- Jesus
I would love to spend just 3 minutes swimming around in my Big Kid’s brain. I think it is an ocean full of ideas and wonders and prospects that are all just floating around among each other. At any time, one idea or thought might just pop to the surface. Usually, it seems, that the time those thoughts pop out is approximately 1 minute before we plan to kiss her goodnight. One question that she has asked on repeat surrounds the idea of why God didn’t make everyone on earth just love Him. If he is the creator of the universe, why didn’t He make His people be obedient? Why doesn’t everyone just know Him and do what He says? I always feel like I have a weak reasoning, because honestly, it sounds like a decent world to live in and it has me wondering the same thing. There would be no evil. No bad guys. No nightly news about murderers who escaped prison and are on the loose for 2 weeks. Why would that be so bad? Those are just my thoughts, though, and instead, I usually repeat something I heard somewhere – “God wants us to love Him. He wants us to want Him. He doesn’t want a bunch of robots walking around loving Him because he is forcing them to love Him.” That placates her for a bit, but never fully satisfies her curious heart. On one occasion, I was able to add the comparison of how much more she loves it when her little sister gives her a hug without prompting, and it is much more meaningful than when she forcefully says “Come give me a hug!” I was so proud of that response to her questioning.I was sure that it would solve all of our problems and move this question topic into the “completed” category on the to-do list.
I was mistaken.
Big Kid’s nightly devotional referred to Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden and how she convinced Adam to sin with her. God had created this perfect place for his people to live and Satan still entered it and tempted God’s creation. They fell for it and fell from grace. They were forced out of their beautiful garden and lived a difficult life, despite God’s immense, deep, unfailing love for them. As I closed the devotional, I was thinking about all of the things I was about to do when we turned the light out and walked out of her bedroom. My nightly to-do list is a hundred miles long and I was one nighttime prayer away from tackling it and getting some much-needed rest time. And then she came out with it…
“Why did God allow evil to enter the world? Like, why did He even let Satan in the garden?”
Um.
What?
I’m sure there is a reason here.
Obviously.
And then, at this risk of sounding like a weirdo, or too churchy or something, I feel like God just gave me the words I needed. With the most clarity that I have ever felt when answering one of her nighttime zingers, I realized that there is only one reason God let evil into the Garden of Eden.
Jesus
If you have been in any church circle for any amount of time, you know that the answer to any Bible question is always JESUS.
Why had I not thought of that before.
JESUS!
The basis for Christianity is that Jesus died for our sins. It is a phrase that I have known for as long as I can remember. He’s called a savior because he saves us. Those phrases have always made sense to me on a surface level, and even a little deeper too. I get it. My struggle was how to make my kid understand it in a way that would stick.
If there were no evil things in this world, there would be no need for Jesus. If God had decided to send Jesus to die for us anyway, it would not have any meaning. If we did not experience the evils of this world, Jesus would just be another religious figure to pray to because someone said you should.
The reality is that Jesus died to overcome the evils that creep their way into the world. The way into heaven is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is and did what he said he did.
Romans 10:9 reminds us that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” It is as simple as believing that God had orchestrated this whole operation from the very beginning of time, and it is the fact on which everything hinges. How much better is it that we know that we have chosen to believe it.
I feel the most clarity here in this moment than I have ever felt about an answer to a tough Bible question, and I didn’t know that I even needed more reinforcement. But in God’s perfect timing, my Bible in a Year reading plan prompted me to read Ephesians 2 in the New Living Translation (NLT).
Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil – the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else. But God is so rich in mercy and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Ephesians 2: 1-10 (emphasis mine)
Because of evil, we get to know mercy. Because of evil, we get to know grace. Because of evil, we get to understand that God loves us so much that he would give us His SON. If you can think about how much an earthly parent would love an earthly son (or daughter), you can understand even just a fraction of God’s love for Jesus and for us. Jesus overcame evil and helps us understand God’s unfailing, unstoppable, always and forever love.
