A WORLD LYING IN INIQUITY
Looking around us at the surrounding environment, it is not difficult for an Orthodox Christian to see that the modern world is literally lying in iniquity, and that in its sinfulness mankind has not only caught up with and surpassed Sodom and Gomorrah, but also the antediluvian mankind that was destroyed by the Lord by means of the Flood. And if current mankind has not yet been destroyed by fire, as had been foretold, it is only because it still contains the requisite number of righteous ones for which the patriarch Abraham tried to bargain with God in order to save Sodom and Gomorrah (and could not), and because the Lord continues to show everlasting mercy to mankind and is granting a chance for salvation to all who can still be saved.
It is extremely difficult for an Orthodox Christian to live in a world where the sins of sodomy exceed the original ones a hundredfold. Not only the souls of righteous ones, but also the souls of all the faithful languish and suffocate in these hellish fumes… However, by his very nature an Orthodox Christian should not despair, but should rely on God’s Providence in all things, should continue to live and work on the salvation of his soul. At the same time it may be worthwhile to attain a deeper understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves. With this in mind we offer you a series of articles dealing with this issue.
Discourse on the meaning of evil
The thought of universal evil lies like a heavy burden of doubt in the hearts of many of the faithful. It seems incomprehensible to them that God allows the existence of evil, since in His omnipotence He could easily eliminate this evil… How can the infinitely merciful God tolerate a situation wherein the evil actions of a single scoundrel can doom thousands, and sometimes millions, and even up to half of mankind to misery, woe, misfortune?
Wherein lies the meaning of evil? In God’s world there is nothing meaningless.
In order to reply to these questions, we must understand the precise nature of evil. Evil does not mean suffering, misery, or poverty, but sins and moral guilt. God does not want evil. The Omnipotent God cannot approve of evil. Moreover, God forbids evil. God punishes evil. Evil or sin are a contradiction or opposition to the will of God.
The foundation of evil, as we know, was laid by the supreme angel created by God, who came out from under obedience to God’s benevolent will and became the devil. The devil is the cause of evil, and he either inspires or influences the engendering of sin in man.
It is not man’s body, as many people think, that is the source of evil. No, the body becomes the instrument of either sin or virtue not of its own accord, but by man’s will.
The true faith of Christ indicates the following two reasons for the existence of evil in the world:
(1) The first and primary reason lies in the freedom of man’s will.
(2) The second reason for the existence of evil is that bearing in mind its inevitability in order to accommodate free will, God directs even this evil towards man’s good.
Our free will is the reflection of our likeness to God. This gift from God raises man above all the other creatures in the world…
In freely choosing good and rejecting evil man magnifies God and perfects himself.
In the book of Ecclesiastes there are the following words: “He (God) created man in the beginning and left him in the hands of his own will,” i.e. God originally created man and left him with free choice.
In this manner God gives people with good will the opportunity to earn heaven for themselves, and those with evil will – to merit hell. However, both one and the other are arrived at only by means of man’s free will.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: “If you were to do good by nature and not by choice, why would God then prepare incomparable crowns? The sheep are meek, but they will never be crowned for their meekness, because their meekness comes not from choice, but from nature.”
St. Basil the Great says: “Why have we not been fashioned sinless, so that we would not be able to sin even if we so desired? For the same reason that you yourself would not consider your servants to be efficient if you kept them constrained, but only if you saw them fulfilling their duties before you voluntarily. Thus God, too, is pleased not by what is forced, but by what is done voluntarily; virtue comes from will and not from necessity, while our will depends on what is within us, and what is within us is free. Therefore, whoever criticizes the Creator for not having fashioned us sinless shows that he prefers a nature that is unfeeling, immovable and without any aspirations to a nature that is gifted with free will and independence.” In other words, such a person prefers a machine (robot) to a sentient being.
Under no circumstance does God wish for evil. However, since evil of necessity penetrated into the world through the fault of creation, God makes even this evil serve to the good in His universal plan.
For example: the sons of Jacob sold their brother Joseph into bondage. They did an evil deed. But God turned evil into good: Joseph achieved high standing in Egypt and thus had the opportunity to save his family, from which was due to come the Messiah, from famine. When several years later Joseph saw his brothers, he said to them: “You planned evil against me, but God turned it into good!”
In the apostles’ times the Jews persecuted the Christians in Palestine. And so the Christians were forced to flee from Judea, which was sanctified by the life and blood of the Saviour. However, wherever they went, they propagated the word of the Gospel. The sins of the persecutors were directed by the Divine hand towards the spread of Christianity.
The pagan Roman emperors persecuted the young Christian Church. Tens of thousands of martyrs shed their blood for Christ in those times. And this blood of martyrs became the seed for millions of new Christians. Thus here, too, the persecutors’ fury and the sins of hate and murder were channeled by God into building up the Church. The persecutors planned and committed evil, while God turned all their deeds into good.
The entire history of mankind, up to our own times, confirms the truth of these words. The greatest catastrophes for people were at the same time the greatest triumphs for religion and served to turn people to God.
We only need to have patience and to wait, for with God one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day. Moreover, this intertwining of evil into God’s plan for administering the world was not some belated adjustment or a correction of creation, but a conscious act of God’s pre-eternal will.
Protopriest Seraphim Slobodskoy