If God exists, why is there so much bad in the world? This is one of the most invalid arguments that I have heard said one too many times. I am not saying that there is not bad in the world because it seems like every time I turn on CNN, there has been a murder, or mass killing somewhere. It doesn't stop there, we have identity theft, burglary, and even unethical behavior we hear about every day. If God really exists, why is there so much bad in the world?
Now, here is a question for you: If your mom exists why do you behave badly? This sounds like a pretty silly question but really it is not much different than that God question so many people ponder about.
Last year I read the book, "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis (highly recommend to the skeptical person), which dove into this same question (along with many others) while Lewis gave an extraordinary analogy about a mother and her child but before we can fully understand this concept we must understand free will.
The most identifiable feature of a human being is that we have the ability to choose. God gave us free will because if we did not have it, we would not be the intellectual people we are. We would never get the full extent of life if we could not choose and we would walk around like zombies with no sense of self. In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are given an order not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was mankind's very first choice and man failed.
Now we can get back to the mother and child analogy of C.S. Lewis. A mother is the authority figure to her child, but despite all the orders she will give, the child still has the ability to choose. For example, the child's room is a mess and it is in their mother's best wishes or will for the child to clean it up. If the room is not cleaned up, because the child refused to do so, there may be some punishments to come.
There is not much of a difference between this analogy and the way God gives us commands and the holy bible to clean up our life. Man was given a choice in the beginning and chose wrong. It is all part of man trying to "play" God, thinking they can control everything which leads to utter chaos.
The bad in this world isn't the result of an non-existent God; it is the result of sinful people who deny God and his teachings because of the free will gift that he gave us.
We are all sinners but we can choose to accept God and his son into our hearts. We can choose to follow his commands. We can choose to show love to our brothers and sisters in this world, but only when God is our ultimate choice in life.
