The Sovereignty of God is a curious thing.
If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why is there evil in the world?
This question is raised by many people, and many Christians have tried to answer it. Personally, I find many of their attempts leave me scratching my head, with questions still unanswered and verses overlooked. A typical response to this question is raised in Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Faith“. We bought the DVD and I have to admit the answers presented were fairly common – and fairly unsatisfying.
The standard reply to the question of evil says “God doesn’t want robots, so He gave us free will. There is evil in this world because we exercise our freedom of will and choose to disobey God and therefore reap the chaos that ensues from disobedience.” I can go with the 2nd 1/2 of that answer, and there are plenty of verses to back that up. But that answer presents two problems:
- Where did the first half of that answer come from? Where are the verses that teach that God doesn’t want robots? Believe it or not, there are none in the Bible! There are verses that imply we have a free will – but there are verses that plainly teach us that we do NOT have a free will! We can’t embrace the former at the expense of the latter – especially when the latter is explicit, while the former is implied.
- Secondly, if God is sovereign and powerful and all knowing, then this answer to evil necessitates that God isn’t powerful enough to get what He wants. The consequences of this premise are staggering, to say the least.
This section of this website explores ideas related to the sovereignty of God and the free-will of man.