Greetings oatmeal, Instead of adding new items, a few comments on two subjects that you mentioned.
Yes, but does this rule out the popular prosperity doctrine.
How do you understand the following?:
Isaiah 45:7 (KJV): I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
How do you understand the extreme circumstances brought upon Job which Job and the record attributes to God?
Job 1:20–22 (KJV): 20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. 22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
Job 42:11 (KJV): Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.
God was in control of the sufferings of Job.
Kind regards
Trevor
Great questions!
The verses you point out and the verses I pointed out would seem to be contradictory at the very least.
For instance:
God is light and in him is no darkness at all I John 1:5
in contrast to
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things
One the first things we must acknowledge is that scripture has passages that are literal and passages that are figurative.
Thus we have a challenge to our rightly dividing the word of truth for we must learn to distinguish which passages are literal and grammatically correct and which verses are not literal or deviate from standard grammatical practices.
For example, in grade school, I was taught the figure of speech simile. A simile is a figure of speech, a non literal expresssion, used for comparison, that can be identified by the use of the words "like" or "as" in its structure.
One verse found early in scripture is
Genesis 25:25
And the first came out red, all over
like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.
Was Esau wearing a hairy garment? No, absolutely not. To take this passage literally would be ridiculous, Infants are born naked, they are not wearing clothes as they leave the mother's womb.
The point of the phrase is to emphasize how red and hairy Esau was when he was born. He must have been an unusual sight indeed.
From Matthew we read:
Matthew 3:16
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending
like a dove, and lighting upon him:
Was the Spirit of God literally a dove? No, it was like a dove. How was it like a dove? Matthew seems to be referring to its manner of descent, not its bodily form.
However, is that the only characteristic that is being compared?
Luke is more specific. It makes specific reference to its bodily form
Luke 3:22
And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape
like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.
Are the two verses contradictory? Not at all, both are true. The Spirit of God that descended upon Jesus Christ not only looked like a dove but likewise descended like a dove. It did not drop like a stone from heaven onto Jesus Christ, it did not crash into him, like an object dropped or thrown, It lighted gently upon him.
With the above illustrations in mind we can take another step forward. There are multitudes of other figures of speech used in scripture.
Another figure of speech used in scripture is idiom. An idiom is a phrase used in a particular culture to express an idea. The phrase is not literal but is used in that culture to express a specific idea or ideas that are not literally transmitted by the words used.
Maybe you are familiar with the American expression euphimistically referring to someone's death. "He bought the farm" Taken literally, there is no possible way a foreigner would equate the literal meaning of those words with someone dying yet, there it is. Somehow for some Americans, "buying a farm" is equivalent in meaning to "death" Ridiculous, but there it is. There is a transition in the context where it does communicate, but explaining would take too much time and space and effort.
One of the Hebrew idioms used in scripture is the idiom of permission. That is, a person is attributed with being the cause of an action where in fact, they only permitted it to happen. In our culture, we see this happen in lawsuits. Someone might be injured at work and the plaintiffs lawyer blames the employer for the accident yet the blame could fall squarely on the mistakes of the injured person. They took a risk and they got injured, even against company policy, yet the employer ends up paying medical costs and may actually end up paying punitive damages. Is that just? If the employee was actually at fault for the injury why should the employer pay at all? That is our system.
Likewise we see God taking the responsibility for activities that He did not do but happened "under His watch" so to speak. God even foresaw the problem but let it happen. Why would God let it happen? Because God gave people free will and God does not inhibit people from exercising that free will even if exercising it causes damage to themselves and others. God refers to those ill begotten actions as sin. We willfully sin and God lets us do it because God takes responsibility for giving us the ability to choose.
God did not literally create evil but allowed those with free will to deviate from good thus they initiated evil. The absence of good in part or in whole is evil. Taken to an extreme, that absence is the opposite of good.
As far as darkness is concerned, the same is the case.
(it might be worthy to point out that darkness as in the absence of literal light, ie, photons. is not always a bad thing. God made provision for both night and day back in Genesis 1. Night is a time of rest and sleep for most people. It is easier to sleep in darkness than to sleep with your face facing the noonday sun. We must look at context to determine the meaning of words in certain situations)
One other example is noteworthy
Exodus 7:3
And I will harden
Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
It would seem that God claims that He will Himself harden Pharaoh's heart. Yet, it is God's will that all men be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. I Timothy 2:4.
I see this many times on this website. Someone points out a clear verse and someone of a different beliefe rejects that verse and harden's their heart against that truth.
Pharaoh was confronted with the truth and rejected it, Pharaoh himself chose to harden his heart against the truth. God foresaw this and declared it would happen. Some people prefer darkness over light, so they harden themselves against the light. John 3:14-21 especially verses 19-21
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
That is a lot of info but that is why we study God's word, to learn and do.
There are more reasons that we seem to see God being blamed for evil However, for brevity I will not go there now.
