Love Was Here First

Most people in the west, religious or not, are aware of the Christian concept of original sin. Atheists take great exception to this concept. Ignoring the behaviour of their’s and other people’s children - very, very young children - these people say that we are born good and only do wrong because we’ve been taught to do wrong. Ya, parents teach their toddler to smack the two-year-old sitting next to her to steal his toy. They’ve taught their one year old to shake his head “no” he doesn’t have a cookie behind his back when he clearly does.

As well, atheists make quite a deal out of God knowing in advance that people would decide to disobey Him. They say that knowing something will happen is the same as causing that event to happen. And to make sure that all their bases are covered, besides accusing God of creating evil, atheists also accuse God of being powerless to do anything about the evil that is now in the world - and to top it off, when the topic suits, atheists say that evil does not exist.

Well, when you're done shaking your head and rubbing your eyes at the absurdity of atheist thinking, yes God did know that we would choose to ignore good and seek out after evil. That’s why He provided for a means of forgiveness before any disobedience had ever taken place; before in fact the material universe was even brought into being out of literally nothing.

As the atheist’s pseudo clever ditty goes:
Either God is not all powerful so we still have evil - or
God is not all good so we still have evil
Since we still have evil, obviously God does not exist.

Our Creator provided for a means of salvation before we were ever created.
Nothing was left to chance.
Yes there is evil, but God’s grace is greater.
Yes there is evil, but Love was here first.
Because God is all powerful, He CAN rid the universe of evil.
Because God is all good, He WILL rid the universe of evil.

He’s allowing people to experience evil for eighty or ninety years to help them decide what to do about it. As is perfectly clear, we’re more than willing to allow evil to exist as long as its ill effects only touch the lives of someone else. As long as the slum is across the train tracks. As long as the starving children are on another continent. As long as it's someone else's child who's caught up in sexual slavery. As long as someone else is dying in the war evil is just not that big a deal to most people.

God also allows this short exposure to evil to help us decide what to do about our relationship with our Creator who is willing, at His own expense to save us from the evil that resides within ourselves. God allows us to be exposed to evil for a few decades because He uses the suffering, pain and tragedy that comes with a fallen world as a means of separating those who are for Him from those who are against Him. Those who are in rebellion to their Creator reject His help. The rest of us turn to Him for help.

When this process is completed -
God CAN and WILL rid the universe of evil.
He promised to do that and He showed us the bloodied corpse of His Son as a deposit and guarantee that nothing will stop Him from accomplishing His goal.

Love was here first.

Original Grace put in place the opportunity for you to experience salvation even before you knew you needed it.

Love - not evil - will have the final word.