Why God Doesn’t Kill the Devil
By Nicholas Ifkovits
Bill Maher posed the question; “Why doesn’t God just kill the devil and eliminate evil in the world?”
The short answer; Because then God would be killing the very mechanism by which He tests His human creation, and with it His own children.
Whether you believe it or not you are created in the image of God. What does that mean? That God looks like a boy? A girl? An old man or woman? No. Obviously that’s silly. You are a reflection of God in that you have will. And you (mankind) and God are the only creatures in existence that do.
True, various animals have varying degrees of consciousness and intelligence, but this is imprisoned within the confines of instinct. They have to do what they are programmed to do. A bird can’t, for example, decide on a whim to fly west for the winter if it’s programmed to fly south. It has no choice. You do. Like God, you have will because you are a child of God.
In a twist stranger than fiction, God cannot kill the devil without killing you, His ultimate creation. If God were to “whomp on the devil” as Bill Maher puts it, thereby eliminating evil in the world, God would be eliminating your ability to choose evil and with it your will, thus reducing you to a mindless automaton. A mere robot in a world reduced to a lifeless play-set for a lonely God to tinker with.
But it’s clear that God doesn’t want to create a plastic toy, God wants to create life. Companionship. Willful creatures not unlike himself.
Like you, God wants to reproduce himself by producing children. And to those who choose life (God) over death (the devil) the promise has been made: they will be born again into His kingdom where they will reside forever as His offspring ‑ the children of God.
See four philosophical, thought-provoking novels at: www.abookshops.com