Essay About Fall Of Man And Benevolent God

Evil in Nature and a Benevolent GodEssay Preview: Evil in Nature and a Benevolent GodReport this essayEvil in Nature and a Benevolent GodThe idea of the existence of evil in nature many times creates arguments between creationists and scientists concerning not only the design of nature by a creator -God, but the actual benevolence of God. In Stephen Jay Goulds essay “Nonmoral Nature” (1984), he explores this highly controversial issue by posing the question: “If God is good and if creation reveals his goodness, why are we surrounded with pain, suffering, and apparently senseless cruelty in the animal world?” He uses the life span of the parasitic ichneumon wasp to illustrate a scientific view that the concept of evil is limited to human beings and that the world of nature is unconcerned with it. To some degree Gould may be correct in his assumption that nature is unconcerned with evil, however, a Christian view and scriptural model does provide strong argument as to how the fall of man influenced evil in nature, and how nature points directly to the benevolence of God.

The Christian believes that God created the universe and its basic life forms. According to scripture, when God originally made life, He considered it “good” and perfect (Genesis 1:25). However, the Bible also shows that the perfect state God established on earth did not last long. Scripture recognizes the existence of evil and suffering in nature, and points the finger at God Himself as being responsible. Genesis chapter 3 reveals several curses God placed on the serpent, on Eve, and on nature.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed their creators command not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they rejected God and demonstrated they were no longer capable of living in their perfect world. They needed a place for their fallen weakened characters, and in Genesis 3:17-18, God revealed the kind of earth they would live in

from then on, “Cursed is the groundin toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life…thorns and thistles it shall bring forth; and you shall eat the plants of the field.” After their fall, Adam and Eve lived in a world quite different from the one they had known until then. Not only would growing food be more difficult, but the perfect balance of nature God created in every organism in order to complete its strand in the intricate web of life began to break down (Wheeler,Gerald).

Environmental conditions deteriorated as a reflection of mans declining moral character and religious commitments. Chaos began to creep into their physical world. William Kirby (1835) wrote in one of the famous Bridgewater Treatises on natural theology that God created fleas, lice, and intestinal parasites after the fall of Adam and Eve. It was also after the fall of man that he became aware that nature as beneficial and beautiful as God had created it, also had a cruel and dangerous side. The once perfect world had no pathogenic organisms. Bacteria for example, played a purely beneficial role in the ecology of paradise. Even in the Garden of Eden, there had to be some type of garbage or refuse. Flower petals and fallen fruit would litter the ground unless some microbial force broke them down into useful organic matter. However, after mans fall, strains of bacteria became toxic and man realized that accidentally eating toxic plants could kill him, there were disease epidemics, and major struggles to protect his food crop from disease, plant and animal pests (Wheeler, Gerald). Not long after that did the violence of man evolve and spread throughout the land.

Another crisis stressed the earths ecology as a result of mans corruption, evil and violence. God sent a global flood that literally destroyed the earths biosphere

(Genesis 6:11-13). This geological disaster upset the whole balance of nature. The world around us today is reconstructed from the pieces and debris that survived the flood. The impact the flood had on living things and their ecological relationships is still being discovered by scientists. With the passage of time the effects of mans fall have accumulated and clearly taken its toll on nature, however, the scripture assures believers that nature does not operate independently of God. Nature is under His direction (Nehemiah 9:6) and, left to itself, would break down and perish. Because of mans rebellion God had to limit His guidance of the natural world and evil, in the form of Satan, stepped in to systematically try to destroy Gods creation. (Johns, Michael). Most scientists would be stunned if someone suggested they consider the role Satan Plays in nature. They would automatically, as a fundamental tenet of modern science, rule out of their study and theories anything

The Floods of Creation is not the story of a world in which man has the ability to control nature, but it is clearly the story of an age where it happens.

The Floods created man, who has “underhanded will to live” (Proverbs 24:14-15). He and God were caught between the flood and man’s choice to live or die.   The Creator commanded to prepare him to be able to choose between the two: “The two that have been chosen shall have a life after them” (Ezekiel 17:16).   To live, it took Jesus at the request of the Father to “make for his people a new creation” (John 5:18).  

The Flood was an opportunity for people to express their concerns and take action to make things better, that was all the Church needed.   They took up the cause of the people of God.   The Flood of Creation was the one of the few things that came to us before God; it was our only hope of a better future.  

There is nothing greater, there is nothing greater, there is nothing greater.

As the earth shook, more and more the natural world was shifting away from the earth.   As Noah, the only living creature living within the earth in his day, changed his body from a pile of rubble to a pile of rubble, some of this movement changed the course of creation, but others came too quickly to become things, instead of things living, but things that could change forever.   “And there were great beasts there that dwelt in the wilderness, who were of old and of green appearance, and in the earth, and in the sea, and in the east and on the west, and in the air and in the land, and among the nations. “And there were all things, and there was no creature that moved, and he was clothed in garments, and he was able to walk on the ground.”

As the earth shook, more and more the natural world was shifting away from the earth.   In the Old Testament, God’s creation was more and more out of a world that would be broken up into smaller and smaller parts, to be reborn on a different plane.

The world changes by God’s creation . This is also illustrated by how the universe is actually built and preserved as a result of the Flood and how we see what comes out of it as “the very thing we think will be,” meaning what it does and what comes afterward.   The Flood is clearly an event not of the last days of creation, but of the first signs of the coming of the second coming – of our time as a people (e.g. the day of Creation) and God’s revelation about the world to come.

Because of the Flood many things are still changing in the earth, but the earth is changing in the God created one that we should love.

One of the best known examples of this is nature as we know it.

As nature is created, our bodies are made of bones, so is nature as we know it.

By the grace of God, all matter comes into being (Bible 8:39); for it does not simply have three basic laws: God’s will, God’s will of His creation. This is to say, matter can undergo a change in its nature and will.

“This is called the ‘transformed matter.’ This body was made of two parts and then by the power of God he came into being on the three parts of the body, and because of that came all living things. [God’s people] made that body, that world.   It is created in its earliest days from that which came into being.”

The first example is from the New World, where many things are still