If God wants evil to exist, and Satan causes evil, why is Satan bad?

Question

God DOES want evil to exist, or it would not. Plus the bible says he created evil.

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 Gods 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’s 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

What you allude to is the contradiction between an omnipotent God and a benevolent God. If God did not create evil and did not create Satan then he is not omnipotent, if he did then he is certainly not benevolent. Then there is the problem of his omniscience, if he is all-knowing then he knew that Eve would eat the fruit and he knew that Lucifer would revolt and he knows which humans will be going to Hell and he chooses to create these beings with that knowledge making God a real sicko.
Satan isn't a bad guy, he tells no lies, he told Adam and Eve that they would not die from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they would only become like God having both knowledge and immortaity. He was right, the Tree didn't give them death, God did. He offers Jesus an escape from the pain and suffering of what's to come, he doesn't do anything mean. Lucifer called God on his hypocrisy and his sociopathic nature and was cast out for it. I'm not Christian and don't believe in heaven or hell, but if it were true, I'd choose to live with Lucifer.

Answer 3

The Bible does not say God wants evil to exist nor does it say God created evil.

The Bible says God created all things, including Lucifer who was not evil. At some point in the dateless past, before Genesis, Lucifer rebelled and there was war in heaven and Lucifer was cast out, taking a third of the angels with him. Those angels became demons.

God wants free will to exist. You have the choice to follow God's commands to do good or you have the choice to rebel against God and do evil. That is your free will.

God created humanity in His image, meaning, among other things, that we have free will. Lucifer and his demons had free will as well. They made their choice. We make ours.

There is a cost for the evil we commit. You can read in the Bible what will become of those who have committed evil.

We all do make mistakes - none of us are perfect, we all deserve what the Bible shows as the end of those commit evil. But we can be forgiven if we come back to God and ask for forgiveness. This is because Christ already paid the cost for our evil, if we accept Him.

Read your Bible.

Answer 4

God did not create evil, satan as an angel in heaven rebelled against good and was jealous of Jesus. He was then sent to earth and the Bible can explain the rest. He wants evil gone with our own free will, that is why satan was not forced to repent. God wants us to repent because we want to not because we are forced to, and there will come a day where evil does not exist any longer.

Answer 5

If evil did not exist, we logically would not know the difference between good and evil, pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, what is right and wrong. Evil, or opposition, is required for us to make choices. It is all part of His divine plan for us. If we had nothing to choose, we would not learn responsibility, would not be required to live by faith, and would not really be learning anything from our experience on earth. It all makes good perfect sense, then, that there is evil in the world.

Answer 6

Okay,Satan does NOT exist,neither does God.The whole concept of deities,good and bad,are because people can't face basic facts;that they are going to die and that's all,no super dooper theme park in the sky,and that they are responsible for their sins,not any make believe first man and woman(Adam and Eve) and nobody can take them away,not even Jesus,who,if he did exist,was the Elvis of his day.His greatest hits didn't happen til way after he died.So basically,what I am saying is,don't waste your time worrying about Satan or God,Good and evil are natural human traits,not any impulse put into us by invisible bogeymen,and the only real reward for either is love and acceptance or condemnation by our fellow men and women.

Answer 7

The Bible does not say that God created Evil, In the verse that you are referring to is the King James version translation, and in that translation the old English used at that time refers to Natural Disasters, (Earth quakes, Volcanos, Tornadoes, storms) as evil.

God allows evil to occur partly for reasons we do know and partly for those we do not. We know that God uses evil to discipline people (Prov. 3:11) and to teach them (Prov. 15:32). But we cannot know all the reasons that God has for allowing evil and suffering in the world. It is not logically necessary that since God has not stopped evil and suffering in the world, that He cannot. God could be using suffering for His divine plan, in order to teach, for discipline, because people are free, etc. The existence of suffering does not at all mean that God cannot stop all of it. It means that He simply has chosen not to do so.

Answer 8

What a tangled web the religious believers have to weave to make sense of all their superstitous justifications, huh?

None of it makes any sense. None of it has any basis in reality. None of it has any evidence of being true. All of it is just the superstitious fears of ancient hebrew goat herders, followed by thousands of years of rationalization and attempts to force it all to make some sense -- all of which have failed miserably.

How anyone can actually believe all this nonsense is beyond my ability to understand. A brain is a terrible thing to waste arguing religious dogma and "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin..." If half of the energy religious people put into arguing dogma would be put into making the world a better place to live, we'd all be a lot happier.
Peace.

Answer 9

evil is the same as bad. god wanted the knowledge of good and evil to exist so humanity could learn. i think humans see satan as the epitome of all evil and therefore bad, becuase of temptation. Sure god wanted evil to exist, but that does not mean that humans should thrive from it. Maybe god created satan to make people fear. as humans we think of things that are fear provoking as bad things.

Answer 10

Satan is bad because he works against GOD. We can define "good" as that which works with. And bad as that which works against. In our current state, this world appears to be good and the Biblical GOD appears to be bad. GOD desires willing company so he planted a universe. Some of that universe is willingly working with GOD and some against GOD. It's really that simple.
Shalom!