Yes, God Does Allow Evil Like COVID-19

I believe Coronavirus is now softening peoples hearts to God's message like tenderizing of meat. The repeated blows of a fist or hammer softens otherwise hard meat into something palatable. I think now is a good time to introduce people to deeper theological concepts not usually ventured towards in normal days. I believe some of them will now be more easily digestible. By forcing us to sit often alone in our homes has made us His captive audience...literally.

In Isaiah 45:7 we clearly see it state the following in the Young’s Literal Translation and the literal translation is quite disturbing:

“Forming light, and preparing darkness, making peace, and preparing evil, I the Lord, doing all these things.” Isaiah 45:7

It reads like this in the Hebrew:

יוצר אור ובורא חשך עשה שלום ובורא רע אני יהוה עשה כל אלה׃

"…one forming-and-one forming light-darkness-one making-well being-and one creating-evil-I Yahweh-one-making-all of-these"

So there it is right in the text, God prepares or created evil. Right?

Whoa boy…here we go! What do we do with this? It's very clearly רָ֑ע Ro or evil, there is no clarification needed here, it means what it means. Evil is evil. Or is it? We are profusely taught throughout Scripture that God does not create evil but in His sovereignty He allows it. So here we have a clear statement that God does indeed make or create evil.

While we’re at it what’s up with Jeremiah and Amos:

Jeremiah 18:11~ “Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.” 

Lamentations 3:38~ “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?

Amos 3:6~ “When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?

Then we have 1 John 1:5 which tells us just the opposite:

“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

How are these not contradictory? As a Christian can you even explain these apparent contradictions? Yes you can.

First and foremost, when confronted with these paradoxical statements, a Christian must always stand firm in their conviction in the Inerrancy of Scripture. The pattern of Scripture and previous and later statements of God’s moral perfection in Matthew 5:48 and his inability to sin in Hebrews 6:18 should set the stage for our resolute mindset.

God is absolutely just and must judge evil not create it. As such we must educate ourselves on many of these more prominent passages that are often taken out of context and have a reasonable defense for them. As you can see from my last sentence, the root of explaining the apparent contradiction of these passages is rooted in context or understanding the surrounding texts and ideas Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos are putting forth to the reader.

The Hebrew word here is clearly “evil” but the question remains: Does it mean literal evil or premeditated action bent on a negative outcome? If it is evil as stated, what kind is it? This word in its context does not necessarily relegate it to a moral negative or malevolent action. This just couldn’t be. The entire pattern of Scripture elsewhere says just the opposite. When read in context the picture broadens and makes more sense.

This passage is talking to and about the commissioning of Cyrus who is God’s anointed through Isaiah (v.1)

Isaiah 45:1 “This is what the LORD says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut…” 

Isaiah 45:5-7 “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create evil; I, the LORD, do all these things.

As can be understood from the context Isaiah is speaking of the attributes of God and His sovereignty and omnipotence. As Sovereign omnipotent God He is aware of all things in His creation and can do what He wishes, and allow or forbid things as He sees fit. This includes working through Cyrus even if Cyrus is unaware of God or God using him (i.e.: Pharaoh’s hardened heart, Joseph’s bros). 

So too the apparent evil of the Holocaust or COVID-19 mowing down people through a machine gun or virus. Natural evils like Coronavirus often stem from the fact that humanity lives in a fallen world and it just wasn't created to be this way but through human actions flaws were introduced to it. Sin, disease and death.

The quintessential example of this is God allowing the evil of crucifixion. It paved the way to allow for the atonement of sin through the sacrifice of Christ. Evil? Yes. Was it caused by God? No. Allowed by God? Yes. Why? In the end it will bring glory to God Himself. There was/is overarching contexts. With this in mind we need to see that God isn’t necessarily the author of all things that take place in Creation. Although He is aware of them and knows they will happen, He is not the Creator of them. This is especially the case with evil or COVID-19. When God creates a being (man) with freewill to love, that being also has the freewill to hate, create havoc or evil. 

What we see is this: For His ultimate glory, He allows evil to exist and persist for reasons of His own and due to justifications of logic that are too complex to explain in a short post such as this. They are justifications in logic that have to do with the redemptive plan of mankind through Christ. We see exactly that in the endgame of Joseph and his brothers.

Genesis 50:20 ~ You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Now that we know this we can see that the 'evil' in Isaiah 45:7 is preconditioned by the previous and later verses to address God’s overall character and how it interacts with His creation (Cyrus) and how He rules over everything and all people. So let us look at the word “רָ֑ע /Ro” again. In this context we are not talking about evil as evil but as something, an event transpiring that has less than a positive outcome. It is something God allows, not something God 'is' or something that manifests from God’s being. This “evil” sounds an awful lot like an “effect” of God allowing something, not Him being the cause of it. Like a virus. 

“I bring prosperity and create evil”. God brings prosperity. How? Through other people or other things in the creation by either allowing things to happen or not forbidding them. As a counterpoint of contrast to this statement we see that God creates (allows) evil. In this instance it is more akin to terrible “misfortune” or “tragedy”, not evil in reality. In the Book of Job we see Job losing everything but we don’t necessarily see it as evil so much as we see it as misfortune and tragedy. So too Coronavirus. Even in Job’s case of misfortune and tragedy did God cause it or did He allow it as a sovereign God? I posit He allowed Satan to do what he did to prove a point.

To my initial point, this must be seen under the umbrella of Isaiah himself and the fact that he was a prophet that was prophesying to a sin deadened culture (like America) and no one was listening just like the world today under the looming threat of Coronavirus. When people don’t listen when you’re talking or writing to them, what do you normally do? Talk louder?

So God created the “potential” for evil by allowing for beings with freewill. This is no different than a sword or gun being used as a weapon. Swords and guns are inanimate objects without a will of their own.  Swords and guns can be turned into farming implements and tools too. It isn’t until a human with will acts upon these objects that they become deadly weapons or become tools. It is in the flawed created being (humans) that evil is “actualized”. This hardly makes God guilty. That’s like blaming your parents for getting a speeding ticket on the Interstate 95. The truth is that God created only good things or very good things. Go back to Genesis 1 and 2 and refresh your memory on that one. Mankind actualized latent potential of evil by committing evil acts. God allows evil but never brings it into being or encourages it. He judges it.

Regardless of evil and sins source, we know unequivocally that there is only One who can overcome disease and will forgive sin and that is God Himself.