When bad things happen – God is not allowing it

by David Leach
(Temecula,Ca USA)

When bad things happen – God is not allowing it

The Myth: There is a popular Church teaching that God has two wills, which are:

1. A perfect will – meaning what God actually wants;
2. A permissive will – meaning what God allows even if its not His perfect will;

I wish to submit to you that this teaching is doctrinal nonsense, and that there is no such thing as “God’s permissive will”. Either something is in accordance with God’s will or it is contrary to His will. This false teaching has done incalculable harm to the character of God in the eyes of both Christians and non-Christians alike – because it makes God indirectly responsible, by supposing that He allows them, for every genocide, holocaust, murder, rape and all the other brutal, hateful acts of man.

Isa 54:14-15 (God says) In righteousness (Christ) you will be established…If anyone (NIV/NKJV) attacks you it will not be My doing…(they) shall fall for your sake.

1 Jo 3:10 …Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God…,

The truth: The reality is that the God of heaven had nothing to do with any of the heinous things that often tragically happen; but the god of this world and the people over whom he has influence had everything to do with those things:

1 Jo 5:19 …The whole world lies under the control of the wicked one (Satan). NIV

2 Cor 4:4 Satan, the god of this evil world, has blinded the minds of those who don't believe…(even deceiving them over who is responsible for evil) NLT

Joh10:10 The thief (Satan) comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy… AMP

Satan was the first being created with a freewill who disobeyed God (Ezek 28:15 and Isa 14:13-14). All spirit beings, Angels and human beings, are created with a freewill and are therefore free, that is, not under God’s control, to either obey or disobey God and His will:

Deut 30:19 (God says) …I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore (you) choose life that both you and your descendants may live;

For God to be in control: In order to change this fundamental reality into one in which God had total control over everything, God would have to do at least two things: First He would have to destroy entirely all those currently created with a freewill, that is, all Angels and all human beings. Secondly He would have to create a class of beings over which He had total control and who therefore had no freewill – in effect robots or zombies. Recognizing that such beings would not be capable of love since love requires the existence of a freewill. There is nothing in scripture to indicate God plans or even desires to do this.

God has limited Himself: Therefore God, by the limitation of what He has already set in motion – the creation of freewill beings that have the right to obey or disobey - cannot stop the wrongful acts of those who, in exercise of that right, choose to disobey Him. He is not allowing evil to happen, in the sense of turning a blind eye towards it, but by the constraint of having created a class of freewill beings, because He wanted them to have the capacity to love Him, He cannot now prevent the evil that so many of them choose.

The evidence of Adam: A classic example of where God was unable to prevent a monumental tragedy, due to the limitations He deliberately placed on Himself in creating freewill beings, is found at the beginning of the Bible – the case of the first Adam. God’s only will for Adam, on the negative side, was that he should not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God warned him of the awful consequences if he disobeyed God’s clear instruction. Now throughout the Bible God refers to trees as symbols for people or beings. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil refers to Satan. The fruit of that tree are Satan’s words. To eat the fruit is to believe Satan’s words.

If God could have stopped anything, it would have been for His newly created man to fall under the dominion of the traitor Angel from heaven. But just like Lucifer before him, Adam had been irreversibly given by God a freewill, and God could do nothing to stop him exercising that freewill. Eve first, being deceived, and then Adam, knowing what he was doing, chose to believe Satan’s words over God’s words. In that instant they both died to God and Satan became the ruler of this world. Instead of destroying them and all other freewill beings, God immediately set in motion a master plan to redeem mankind from Satan’s dominion. The plan necessitated God coming Himself in the form of a man, Jesus Christ, to atone for man’s sins and to die to his now sin infected human nature.

John 14:30 (Jesus referring to Satan) …The ruler of this world is coming…

Acts 26:17-18 (Jesus to us) I now send you…to turn them (the unsaved)…from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith that is in Me.

What allows evil to operate: God was never and is never the author of evil. Evil is the opposite of good. Jesus said “only God is good” Mat 19:17. God is the tree of life. And a good tree only brings forth good fruit. He is the God of the obedient. Satan is an evil tree who only brings forth evil fruit. He is the king of disobedience and rules over all those who are disobedient to God – that is, all the unsaved and all those Christians who choose to live according to their fallen human nature in willful independence to their redeemer.

1 Jo 5:3 Loving God means doing what he tells us to do… TLB

Heb 5:9 (Jesus) became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him,

After bad things happen: This is why bad things happen, they are always the result of beings, whether demonic or human, that are disobedient to God. However, when a bad thing has happened to a person and that person turns in their heart to God, who had nothing to do with the bad thing, God will now start constructing good out of that bad thing, just like He did with Adam. To the extent that person continues to follow God’s one and only good, pleasing and perfect will, refusing to eat any more fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, all things will now work together for good to such a person.

Ro 8:28 And we know that all that happens to us is working for our good if we love God and are fitting into his plans. TLB