The promised revelation of God’s approach to handling troublesome evil and the brutal torment, pain and suffering inherent in it has finally arrived!
Dear reader, it is quite gripping to delve into an inclusive description of God’s Pre-Creation Plan to overcome evil as a result of the Creation. But this subject is really loaded and we can only cover it a bit at a time. So, of necessity, we will be discussing it throughout many coming blogs.
Of course, we have seen so far in this tour of soul in the person of the Godhead that God’s being and doing are absolutely ruled by pure goodness. Therefore it is no stretch to say (and I can confidently propose) that any plan God would create for handling troublesome evil would have to be exclusively composed of good and only good measures. In fact, scripture teaches “overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21b)” and that is because pure good is the only approach God in His commitment to pure goodness would ever condone.
Bottom line?
Goodness itself becomes God’s overarching, general solution to handling troublesome evil—so I have not deceived you that answers would be yours in this blog, dear tour companion. You do now know how God handles evil—with good; but note, what makes His Pre-Creation Plan such a loaded subject is that His goodness will be taking many forms throughout the Creation as appropriate to the issue, whether large or small!
Thus the Pre-Creation Plan begins something like this:
The spiritual world of the “heavenlies” will be God’s Kingdom. Here, its newly created population will answer directly to the Godhead and to the Godhead alone.
Knowing war will erupt in this Kingdom, God commits to a policy of exclusion of rebellion (evil) by throwing out all population members that rebel against His rule. This exile will be without recourse. Reconciliation will never be achieved. Those exiled will never regain citizenship in God’s Kingdom, may only on occasion be allowed to petition God, the Father, through one representative (Satan, the Adversary), but will be allowed to roam earth.
The physical world of Creation as conceived and executed by the Godhead will be a polar environment, meaning an environment consisting of opposites, opposites sustained by balance—up and down, black and white, hot and cold and so on.
Therefore, to provide against evil in the physical world, God imitates His setup in the Godhead and in the spiritual realm . . . and physically separates evil from good, off-lines evil so to speak, and sequesters it . . . in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
As long as mankind chooses to rely on God’s rule and reason (in other words, is committed to the rule of pure goodness), God will personally provide for and protect mankind from all evil, since He will see that choice as indicative of their desire for Him to be involved in their lives, to be their solution.
Genesis 2:8-9 “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
In the physical world of polar opposites, good now exists. And evil exists. Though contained, evil exists. And the balance is kept—safely.
But evil stayed contained and harmless only as long as it was left well-enough alone.
Genesis 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
But eat, and things will change, confides God.
In this succinct communication, God gives mankind the big choice, as I term it, concerning troublesome evil. If mankind avoids the tree as instructed, all will be well. If not? Well, God’s counsel concerning the poisonous nature of the fruit of the tree gave mankind good reason to go without the knowledge of evil, of that we can be sure. But we also can be sure that should they not get on-board with God’s reasoning, trouble, big trouble would ensue. And, as we all know, that it did.
Thus the first form and second form of many to come for handling troublesome evil in the physical world became the tree and reason, in that order. In the tree, God overcame evil with good! With persuasive arguments He launched His relationship based on reasonable choice with mankind.
Anyway, leaving this option of choice between knowing and not knowing about good and evil (or having to deal with it) open to mankind must have been very painful to God, considering how superior He knew existing in an exclusive state of pure goodness to be. In the Godhead, thoughts, feelings, and will all existed under control—disciplined, in a state of sublime resolution. God knows emotions well and has selected for the best ones and lives comfortably with them. He wanted the same for us. Mankind was offered the same sublime situation. Mankind did not embrace that situation. Sadly enough, instead, mankind blundered horribly and sin emerged from its restriction to the tree.
Too bad we dropped the ball (er. . . the apple that is) on that whole pure goodness vs. emotion vs. evil thing, isn’t it?
To be continued . . .
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