Short Essay 1 Theo 202

Antonio Valines

THEO-202 B11 LUO

Short Essay 1

Short Essay on Hamartiology: The Problem of Evil (Theodicy).

The biggest factor in trying to understand evil is that one must be fully willing to comprehend that evil is everywhere you look, and it does appear as time goes on that these random acts of evil worsen from a human perspective. I however elect to think of evil from a biblical standpoint and therefore choose to recognize it as a mere sign that the last days are near. For the Bible foretells of these days in 2 Timothy when Paul emphasizes to young Timothy that “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.” (NIV, 2011) So therefore I feel that the problem with evil regarding mankind is no respect or love for God anymore. We’ve taken God out of everyday living, and it has resulted in increased insanity throughout all nations. Without God it is even more difficult to live a righteous life due to the lack of real moral existence or guidance. We however fail at the freedom of choice just as Adam and Eve did in the beginning and under estimate the craftiness of Satan failing to truly rationalize that God does allow evil in order to achieve the ultimately greater good of free will. Case and point of free will and its role in evil doing, if a man elects to murder his neighbor then it is usually based upon his moral principle which in this case is obviously not based on the commandment that thou shalt not kill. On the other hand a natural evil that affected many occurred during the events of and after Hurricane Katrina, while many cried out injustice to the lack of good moral...