He chose to create a world. He did not need to do it: there was no reason (or necessity) for creation other than His will for it to be. Neither did He have a need to do it: He did not call creation into being in order to fill a void or satisfy an inner need of His. He was complete and content without us existing. He did it purely because He wanted there to be a world. He knew what would happen. Chronologically, in the temporal order of things, He could regret making man, as retold in the history of creation (Gen 6:6) but this is just an expression of Him being able to be regretful, mournful, but not surprised, and no less omnipotent or competent than ever!
And that His servants erred and misbehaved is no accident either. Hagar and Ishmael were important people in Abraham’s, Sarah’s and Isaac’s lives – without them their biographies would have been incomplete.
Former of light and Creator of darkness,
Maker of good and Creator of evil,
I, ‹YHWH›, make these things.
Yet I am saying to you, Love your enemies,
and pray for those who are persecuting you,
so that you may become sons of your Father Who is in the heavens, for He causes His sun to rise on the wicked and the good, and makes it rain on the just and the unjust.
How are we becoming sons of our Father by loving our enemies? We do so by becoming like-minded with Him. He is able to eradicate all evil with one Word. He chooses not to do so, not because He would be cruel or careless, but because evil is necessary in the character of the creation He chose to make. Yet only temporary.
The Rock – flawless are His deeds,
For all His ways are right judgment.
The El of faithfulness and without iniquity;
Just and upright is He.
You are of cleaner eyes than to see evil,
And to look at misery You are not able.
Why are You looking at the treacherous,
Are silent when the wicked person is swallowing up one more righteous than he?
Because we need to learn our lesson. Really? All this immeasurable suffering and injustice, just to teach us a lesson?! Yes, and a crucial lesson it is. We need to learn nothing less than the perniciousness of our self-righteousness, the foolishness of our rebellion. As wilful, headstrong humans are we created, because it pleased Him more to have us this way rather than surround Himself with obedient, carefree puppets.
As soon as we are through with this, have felt what injustice and exploitation of humankind and nature truly feel like, and ran back to Abba, it will all be over, and the coming Ages of the Ages shall be way more pleasant and harmonious.
I have never experienced true elementary, fierce suffering. I can only pray that when it comes, and it will in the last days, that I shall be able to stand, and not hate myself when thinking back at writing these dogmatic, holier-than-thou lines.
In His wisdom and providence, our Creator is using Satan, allowing him to rule this particular age (see the previous article), because He Himself could never institute all these evil machinations, He needs an agent to do this for Him – “for” both in the sense of “in place of Him” and “as a service to Him in order to achieve His will”. He is unable to enact this Himself, not because His omnipotence is a bit dented, but because these deeds are incompatible with His character: because He is good.
Give acclamation to Yahweh, for He is good,
For His benignity is eonian.
No one is good except One, God.
It is, in an earthly sense and as a darkly mirror reflection, much like a loving dad sending his recalcitrant child to boot camp. The sooner we get it over with and can proceed to a mature, wise, harmonious age and relationship to Him, the better. That is why Satan has to be given free reign. Otherwise, at some point into the age of the consummation, some wayward mind may get a nagging thought like “Well, He never let us off the tether completely. If he had, we may just have established our own cruel imperious paradise.”
So the suffering has to be complete. Everybody experiencing it, myself included, may he or she be encouraged by the thought that none of it is in vain. It serves a purpose, even while in the moment, the individual experiencing it is gored by its futility.
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