IS GOD BOTH GOOD AND EVIL?

One Facebook respondent wrote that God is all-powerful. Therefore, God is the author of both good and evil. I responded:

“Your belief that everything comes from God – all the good and the evil – is not Biblical. Instead, we are instructed that God is perfectly good and holy:

·       This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. (1 John 1:5-6 (ESV)

If God is both good and evil, He would lack the authority and the truth to judge this world:

·       But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? (Romans 3:5-6)

If God isn’t perfectly holy, He would be unable to judge. Where then did sin come from? Clearly, our all-powerful God allowed it but didn’t cause it. Instead, He had granted us the freewill to sin and rebel against Him and commands us sinners to repent and to be like him. Jesus instructed us:

·       “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

However, if God is also evil, this would give us the justification to do evil. How then would we be able to trust one another! Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi had correctly observed that the Christian West had progressed because of Biblical morality. Non-Western nations have begun to progress because they have begun to copy these Biblical principles, which had once made the West great.

Would you want to do business with someone who claimed, “I will be like the gods and will do both good and evil?” Would you want to marry such a person?” How could we trust such a god?