Day 15: Living Daily in Reality: Why does God allow evil?
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Living daily in reality entails seeing clearly that you personally have a
loving father who made you inside his own son so that he could live the
life through you that he has planned. What we saw yesterday was that we
have had no time for that kind of thinking; we are utterly taken up with
getting enough food, clothing, and shelter to gain some sense of security
from these things; getting enough respect and recognition from other
people to give us some sense of significance; and arranging circumstances
and events so that we have a little pleasure and happiness to make life
bearable. All of this focuses us – not on some creator somewhere out
there – but solidly on this world around us; it is the source we look to
for our livelihood.

Why does our maker allow this to happen? Because of his own nature –
which is love – a real desire to give what he has and is – to others –
not because he has to but because he wants to. This means giving the free
will that he himself has – so that we are truly free to return that to
him; so he gives us the freedom to reject him and his love or to love him
in return. This was expressed by his son here on earth when he said
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you as a hen
gathers her chickens, but you would not”. It’s why throughout the years
in which the nation of Israel turned away from him to other gods, the
prophets said “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies
never come to an end”. Although God has planned that the rarest flower
has a bee or moth that is able to pollinate it and that the air pressure
of our atmosphere is precisely right for us to exist without exploding or
imploding – and although he has carefully planned your life in detail,
yet he bears all the independent selfishness and irritability you choose
to express.

The result is that this world is actually a picture of what life would be
like without a creator who is our loving Father. Just as permission to
eat of the tree of life and to reject the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil was given in the Genesis account of creation, so this present
world is a clear presentation to us of life or death – it is our
opportunity to acquiesce to our creator’s plan for us or to reject it.
However, there is no permanent life apart from our Maker’s, so our father
faces a devastating situation when He creates us. We can only be what he
is if we have his freedom, but if we use it to reject him, then we lose
any possibility of retaining life – because there is no life apart from
him!

This is why he made us in his son.