I find the general attempts to deal with the question of evil to be very unsatisfactory. They usually take a theme around "free will", or unknowableness of God’s purposes, or that somehow the presence of evil is necessary to bring out a value or circumstance that is desirable but would otherwise be absent. In many ways they represent incremental concept development, looking for a place to step out towards from our current understanding. However, they often lack a framework or system that allows the ideas to make sense, to have context, or to be "tested".

In reality they are just guesses. It’s a bit like my daughter doing her maths homework. If she does’t understand the theory behind a problem she just guesses the answer. If she understands the theory she has a context in which to develop the answer and then test the result for soundness.

I expect that the problem of understanding evil and why it exists will be found in a contextual model or theory. And I expect that this model will be fundamentally related to the nature of God.

I think it is relatively easy to answer the question "what is evil". It is fundamentally anything which opposes the will of God. It usually manifests itself in the corruption/destruction or attempted corruption/destruction of parts of creation. The much more difficult question is why. Why does evil exist? Why doesn’t God just stamp out any attempted corruption/destruction? Why doesn’t God simply bind or disempower the evil doers and their schemes and structures?

The starting place to look for an answer to this fundamental issue of creation must be in the nature of God. In particular it is my hypothesis that it has to do with the integrity of God. God must be true to himself. Anything less than that must be doom for everything. As Jesus said, a kingdom divided against itself will fall. If the highest good, the self existing cause, is not true to itself, than all of creation is lost and there is no point considering the topic any further.

The Gospel is the epitome of God’s self integrity and the clue to understanding the origin of evil. Law is the driver that resulted in the need for the Gospel and I suspect the agent that enables evil to continue.

Under the Law, evil must be punished by death (at least full separation from the source of life and thus Hell.). As all fall short of perfect obedience, all are condemned by the Law. Therefore if God were to exercise the judgment of the law, all must be put to death. (Law is a very black and white issue, there can be no degrees of compliance.) If He showed any partiality in the application of judgment and law, He would have no self-integrity. Without integrity at the top there can be none in the system and creation would have no hope. Therefore God holds off executing judgment until the right time to intervene and save His creation. He does this by taking the full punishment of the law on Himself through Jesus Christ. After that, He is now free to "save" anyone He wishes, come judgment day, and still maintain His full integrity and the integrity of His creation. (And He offers to "save" all who call on Him. And I suspect He may well "save" others too, though we are not given any information about this. It is all a matter of Grace.) So this is why evil reigns, because Law allows it to.

Does this mean God is hardhearted? Would we prefer a God of less integrity and more action against evil? Is the "now" more important than the whole system? In the scheme of things, will present suffering overshadow the blessings of eternity? I think the answer to all these questions is "no". The Gospel event itself reveals the deep compassion God has for His groaning creation.

So far in my hypothesis I have provided a definition of evil and a reason why evil continues today. I am satisfied with this model because it appears to me to be a consistent system founded in the ultimate cause. There remains one more problem. How did evil arise in the first place? Let me have a go at that. While the following provides a somewhat satisfying theory for me, it lacks a little finesse and is perhaps more incremental than systemic in its nature.

First, evil is not something created. Evil is like darkness. Darkness is nothing more than the absence of light. It is in fact nothing and without light it would not exist as a concept. Evil is the absence of Good and as such it is fundamentally opposition to God.

(The other interesting thing that I find when developing these hypotheses, is how much of all the generally more conservative beliefs in the Bible readily and even necessarily fit into the model. I am not personally committed to any particular view of the Bible, except that one should first receive it on face value, then evaluate it in terms of its own integrity, the science of hermeneutics and the problems of epistemology. In doing this it is important to recognise one’s presuppositions, be they conservative or skeptical. For the following I will launch into a consideration without debating the detailed elements, such as angels.)

Imagine then a time in creation before the earth and humanity and before evil. In this world God has already created angels to be His messengers and servants for building the universe. Imagine that because of their free will, angels are able to choose to oppose God’s will. Imagine that God actully binds the system in a way such that though the angels can oppose God’s will they cannot sustain that opposition or its effects. It’s a bit like gravity for us on earth. It is a non-intrusive limiting factor that we can desire to defy and can even do so in a limited way, but not in a way which we can sustain. In this system there is no Law and there is no evil. Law is not necessary and has not been set, and evil can’t get a foothold.

Imagine that this causes a significant degree of dissatisfaction in some of the stronger, more gifted angels and they petition God to make His ways more explicit in a codified Law and to remove the artificial protective boundary. Imagine God agrees. (In doing so, He must have seen or known the consequences. This is a flaw or gap in the model that so far can only be explained by resorting to more incremental concepts such as those at the start of this article.) Once the Law is in place there is a basis and expectation for consequences and for God himself to act in accordance with the Law. (Not a problem in terms of following it, for what the Law states is in itself good. Law is not evil.) What arises is the demand for justice and the beginning of accusation. From then on disagreement becomes conflict which results in accusation which results in petitions for justice. All because Law enables it.

Because the angels don’t have perfect self integrity (I think only God can have that), it is not long before they have all broken the law in one way or another. God does not invoke any consequential punishment because that would break down the whole system. The consequence of this is that some of the more capable angels who desire more power and privilege for themselves flaunt the Law to a greater extent, at the same time accusing others before God. They know that God’s integrity will prevent Him judging them without judging and condemning the whole creation. This eventually turns into active opposition to God’s will, becoming the essence of evil. These creatures become consumed by their own actions until they are the epitome of evil itself.

It might be argued that God should have destroyed the lot and started again. But what would be the integrity in doing that? Wouldn’t God be forever doing the same thing? I think that it must be true that for a creature to have self will, it will have the capacity in itself to challenge God’s way. This must have been a foreseen consequence on God’s part. To bring about a creation that had end to end integrity and was not plagued by legalism and accusation, I suspect God saw the need to work out the scenario to the point where Law could be fully satisfied and then retired forever; where there could be no questioning of His integrity by His creation; where submission and adoration are entirely voluntary and without risk; where evil is banished forever.

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