Therefore free will exists

Because we aren’t robots, and we have moral accountabilities, we aren’t pre-determined.

Contrary to what many atheists believe, we do have a free will.
If there’s no such thing as free will, there’s no reason to condemn anything evil, because these actions are considered as “natural”: murder, rape, stealing, etc…a psychopath should then be never put in prison because he doesn’t have a free will or conscience but it’s all pre-determined. Like what Richard Dawkins wrote in his book, that there’s no evil. And yet, he constantly complains about God.

“The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
Richard Dawkins

Would it be fairer if God per-selected some people to send them to Hell, or to judge people based on their choices & conscience? Of course, God has a plan for us, but we can also reject it. If God took away our choice to love Him or reject Him back, that’s not love anymore.

When we make a choice, we carry the good & bad consequences that comes with it.

Freedom comes with responsibilities.

If I open a discussion with a clear guideline, it’s not a guarantee that someone will get “offended”, both accidentally or intentionally. Everyone has to assume the responsibility for their actions.
Without God, there would be no objective moral value to determine what’s objectively good and objectively bad.
…

“If there is no God, everything is permissible.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there’s no destination, there’s no way to tell if anyone is on the right path or not.

God is everywhere, so it’s up to you to make Him the center of your life & decision. It’s not easy, and humanity has fallen all the time.

We choose to satisfy our desires with partial good, an incomplete version of goodness. People want love, but choose lust. They want ressources, but choose greed. They want truth, but choose lie.

Just like Adam & Eve, they can freely reject God and go to another alternative instead.
This is where temptations begin.

For example, I want to go to the library to study and have great marks in my exams.
But, on the road, there’s a lot of distractions: shopping sales, food, party, etc…
I can make the choice to go with my initial goal & resist, or I can let myself enjoying other ways instead of studying.

The human heart is empty. Human don’t commit a crime unless we start to pursue goals for our own interest at the expanse of others.
Cheating & corruption exists because people want to win at all cost.
J. Warner Wallace argues that intentional homicide is due to 3 reasons: power, money, lust. That’s the reason why an atheist can be a good & moral person, while a Christian can be a bad & immoral person. It all depends on where their desires are aiming toward. It’s without surprise that Jesus condemns the Pharisees. They are supposed to seek God’s will, but within them, they were looking to get fame & power….

Here’s the key: it is at the expanse of others that cause evil.

Paul argues that anybody can know morality with their conscience without directly being exposed to the Jewish Laws (Rom 2:12-16). Because it was indirectly written in all human’s heart (Rom 2:15).

Loving God means to self-sacrifice oneself for the sake of others. It means to imitate his goodness.

Love comes with a sacrifice. If a man chooses to love God, there’s also a price to pay. Doing good has consequences as well.

God is perfection itself and sets himself as the standard of goodness: love, humility, self-sacrifice, etc.

What will I forgive if there are no mistakes?
Evil can’t exist if there’s no good. And goodness comes from God. For an atheist to claim objective evil, must rely on an objective good, which is of God. A metal is good, but rust is a corruption of it.
If I get 80% on a math test, it’s because I miss 20% of the right answers.Does that imply that God wants us to mess up so He can heal us? Not at all. God wants a perfect world, just like a dad and son, the dad can give him clear guidance, and the child refuses to obey, instead, get wounded, and then, the dad will come to heal him.The whole notion of mercy is based on the existence of evil in order to forgive, and evil is a twisted version of the good.

I give you an entire cookie. You want it. I break it into 2. You still want it. I break it into 4, you still want it. I break it into small pieces, you still want it. Even if it’s broken, it’s still valuable. Any human being is loved by God despite our brokenness & mess.

As we can see on the whole Bible, God interacts with His people who rejected Him all the time & commit atrocities. It doesn’t disprove his existence, it only shows us that God loves us so much in a point where He had to sacrifice himself on the cross in order to restore the relationship back to the initial plan by his infinite mercy.

As we see in the story as an analogy, the guy portrait humanity, and his girlfriend is like the picture of God. We were created with a desire & longing for God. Through baptism, we took vows and commitment. The book of Revelation tells us that there’s a wedding feast, a huge & massive eternal banquet (Revelation 19:6). We were intended for that dinner, but instead, idols have invited us to another feast. Our desires have been shifted away. We start to realize that it wasn’t fulfilling.
God has a heart so big that He is willing to forgive us.