The Origin of Evil

In christianity evil is any event or action which goes againist God's teaching and brings aboutsuffering.

God gave human freewill because he loves us. Freewill is the ability to choose and the ability to choose doing right and wrong. The problem of suffering comes about when we make the wrong choice. When we do something wrong it often leads to hurting others and ourselves.

The first time humans chose wrong form right is explained in the bible through the story of Adam and Eve. They chose to disobey God and eat the fruit form the tree of knowledge. This allowed Adam and Eve to have a knowledge of good and evil but because they were only humans they couldn't deal with that knowledge and things started to go wrong. Christians believe that Adam and Eve destroyed the perfect reletionship between humans and God and humans continued to do wrong things and act aganist God. Evil was now in the world. this event is known as the fall.Christians believe that jesus came to buy back that perfect relationship with God for all of humanity.(REDEMPTION)

Adam and Eve action's are known as Original sin( the first time humans disobeyed God) . They believe that since the fall every person is affceted by original sin. Christians say that all people need to repair their relationship with God in order to have an afterlife in heaven(salvation). By beliving in jesus this will happen.

"Sin" literally means "missing the mark". Christians use the word to mean not living up to or keeping God's commands. When Adam and Eve rejected God in the Garden of Eden, they sinned. Since the Fall, Christians believe all humans, without God's strength and power, have the tendency to make their own rules to suit themselves. Refusing to live under God's rules is to sin and Christians see much suffering as a consequence of sin. For example the suffering caused to the bereaved family when someone is murdered can be seen as a consequence of the sin of the murderer as God clearly commands in the Ten Commandments in the Bible that murder is wrong (Exodus chapter 20 verse 13

Most Christians believe in a supernatural evil force known as the devil or Satan. Satan is consistently represented in The New Testament as the enemy of both God and His people. Jesus describes the devil as "the enemy" in Matthew chapter 13 verse 39. Christians believe the devil tries to thwart God's plans in order to establish and maintain a kingdom of evil.

So Christians believe God cannot be to blame for suffering and the existence of evil.God created a perfect world without suffering. Suffering came into the world because humans sinned. God gave humans freewill and when humans chose to reject God and go their own way, suffering was a consequence. Most Christians also believe there is a devil who is trying to disrupt God's plans and the devil encourages people to sin and therefore to bring more suffering into the world.