We started with the most common answer. God gave us free will in order to have an authentic relationship with us and we messed that up. That does not give us the answer though. We wanted to know why there is evil. The next place we journeyed was to the fall of the angels. This took place before the fall of man so it would appear that evil was already in existance. Did it come about by that rebellion?
Have you noticed the mistake we made in our conversation? We had yet to define evil. So what is evil? Is it doing bad things? Is it a force? We made this parallel. God often describes himself as The Light (John 8, 9, 1 John 2). We often think of the opposite of light as darkness. That is not true. Darkness is not the opposite, but the absense of light. I cannot ask my children to go turn on the darkness. That is rediculous. The only thing I can do is to ask them to remove the light. So with that analogy in mind, I would define evil as the absense of God (darkness).
In Matthew we have Jesus giving us several examples of the Kingdom of God. At the end of these someone is not prepared and they are cast in to the place of "eternal darkness". From what we have already discussed that would be away from The Light, evil if you will. When we describe something as being evil what we are really saying is that event, that person, that experience is lacking God's presence. (Matthew 22, 25)
Back to our original question, why did God create evil? The answer is, "He didn't." Just like in the beginning he merely separates light and darkness. He is still doing it, and when Jesus returns to renew all things and establish His kingdom he will complete that separation.
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