There are a lot of contradictions in Christianity.
They aren't worth dwelling on if you want to remain a Christian.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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I struggle with the fact that god created Lucifer who was his right hand man, he then rebelled and God just banished him from heaven, didn't strip his powers, didn't kill him. Then he created earth and just let the devil do whatever he wanted? God is all knowing and I get the idea of letting humans have free will but just letting the devil roam around and do whatever seems odd. I dont think we brought ain into the qorld God did aonce he created everything in heaven and earth. I also struggle with us humans (we all) suffer the consequences of one action from two people thousands of years ago.
Isn't that the core principle of monotheism, that one God does everything, both good and evil?
Sure, but monotheism still has to be internally consistent, and labeling it ("monotheism") doesn't address the inconsistency.
If anything it just means that benevolent and omnipotent monotheism is intrinsically inconsistent.
Yeah, the point is that God is not "allowing" the devil to do evil. If Christianity is truly monotheistic, then the devil is a creation of God, just like anything else. There is no independent being. So yes, like the title says, he is an accomplice.
You won't be able to debunk it. Logic does not apply to faith. It's like dividing by zero. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Trying to apply logic to matters of faith is a fools errand.
There is another option Mr Epicure forgot to add: God can and wants to destroy evil, but has a good reason not to.
I'm not 100% certain what that good reason is yet. The instant removal of all evil from the planet and all ability to perform evil will constitute pretty irrefutable evidence of his existence to even the most determined doubter so maybe that's got something to do with it.
That is part of the paradox. Could god have created a universe where that good reason to not destroy evil didn't exist? If no, then he is not all-powerfull.
A model is only a crude sketch of the reality.
In Judaism, ha-satan does work as a kind of public prosecutor. You get a public defender too.
We let Satan into our lives when humanity ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree. It is our punishment that we live in sin and have evil/bad things. But even though God gave us salvation in Christ and Satan has been beaten. And on top of that God said He will make everything new and good again. If that's not grace I don't know what is.
We let Satan into our lives because Eve (not we) ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree? Inheritance of punishments is one of the many reprehensible staples of Abrahamic religions.
Well, we actually let satan in through Judaism. In which he is more of an accuser/prosecuter. Hence you yourself can be said to be satan for accusing blame.
The genesis myth isn't literal.
The garden of eve is innocence or naïveté. Kids have what we as adults would conceive as a literal heaven. Sure, chores and whatnot, but you get to play and have some form of freedom. Actual freedom built on the backs of your parents, the keepers of your prison.
As you age, you learn and become disullusioned. You eat from the fruit of knowledge. It becomes a curse as you truly awaken from the lies you were told. However, if you are able to supersede your ego bruising. You will find the power that knowledge can also wield, and liberate you.
This is why most people leave christianity. Sometimes people can return and see the value. Fascist pig insult comes in clutch and we must be thankful for that gift at least.
(There is also the heavy sexual undertones with a 'snake,' for some reason folks forget people use metaphors - especially when talking to kids about series topics.)
I am aware of the 'knowledge destroys innocence' claim of christianity. I do not subscribe to it, whether it's knowledge in general or sexual 'knowledge'.
You take a major split from most christians when you say this knowledge will be the one that liberates (what exactly does liberate mean for you?) you. Christ's sacrifice also need to be re-contextualized.
For them salvation (sometimes called liberation) is achieved through acceptance of christ explicitly (an oath of fealty) as well as trying to return to innocence (especially sexual innocence). A core part is that you cannot succeed in returning to innocence since you are mortal thus you need christ to forgive your sins.
Some believe you will be actively eternally punished if you fail to do so, others that will simply miss out on afterlife. Both are incredibly harsh and disproportionate punishments for even murderers let alone people who just are sexually promiscuous and not sorry, or perhaps simply do not believe in God.
Unfortunately most people don't leave christianity, ironically you seem to have gone quite afar yourself. Your beliefs seem to be a bit less hateful and harmful, though I can't be sure how honest you arr or if you are just engaging in apologia.
Knowledge destroys naïveté. Innocence is not lost until you do act. I mean the broadest term of knowledge, sexuality just applies as usually this is how dominion is expressed. Why the Jewish faith banned sodomy, domination and humiliation of egyptian culture back then. Same threat woman fall under often times.
Knowledge affords you the ability to act. Say your mind is a void and knowledge fills it, hence you can begin to warp the world to your desires via that knowledge. It liberates you by affording you control, to an extent. Beyond this, it also allows you to know how to circumvent dangers too. Information is powerful, it can free you from the clutches of those who have power over you.
Christ sacrificed himself by speaking out, he didn't save anyone. The point is that you can save yourself with his message. Act now before you cannot act. Live before you cannot live. Hell is the domain that Christ lived in, Helia. Hence, hell is just living in your material realm.
Heaven however is much more, it is the ascension of people. Not by god but by people. Be kind to people, be their champion, and they too shall hold you up to the heavens. When you go, your absence will be felt and they will carry a fragment of your soul with them. (Soul being their intent, will, etc.) Grieving gives us something, not just loss. Combine this with your self ascension into imagination through the use of child-like wonder, you will enjoy simple pleasures. Losing necessity for depravity.
In short, karma. You do bad, you feel bad, you see bad, and you project bad. Your fixation on bad will then drive you mad, why honesty and repenting is important. To free the soul and grow. You do good, you feel good, you see good, and you project good. Hence, good standing creates a positive sense all around you.
Same logic aplies to the 'evil eye' curse. You as the observer can see good or bad. Our envy and own emotions can contort what is before us. See a man succeed and you feel jealousy, even though nothing was taken from you. You can hyperfixate and cause actual harm, to them or to yourself. (ignoring things you should actually focus on usually) Others can do the same.
I follow the rule of; if you see the buddha on the side of the road - kill him. Fixating on the buddha does you no benefit when you are on your own journey to become like him. All it can do is halt your journey as you fixate. If buddha is the 'deity' of buddhism, I apply it everywhere.
Ground a god and make them mortal, only then can you learn from them. What can a god teach you when they cannot understand mortality?
It is our punishment that we live in sin and have evil/bad things.
So, we are born into punishment because of someone thousands of years ate a fruit without understanding the consequences? That's like imprisoning someone's great-great-great-grandchild because they once jaywalked.
Not letting it get ****ed up in the first place?
Rev. Mark Woods discusses this a bit.
I like his conclusion, even though it doesn't solve anything:
"arguably, when we're face to face with such things, our instinct shouldn't be to discuss them, but to get angry and do something about them. Part of our discipleship is to work for human flourishing in body, mind and spirit: we should make the world better, as far as we possibly can."
There's no devil causing evil. There's only us, flawed as we are.
And what God can do and what God will do are not the same.
What about all those non-human evils like earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, tsunamis, wildfires, parasites and disease? They cause immense suffering and death, even of innocents such as the newly-born.
If god can stop these, why won't he?
(Edit: misspelling)
If he can and doesn't he's evil; if he can't he's not all powerful. Lucky for you he doesn't exist.
Ah, now we're shifting into the ancient Greek idea of "evil": what is harmful, rather than what is immoral.
But to actually answer your question, I don't remember anything in the Bible about God being omnibenevolent. That seems to have been added to Christian doctrine by later religious philosophers.
That said, I just don't know. And I'm alright with not knowing, because it's that or be tortured by something outside my control.
I don't remember anything in the Bible about God being omnibenevolent. That seems to have been added to Christian doctrine by later religious philosophers.
These properties were indeed added but it was by the church fathers very early in church history when christianity was very different in belief and form compared with today.
At this time the early church interacted with greek and roman ideas to create a new religion to differentiate it from Judaism from which it was born - you can see some of this debate in the new testament between the traditional jewish pov (such as in Matthew in the sermon on the mount) and different laws for non-jews such as circumcision not being needed in Paul's letters.
In exactly the same way, it's impossible to find the doctrine of the trinity in the bible. And yet the trinity is declared in the nicene creed and is the keystone to christian identity
Funnily enough, I'm also a unitarian. Unitarianism (the denomination) was pretty popular until the middle of the last century when it was mostly absorbed into Unitarian Universalism, and other denominations (eg. Jehovah's Witness) are still unitarian, so I wouldn't call it a "keystone".
Following the example of Christ is a keystone. True repentance is a keystone. Professing the Gospel is a keystone.
Sad things, tragedy, and death are not the same as evil.
Without answering the question here, just wanted to point out that it's a different question, so don't try to apply the answers to one question to the other question.
You're talking about 'the problem of suffering' not 'the problem of evil'
yeah it's not even a Christianity point to make. Who are we to condemn the happenings of Earth and it's inhabitants just because it can harm humans? We are not above our planet.
Sad things, tragedy, and death are not the same as evil
Agreed.
Evil is a moral judgement describing a motive or agent (in the sense of something with agency, something that causes something to happen). Sad things, tragedy and death are not in and of themselves evil, they are the result of evil.
When a person does things that directly cause immense suffering on purpose, we can say the evil came from a human.
Now on to god. God is normally ascribed the properties of omniscience, omnipotence and all omnibenevolence. In addition God caused the universe to come into being.
As he is omniscient he knew the world he created would cause untold suffering and so either he is not omnipotent (i e. Could not create a world without suffering) or omnibenevolent (i.e. is fine with a world where the innocent suffers. (The comments have several versions of this argument done better than I could).
If we argue that it's impossible to create a world without suffering, then what is heaven?
You're talking about 'the problem of suffering' not 'the problem of evil'
No, I'm highlighting the real problem of evil - that it seems inherent to the world that an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent created.