why did God who is all good create satan {Lucifer} who is all evil "free will" is not an acceptable answer

Question

The nuns told me evil comes from "free will" .I would like a less "programed" answer.I've never understood the reglious good evil conflict .God by christian definition is all good . How can he create evil. This is a serious question.

Answer 1

In ancient Jewish tradition Satan is simply an angel doing the work that God assigned to Satan to do.

The word Satan means challenger. With the idea of Satan challenging us, or tempting if you will. This description sees Satan as the angel who is the embodiment of man's challenges. This idea of Satan works closely with God as an integral part of God plan for us. His job is to make choosing good over evil enough of a challenge so that it becomes clear to us that there can be only one meaningful or logical choice.

Contrast this to Christianity, which sees Satan as God's opponent. In Jewish thought, the idea that there exists anything capable of setting itself up as God's opponent would be considered polytheistic or setting up the devil to be an equally powerful polarity to god or a demigod.

Oddly, proof for The Christian satan/devil mythology is supposedly found in the ancient Jewish texts that were borrowed to create the bible. One can’t help but wonder how Christians came up with such a fantastically different interpretation of Gods assistant Satan in their theology.

Other hints about Satan’s role in human relations can be seen if you look at the name Lucifer. It meaning in the original tongue translates as Light bearer or light bringer. Essentially the bringer of enlightenment. The temptations of the Satan idea bring all of us eventually into Gods light. Hardly the Evil entity of Christian mythology.

Love and blessings
don

Answer 2

The idea of an 'all good' and 'all powerful' diety actually dates back to a very outmoded idea:

It used to be thought that only corruption can spread naturally in the world... or in other words, nothing could produce something 'more perfect' than itself. If this were true, it's a relatively simple matter to trace the line back and conclude that whatever created the universe must be all powerful and all good.

A good example of this line of reasoning can be found in Rene Descartes' book "Meditations on First Philosophy":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy

By this original line of reasoning, anything that you see in the universe that is bad, evil, broken, corrupt, or whatnot, arose from the natural destruction of the universe on good things. Even Lucifer, after all, was once an angel... he just supposedly fell away from the true faith.

I think, however, that it is pretty obvious that everything is not getting worse and worse. Children are not necessarily 'less perfect' then their parents - many healthy, intelligent, productive people have sprung from roots that were diseased, stupid, and wasteful. Likewise, if we look at history, we see many empires disssolve, but we also see many new ones form... nor, I think, can we say that all the old empires are superior to all the new ones! Science in particular becomes more and more perfect and descriptive as time goes by and it is added to or sheared away by generations of people.

Hope that answers your question and gives you lots of things to think about too!

Answer 3

God created Lucifer as the most beautiful angel. This kind of went to Lucifer's head. He thought he was greater than his creator. He was the second angel in command, if my memory serves me correctly. He decided it was time to overthrow his creator. So the attempt was made. God cast him from heaven. He is not some big ugly thing that would scare the pants off of anyone. Why do you think that sin is so alluring? So man has his choice or woman for that matter, serve that which is good or their own personal vanity etc. Do that which is good or follow those of Satan. Satan stands before God day and night and accuses the saints, Gods people. Why do you think Job was so tempted?

Answer 4

Satan was a created angel called Lucifer. In the Book of Isaiah it says that Lucifer was the most beautiful angel! But Lucifer could not be satisfied with the fact that he had such great beauty and as an angel he had free reign in heaven much like all the other angels!
Pride set in and Lucifer wanted to be God! Satan with a third of the angels, caused a war in heaven whereby God cast satan and his fallen angels(demons), out of his perfect heaven!

You see God did not create Lucifer to be evil, Lucifer chose to be evil!

Answer 5

But free will is a justifiable answer. Free will is not innately evil. It only opens up the possibility of evil existing. You might argue that that is evil itself, but is it any less evil than taking away somebody's right to choose, even if you know that choice might lead down the wrong path?

God created angels and humans and gave us the ability to choose what we want for ourselves, regardless of the consequences of such a gift. It's like when we have kids: we could lock them in a room and keep them so sheltered from the world that they'd be clueless of half that goes on and never able to drink alcohol, do drugs, or have premarital sex. They wouldn't be able to kill people, steal things, lie, cheat, etc. But wouldn't it be evil to deprive them of the choice, even though you know they'll inevitably screw up somewhere, sometime, for some reason? Wouldn't you love your kids enough to give the the opportunity to make such mistakes, knowing the pain and evil that will come, because you love them enough to let them try (within certain, reasonable parameters) that which interests them? Living life without free will would be like a child forever locked in a little room, "safe" from the possible evil they could experience (or provoke) in the world...

Answer 6

Lucifer was actually an angel--an Archangel if I'm not mistaken (which is like the Big Kahuna of angels). And he just chose the wrong path.
So there is the whole "free will" answer--he chose EVIL because he had free will. We can do the same--choose the right path (Good) or the wrong path (Evil) because God allows us those choices.
So evil wasnt "created", it was always there, as a "choice", whether that was to tempt, or to prove goodness, that's your choice.

Answer 7

I have a question for you. If you were asked if evil what would you say. probably that it does. If I asked if cold exist would you say yes? Actually cold does not exist, it is only a word that we have created to define how we feel, cold never was. what would you say about darkness. Does darkness exist? No it doesn't. Darkness is the absent of light, it never was created. It only is around when light is not. Now I have a question did God create evil. The answer is no. Evil is the absence of God. Holiness is what God created and will always be. It is up to us to decide to be absent from God.

Answer 8

Satan was orginally Lucifer an angel of light. Lucifer rebelled against God when God gave Adam and Eve a higher standing them him. Lucifer was then cast down to earth where he began turning people from God. The name Satan actually means deceiver/destroyer and was a name that was later given to him. Lucifer's evil came because of Lucifer's pride and rebellion against God's love.

Answer 9

Satan was not created evil. He chose to rebel against God and lead others to do so as well.

So while God created Satan it was Satan's idea to rebel which is labeled evil.

It's the same argument as asking is the person who manufactured a gun at fault if the person who legally purchased the gun used it to commit murder? The person who made the gun gave the person who bought it the decision on how to use it.

God created you. Every day you make decisions that could be classified by good or evil. If you kick the dog when you leave the house would that be good or evil? Whose decision was it? If you seen someone ahead of you drop a dollar and you kept it, would that be good or evil? If you stole something from a store, would that be good or evil? Did God make those choices for you or did He give you the ability to make your own choice?

Would you rather have someone love you because that is their choice to love you of their own free will, or would you rather have someone love you because they had no choice?

God wants us to come to Him of our own free will which He gave to us to decide for ourselves. Satan used his free will to go away from God and now he wants as many as he can get to do the same. Misery loves company and make no mistake, Satan knows his destiny.

Do you know yours?

Answer 10

He did not creat Satan evil. He made him the most beautiful angel. Lucifer CHOSE to change becuase he wanted to be better that everyone else. God turned him inside out (hence the ugliness and skin color, etc) and cast him out of heaven. He crated his own hell. If you want more explanation, you can email me. Im a gnostic by the way...