We have to be very careful not to attribute causality to God when typically the reason for anything is our whole fallen world that we all work in. What God does is use the evil that we do to work good from it, but He certainly doesn’t will for any of these things to happen.

One of the most fundamental aspects of our existence is Free Will. A free will that is so very real that I am allowed to choose to end my own existence, I can choose to disbelieve I was created, I can choose, literally, to do whatever it is that I want.

In the beginning was the Trinity, and nothing else. The Trinity exists in Love, and that’s why we say that God is love. Love is never selfish, love gives. Love begets. Love creates. Love sacrifices. So He made man, and He made man to live in relationship with Him. He made humans with body, soul and spirit. The spirit part is what set us apart from all animals. Proof of this spirit is the whole natural world. Where on the planet is there an animal who can rationalise as we do, even though we are not even the biggest of the creatures or the most powerful? Where else in creation can you see the animals having discussions? Can the other animals collectively come together and master the sciences as we have, where we know what atoms and particles are? No. There is clearly something uniquely different about us lowly humans. That difference is that we have a rational intellect that came in our being made in His Image.

The tree in the garden was there so that there was never a compulsion. In fact, I remember reading once that one Father said, for all we know, God may have given us of the tree later on at a better time. But that’s a meditation and nothing else. Choosing to eat from the tree brought death. But that death was not a punishment! It was a consequence!!! It was a consequence in that we were living in God and in Him is life. We were incorruptible and made to be immortal. But when I ate from that tree, I corrupted my nature, I introduced something (sin) that was foreign to my nature, and it brought forth disease in me. It was not God sentencing man to death or He would have just killed us on the spot!

But instead of that, He didn’t stop dealing with Adam and Eve. He didn’t stop dealing with humanity. He still kept on over and over trying to work with us. He rebooted the world in the time of the flood and tried to work with Noah, but even Noah got totally drunk within days outside of the ark. He then called Abraham and made a covenant specifically with him, because the rest of the world had become so far gone! He dealt specifically with the tribes of Israel, who still rejected Him, despite the miracles and wonders that they witnessed. Again and again He sent prophets during the times of all of these kings who went the wrong way. Yet, they would not listen. He was dealing with children and He disciplined them the same way that we do with our own children.

But in the background, He was preparing the world for Salvation, to be able to live in Communion with Himself again. He knew He was coming Himself to redeem us and to save us from the fear of death and the captivity of sin. People don’t realise that sin is what is killing us. That sin is what is making us less human. Less loving. More selfish. Because sin is self-love. It’s preferring myself over anyone or anything else. Yes, some of it is understandable, but if you get down to the reality of sin, that is what it is.

What about all of these other people in the Old Testament, “how was this their fault?” you might ask. God used their evil for good, but He didn’t even abandon them! He descended into Hades (1 Peter 3:19-20) and preached to those who were not His chosen in the Old Testament and to those who ‘were formerly disobedient’!

But let’s go back to sin for a little bit, I hate focusing on sin, but it’s important to understand its consequences. Sin worked death in us (Romans 7:5) because it is contrary to nature. We’re not all doctors but we have a knowledge of disease. We know that all sorts of things bring disease to our body: neglect, overeating, undereating, harsh conditions, using body parts the wrong way, foreign chemicals, exposure, some things are neglect some things are not etc… but all of these things have an effect on health. The same is true of my spirit. I can nurture it and raise it, or I can leave it in shambles. The more I sin, the more I tie down my spirit because i am chaining it with things that it was not made for. This sinful nature is what we are all struggling with.

But the consequence of our sin and turning from what was good and what was intended – whether willingly or unwillingly – is what we see as evil in the world today. That is not God’s doing. What kinds of evil? All of them. Moral evil, physical evil and natural evil. How is that possible? Well, the way that we treated our environment has caused natural disasters and storms, it also has caused cancers, lung problems and all sorts of diseases. You know the stats as well as I do, at the rapid increase in diseases and problems. The modern addiction to sin in a very extreme way has led to the depression of the masses. They are so empty and trying to get the thrill of anything to forget their miseries even momentarily, but once back to reality, they are dead again, and sad. That’s also why people are addicted to communication. They cannot handle being alone at all.

But the consequences of sin are on the whole world because of the fact that we are free. If a table is meant to be for eating on, that doesn’t stop a person from standing the table up on its side and using it to hang clothes on. Over time, I might do more damage to it because I’m using it in a messed up way, but it doesn’t matter, i can still use it wrongly. Even if the whole world starts using the table that way, doesn’t mean the table was meant to be that!

So, sin did a lot to us and to the world, and we tend to blame God on these things when really all He is doing is saying, “I refuse to force you to love me. I refuse to force you to do things the way I made them. If I force you to do these things, then we are not in a relationship of love, you are being slaves.” If you felt that your spouse or parent was forced to love you, how happy would your relationship be? Yet He made marriage to mimic the relationship He has with our souls, He let us be parents to understand His fatherhood. For those who love Him, He can work with them, instruct them, discuss with them, rebuke them sometimes and pamper other times, but only because they are willingly in a relationship.

We have to be very careful not to attribute causality to God when typically the reason for anything is our whole fallen world that we all work in. What God does is use the evil that we do to work good from it, but He certainly doesn’t will for any of these things to happen.

God’s love is what frees us. Entry into the Spiritual life means letting Christ reign in me and finding interior freedom, because I cannot control the exterior in any way. When I focus on God’s love, my sins start to go away because I’m living in something positive. We are not called to think about how evil we are all the time, but to live a life in Christ that naturally pushes us away from those things. It’s a fallen world, but we are able to be alive in it if we choose it…freely.