I found a quote earlier on Facebook from one of my BMT friends. The quote was from a Greek philosopher, not as well known as Aristotle, or Plato, but he had some good questions, nonetheless.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” -Epicurus

The only questions that deserve a positive “yes” as the answer belong in the second set. “Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?”. To go further into the first question, God is able and willing, as He gave up His one and only Son so that we may be forgiving of our sins and break away from the evil in the world. He is willing to stop it; He wants to stop it. Even though He can stop it, He refuses because of our free will. God gave us free will before evil entered the world; and He’s not one to change His mind. God has a definite plan for how the world works, but He still allows us to make our own choices. Thus, is He able? Of course, He is the master of the universe, the one that created the earth and heavens. He’s the head hancho of everything we have come to know and that which we still have yet to discover. Is He willing? He sacrifice His Son; doing what He stopped Abraham from doing for Him more than a thousand years prior. If a god makes the ultimate sacrifice before his own people, then I believe that’s a true testimate of will, don’t you?

So now we are faced with the second question. “Then whence cometh evil?” Albert Einstein proved in a famous debate with one of his college professors that evil is simply a man-made term to describe the absense of God. It is like the absense of heat, which we call cold; or the absense of light, which we call dark. Heat is the rendition of active molecules bouncing off of each other and causing tension, generating energy, producing heat. When these molecules are not moving, what is happening instead? Nothing. Heat is no longer present. So how do we describe its absense? With the word “cold”. The same can be said for light and dark.

I won’t continue to beat a dead horse; so I’ll just say it. It seems to me that Epicurus merely wanted to complain without actually looking into what he was asking about. Stubborn athiests of asked the same questions again and again, and its always a question of “why”. But the Father tells us to “be still, and know that I Am God”.