What's your view on Isaiah 45:7 ('I make peace, and create evil')?

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

I've never known a Bible-believer that could take "God" stating "I create evil" at face value. What's your view on it?

First, we've got to deal with linguistic issues. Even the best apologists can't save the verse I'm afraid:

Notice that the context of the verse is dealing with who God is and that it is God who speaks of natural phenomena (sun, light, dark) and that it is God who is able to cause "well-being" as well as "calamity." Contextually, this verse is dealing with natural disasters and human comfort issues. It is not speaking of moral evil. Rather, it is dealing with calamity, distress, etc.
carm.org...

What's the problem? The verse blows apart the notion that the Biblical "God" is "good" and that's an essential belief for most Bible-believers.

After all, if the best interpretation of the verse is that "God" 'only' creates "calamity, distress, etc.", is that a manifestation of a "good" entity? Not by any evaluative measures I'm familiar with.

So, what we're left with is a "God" that is something like "the force" from Star Wars. It's the positive and the negative side simultaneously. There's a view that you'll never hear from a television evangelist. Ironically, it's a far more interesting view than what the average Bible-believer believes.

Some will argue that all versus have to be taken in context of the entire Bible. Well, let's do that then. Please start with "God" bringing calamity by killing almost everyone in the "great flood" and later by cruelly toying with his faithful servant Job to win a bet with "Satan." And that's just the tip of the iceberg of course.

I think it's an interesting thought experiment to think of "God" as being exactly what Isaiah 45:7 says...good and evil simultaneously.

I, personally don't have a problem as seeing God as all powerful and encompassing the power to have good or bad things happen.
I have thought alot about the story of Job and have come to the conclusion that God already knew what Job would do and used Job for an example. Was it cruel of God to use Job this way? Well Job in his faith didn't think so and seemed happy to start over with a new family. I like to think that Jobs first family went to God.
Now you've got me thinking deeply, thanks for that.

a reply to: Profusion

'God is good' is a typical monotheistic consideration.
Asian culture (Taoism) would rather consider that each things has a dual aspect : good and bad.
As above, so bellow; the divine realm is no exception.
Remember the Ying-Yang symbol ?
It's where you have the most white that the black dot appears, and it's in the middle of the black part that comes the white ...
Bible teaches : don't judge if you don't want to be judged. It's probably because - as humans - we tend to classify things in an absolute way as good or bad.

a reply to: Profusion

All the more reason to take every single religious book on the planet and throw it into the very pit of hell.

originally posted by: Profusion
What's the problem?

I believe it is that you are lying.

Isa 45:7
I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.

Examples in the Bible would be the Flood. Sodom and Gomorrah.

a reply to: Profusion

You know those scientists that do experiments on rats - they inject some with this, and some with that, put them through mazes, genetically experiment on them, some become pets, some become food, some are black, some are white, some are multi-coloured, some are big and some are small.

Planet earth is the lab, humans are the rats and God "are" the scientists.

the "pet" humans wrote the bible (and all religious documents), not God - Religion is one of the control mechanisms of the experiment(s), war is another and economics is another still.

Some of the scientists in the lab want to free the rats, other scientists (the ones in charge) want to keep the experiment going - forever.

Aliens, angels, advanced humans from the future or interdimensional beings = irrelevant memes to the experiment.

That's my view on the book (of Isaiah), since you asked.

What "God" punishes innocent African children with famine and early death and at the same time rewards fat turds with wealth and control?

It is milk to say that evil can not come from God.

It is strong meat to look up "evil" in a good concordance, and see all the times God did evil, or repented of the evil He had intended to do. Evil is a teaching tool, just like Paul wrote about - we are raised with admonitions and the rod of correction, and it is unpleasant at the time, but produces much fruit in us.

In the book of Job I recall that Satan made a proposal to God to do such-and-such to Job, and God agreed for Satan to do it (I'm sure He knew the outcome.) but He put limits on the evil that could be done. Within these limits, God APPROVED - even to the death of those around Job. You've got to get your mind around that. God plainly says that He created evil, it was He who planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden (apart from Him was noting made that was made), it was He who made Satan (but not Hell), and it was He who Moses dissuaded from doing evil to the children of Israel. Open a concordance and look at all the references for "evil" - can you begin to see that God uses evil as the Rod of Correction? God has great purposes in mind, and He is sovereign in how He reaches those purposes. He also tells us it is none of our business, with His comments on the pot questioning the potter. Beyond that, do not blame God for the evil men do, for all that kind of evil happens because men have forgotten God.

a reply to: Profusion

The cop out by those who created and wrote down the God concept in the first place through which they slyly liked to rule.

They had to give God a get-out card to play, because clearly he had no control over natural disasters and if the 'believers asked why not as he was all powerful (as they claimed), they came up with the idea that God caused these disasters if he desired. e.g. don 't question anything God doesn't deal with, as he has 'higher motives above your minimal understanding which ….. we will eventually interpret for you when it suits us.

This isn't really about Gods claimed powers to be a God, its about excusing his lack of them and making a virtue of people not questioning the authority of the priesthood. The whole ethos of the bible is about getting people to accept their lot and not complain because, by doing so they would get into heaven. Its a handbook for basic dictatorship made up with some pretty uncouth tales, which fortunately most don't get to read.

a reply to: Profusion

God holds truth of His word above His own name (Psalm 138:2). The truth can be rather ugly when His creation is given the full freedom to choose between the potentials of righteousness and evil. The truth is, some will choose righteousness and some will choose evil. Without the choice you wouldn't be free.

It shows you God's true priority: truth.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

Pay attention to the wording in the Hebrew.

Isaia 45:7
יוצר אור ובורא
חשך עשה שלום
ובורא רע אני יהוה
עשה כל־אלה׃

יוצר-(yothzer) means to form or shape from an existing material.
God formed (יוצר) the Light from a pre-existing material. What existed before all creation? Only God. So the Light, God formed from His own nature.

ובורא-(uburah) means created from nothing.
God created from nothing (ובורא) the darkness.

עשה-(ghasher) means to model/design something (perhaps a system/machine/institution) after a pre-existing format or pattern.

God modeled (עשה) peace after a pre-existing design/format. Again this would have to come from God's own nature.

But again!!

God created from nothing (ובורא) Evil (the same way He did for darkness.)

So, God went beyond Himself to give us the freedom of personal choice: Either we choose His own Light and Peace or we choose the Darkness and Evil that He did not form or design from His own nature.

a reply to: Profusion

God created the knowledge of good and evil, represented by a tree in the garden. And God gave men freewill to choose to be disobedient and choose an evil self serving life over a loving community focused life.

He doesn't commit evil, but he created the path of evil which many have gone down. Narrow is the path that leads to righteousness and few have taken it.

a reply to: Sublimecraft

What "God" punishes innocent African children with famine and early death and at the same time rewards fat turds with wealth and control?

A Malevolent One.

a reply to: Profusion

So a natural disaster is "evil" or it just is? I think it's the latter. I know many will come back and say Christians always claim this or that natural disaster was God punishing this or that group. But in the main, there is little to no evidence of God's hand in any of those events. All so far have had explanations or been within the scope of what happens naturally or not been indicative of prophetic fulfillment in any way.

We can rail against the idea that these disasters exist and create calamity for the people who happen to live in their path, but how many times do people also say things like ... live in the realm of an active volcano and ... or live in a floodplain and ... or live on a fault zone and ... or live in tornado alley and ...?

What you are really seeing is our God-given sense of what's fair and what's not. We don't like seeing the innocents suffer, nor do we like seeing people we consider to be otherwise good being the victims of otherwise impersonal, random acts of nature. It messes with our sense of what should be fair and just and right in the world.

But in reality these disasters are just impersonal acts of nature.

The wildfires didn't walk up and down the doors of the neighborhoods they burned out asking if the people living inside were morally upright or hateful @ssh*les before planning a carefully controlled burn. They just did what they do in the manner of nature - doing what it does.

And on the flip side, the ecosystems of those areas do rely on being burned out periodically. It's a natural thing to have happen. There will be plants, animals, etc., that will benefit from these fires. Should God be a jerk and stop wildfires in the area entirely to please humans? Wouldn't that be selfish of us? Sometimes, what is ultimately "good" isn't always what we might think it is and long-term, our good might be accomplished by nature having its way there.

Or maybe you're an athlete. Obviously, your good is to win, but is it fair to ask God for victory? Why or why not? I stopped asking for victory really early on in my athletic career. What you have done?

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

I agree with you.
You can't have one without the other. Light is what creates darkness. If there were only darkness then there would be no choice, only light makes the distinction.

It is a package deal.

We have a choice to make, either we become light/let it pass through us or we become an obstacle for the light to encounter and thus casting a shadow.

We must be like light, like God, abstain from resisting the light or God as to not cast darkness.

a reply to: Profusion

We are here - separated from God - because of sin. It is not supposed to be all rainbows and unicorns.