The Purpose of Evil

Contrast is an effective aid in creating a definition, a clear outline.
If we place a white figure against a white background, how are we to discern the outlines of the figure? Only through changing the background to a dark setting the white figure begins to stand out, and thus we can have a clearly defined outline of the figure.

Likewise, it is through the presence of evil that we can outline and get a clear definition of what is good. This is what is referred to in the Bible book Genesis as the 'Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil'.
In this tree God created a gateway to a world full of contradictions and counterparts for the purpose of creating clear outlines and definitions, and if we are to become ‘good’ souls then the presence of evil serves the purpose of creating a clear definition and outline of the goodness of the soul, the knowledge of 'good' and 'evil'.

When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of that tree they brought into their lives and the lives of their descendents the world of contrasts as we know it, which inevitable entails the entrance of suffering and death as contrasting elements to joy and life.

Didn't God give a very stern warning in advance that this would happen? Didn't God forbid Adam to eat from that tree?

Through Adam's choice our current world came into being.
Yet if we put the blame on Adam we should look in the mirror and ask ourselves how long it would have taken for us to make the same choice. God knew this in advance and created His plan based on this knowledge.

Ultimately, isn't God then to blame?
Is the man who invented the knife to cut bread to blame for the murders committed with knives? Or is it the result of our free will?

The choice we face in our lives is whether we want to spend an entire life looking for whom to blame, or to take our own responsibility and learn to let go off our need to blame and simply look at the One who can save us from the original choice by offering us the fruit from the Tree of Life.

This is what is implied in the original story in Genesis, that in order to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life (Yahshua) we need to let go off the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (pride).

People often do not realize deeply enough how all the pain and suffering we encounter in life actually can serve to bring forth the good and help us grow in contrast with evil.

I personally know people who prefer to persist in their anger towards a God who allows evil and suffering.
Since anger is the most effective instant psychosis (a person who is angry can never be wrong in his own eyes), the eyes of the angry person looking for the scapegoat remain closed to the fact that by judging God through prejudice coming from a limited perception and faulty understanding, they have placed themselves on the throne of God, and thus re-enact the ancient scenario of the fallen Satan.
In such a state of mind they remain slaves of evil, self-righteous and self-justified through a delusion created by their sustained anger, and the depth of the mystery of evil and suffering will remain shut off as long as they remain prisoner on the holodeck of their anger.

Sometimes God allows suffering to take place as a tool to break up this cycle of anger, thus releasing them to a new perspective on their life.
To the person experiencing it, it feels as if they are being broken, and in fact, they ARE being broken, but in a good way. The suffering should lead to a point where the stubborn and resistant individual simply gives up and sits in dust and ashes of his life.
In such moments of brokenness, God actually has the space necessary to do His work and make the person realize the futility of hardening his heart in anger. Then the seeds of endurance and patience can begin to bring forth the first shoots, building blocks of the Kingdom of Heaven.

We see pain and suffering as negative, yet if we are honest and if we have learned to practise patience and endurance we also have to admit that in fact they can bring forth tremendous personal growth, fruits of character traits we have come to define as being 'good'.
And because those fruits seem to grow 'by themselves' it becomes impossible for our old, dying pride to rekindle its energies by taking pride in the new person growing up inside us. After all, we do not create the fruits; we just see them grow up when we compare our current self with the old ‘tainted’ self of the past.
The new fruits stand in contrast with what we used to be.
It all fits perfectly into God’s plan.

Remember how the Bible recounts YHWH’s words ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated’?
Jacob, the younger brother, had a heart inclined to God whereas Esau’s heart was turned away from God. The Bible also states YHWH’s propheticwords about Jacob and Esau before they were born, that ‘the elder [Esau] shall serve the younger [Jacob]’.
Likewise, evil serves the purpose of good.

Yes, if God is omnipotent, what's the point of allowing deformed babies to be born, what good can be accomplished by that?
I know that watching such a little creature in a deformed body is heart breaking, but we also should not be too quick to forget our part in the play.
Did God impose evil upon the human race or did we invite it in, AGAINST God's orders? Didn't God WARN that this would happen?
God does not delight in deformed babies being born, yet this is the inevitable result of living in a world where we have invited the element of destruction, evil, a world based upon the thirst for the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

We can be sure that God cares and that He has plans hidden only He knows about. All we have to learn is to trust. Looking for scapegoats makes us blind to the One who made Himself into a scapegoat so that we might have access to the Fruits of the Tree of Life.

When we look at the human race and wallow in self-pity for all the suffering in this world, let us not forget to look at God and His plight in this world, because He seems to be the archetype of the rejected misfit, offering help and blessing wherever He goes yet suffering rejection everywhere in spite of His good character.
And when the times turn sour through the hardness of heart of people ignoring the voice of God, guess who is the one to receive the blame?

He presented His helping hand numerous times through prophets and men of God to Israel, but time and again they rejected Him, even to the point of killing his prophets in the most horrible ways, culminating in the crucifixion of the promised Messiah.
When God turned his face to the gentiles, offering His help to them, He suffered rejection here as well; how many of his prophets and saints have been murdered and persecuted throughout the past 2000 years?

So now we see God turning his back on the gentile nations hardening their hearts in self-righteous pride, returning again to Israel, after gathering a remnant from all across the globe of people who invited Him in and rejoiced in His company.

Just as God is the eternal misfit (or so it seems...), so are His children, unable as they are to oblige in world-conformity and thus standing in contrast with the spirits of the age.
God has marked the foreheads of His own for protection in the time to come, a time when His face is once again turned towards Israel as He is preparing judgment for the entire world. His angels are assigned to His remnant to protect them during the years to come when the world (including Israel) will be judged
This is the time we are living in.

I very strongly feel that the old world system is about to be overthrown, collapsing under its own weight, followed by a dark period. But this dark period will be the night before the dawning of the Sabbath where God will have reclaimed the earth and the ancient curse will be turned into a blessing as the season for the Tree of Life has come to earth.
In spite of the darkness of the immediate future, the joy of hope lives in my heart because I can sense what is coming, and which is already coming in the heart of His own.

So, while it is true that God created evil and allows evil to happen in our lives, we should also remind ourselves that God allows this evil to happen because in His wisdom He uses it as a tool to sharpen us and perfect us into His image.
It must be to Satan’s eternal frustration that his evil schemes actually help and aid the purpose of the God he is trying to dethrone.

I know that when you are young the message you would like to hear is that the future carries a big radiant smile and that paradise awaits you, but the truth is before we are able to enter paradise we need to go through the Valley of Tears to be cleansed of the properties that keep us from reaching paradise, and as such in the life of anyone seeking God with all his/her heart there WILL be a share of suffering, a share of pain, a share of disappointment, yes, as the apostle Paul already mentioned, a share of death so that we might come alive in a new way, a new spiritual seed growing up on the wasteland of our old dying egos, the butterfly that releases itself from its old cocoon.

And as our egos die to our old conditioning and are resurrected through faith in a new relationship with God as our Father (through which we can partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life), the old contrast of God with our own prideful, corrupted egos within ourselves now becomes a conflict of our renewed, resurrected selves with the world around us, and this contrast not only helps us to outline our good, but through the contrast also the evil in this world in outlined, evil which the deluded world embraces as good and is able to embrace AS good as long as there is no contrast.

The butterfly is hated by those who are transformed as zombies in their cocoon.
So the inner conflict of our old selves with God's light now becomes a conflict of our renewed selves (united with God) with a corrupted world; and woe to the man or woman who stands in contrast with the world, because they will be appointed as the black sheep, they will be allotted the share of persecution.

This is not what we expect from life when we are young, but this is what awaits us from the day we are born. Life is a road of disillusionment and renewal of hope; it’s the path of temporal hopes born in the cocoon dying with the cocoon, so that eternal lasting hopes of the butterfly might come to life.

We are born into a battle zone, and on the battlefield soldiers get shot at, soldiers are wounded.
Yet instead of focussing on the suffering and allowing our hearts to be hardened through giving water and life to a root of bitterness (through which the enemy tries to recreate and flame the old conflict within us), let us not forget to focus, not on the battle, not on the pain, but on our General who is leading His army victoriously to the Promised Land, in spite of the enemy firing at us, yes, even with the help of the enemy firing at us: if the enemy does nothing, we march on, if they open fire, God turns our wounds to strengths through endurance and forfeiting to harden our hearts in anger, and we still march on, stronger than before.

So, whereas we have personal tragedies in life which will help us to come to terms with our imperfections (and God knows exactly what tools to use to turn our imperfections into perfections), our enemy has an eternal tragedy, because their every move God will turn to frustration.

If we learn to let go of anger and just allow the times of suffering to pass, afterwards we will be able to look back and marvel at how God was able to turn it into a tool to help us grow into His own image.
Unlike some preachers, pastors and priests who like to depict God as being impotent in the face of evil, the truth is that God is in charge, that He is above it all, and that He is so smart that He actually is able to use the enemy to further His purpose. As a matter of fact, the enemy was part of the plan of God all along.

Thus the purpose of evil is eternally frustrated, and yet at the same time fulfilled.
It is through the faith in Yahshua (Jesus) that we are saved from the choice of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that we are offered the fruit from the Tree of Life.
YHWH is in charge of ALL.