Chuck Colson says that the “first and most fundamental element of any worldview is the way it answers the questions of origins – where the universe came from and how human life began. The second element is the way it explains the human dilemma. Why is there war and suffering, disease and death?”

The Bible tells us that God created the universe and created us in His image, created us to be holy and to live by His commands, and to be part of His family. Yet God loved us so much that He imparted to us the unique dignity of being free moral agents, creatures with the ability to make choices, to choose to obey or disobey.

Going back to Genesis we read that good existed before humans were created. “And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden: but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

The Hebrew word for “good” used in the first chapters of Genesis is “Tov” and does not necessarily refer to morality. All that was created, is labeled as good (Tov). The plants to eat were good. Being alone for Adam was said to be not good. It is not morally bad. The creation that God said was good is not referring it as being morally good, but that it was beneficial to man or to the universe or well-made.

The Hebrew word translated into English as evil is “ra.” This word can then refer to the condition of things that are dangerous, harmful or destructive to man. Thus, the words tov and ra can be regarded as “well-being and calamity”, “blessedness and disaster”, or “goodness and destruction.”

The Hebrew word for knowledge is “da’ath” and the verb to know is “yada”. The words convey more than just understanding something but instead signify experiencing something, such as when scriptures use the word to know in reference to sexual experiences.

In an article by Matt Johnson on the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he says “tov and ra, then, are alternate, contrasting states which God can bring about. They are two different ways in which he can act and be experienced. God can bring about tov (think, Eden), but also ra (think, the flood). Putting this all together, the “knowledge of tov and ra” acquired by Adam and Eve brought about the realization that God, whom Adam and Eve had, up until now, experienced only as the giver of blessings, was, in fact, quite dangerous. It was the realization that God poses a very real hazard to mankind: he could cause man both tov and ra.”

It is this characteristic that man fails to understand or accept. That God is capable of creating good and destruction. God has the power to release blessings and curses. How will we handle both?

Isaiah 45:7 says “The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating disaster; I am the LORD who does all these things.”

Exodus 4:11 says, “The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

Adam and Eve experienced the knowledge of paradise in the Garden of Eden walking with God, then they experienced calamity, outside of paradise with increased labor pains in childbirth and unproductive toil. God is capable of giving both experiences.

Another angle are the Latin words for evil, negation and privation. In other words, evil is the negative of good, such as in the words ungodliness, unethical, disobedience. Negatio is the negation of the positive root of the word. Privatio is the lack or want of the positive word. Thus, evil is the absence of something positive. RC Sproul struggled with the question of evil, but says, “evil cannot exist in and of itself. It depends on the corruption of that which is good for its existence.” Perhaps evil is what exists or happens outside of God’s intervention.

John Stuart Mill posed the famous question, “If God desires there to be evil in the world, then He is not good. If he does not desire there to be evil, yet evil exists, then He is not omnipotent. Thus, if evil exists God is either not loving or not all-powerful.”

You cannot say God desires there to be evil in the world, but you can say He allows it, and He allows it as a consequence of human beings not submitting to his authority and trying to do things their own way or even making themselves out as gods. If we see the word evil as calamity, destruction, sickness and suffering, then yes, God does bring it on.

Joshua gave instruction to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 30:19, “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

Whether it is “good or evil”, “blessings and curses”, “goodness and destruction”, our response is what counts. God has done his part and sent his Son to atone for our disobedience on the cross. Whether we face blessings or difficulties, will we accept God’s offer of reconciliation and live with Him in the new Paradise?