Did G-d Create Evil?

Did G-d Create Evil?
By Aron Moss
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Question:

Did G-d create evil? Surely G-d made everything. So although it is people who actually do evil, it was G-d who must have created the idea of evil. But if G-d is good, how could He create evil?

Answer:

Here's the paradox: Goodness exists because G-d desired it; evil exists because G-d doesn't want it.

If a human wants something, but doesn't actually do anything about it, nothing happens. You may want a piece of cake, but a cake will not materialize unless someone bakes it.

But when you're a Divine Being, your desires create reality. With G-d, just wanting something makes it exist. After all, He is all-powerful; if He wants it, what can possibly stop it from being? He wanted a world, so it was. He wanted goodness, so it was.

Now the same applies to G-d not wanting something: it too becomes reality. If G-d decides He doesn't want something, then that decision itself makes that thing exist. G-d's all-powerfulness means that even His not-wanting creates. Evil is what G-d doesn't want. So it exists.

But evil doesn't exist in the same way that goodness exists. G-d wants goodness, so its existence is true and everlasting. Evil exists as a negative, something G-d doesn't want, so its existence is flimsy and temporal. Evil is no more than an undesirable non-entity, a path not to be taken. By doing evil acts, we give evil more credit than it deserves. Our bad choices make evil into a truer existence than it really is.

In the end, evil can't prevail. It is an unwanted ghost, a temporary illusion, a thin facade. Over time evil dissipates, no matter how menacing it may seem. Wicked empires crumble, rotten ideas become exposed, and goodness eventually shines through. That's what G-d wanted all along, but He leaves it to us to achieve.

The only way to banish the ghost of evil is to turn on the light of good.

Rabbi Aron Moss teaches Kabbalah, Talmud and practical Judaism in Sydney, Australia.

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