Tanya: Chapter 6 - Part 2: 6th day of Teves
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God Creating Evil I am confused. You say God created evil, and your explanation sounds logical (i.e. otherwise, there would be two Gods). But, in Torah God continually rails against evil. Why create something He hates? Does that mean, for all intents and purposes, that He created Lucifer? In the story of Creation there is no mention of anything other than He "saw that it was good". I heard you mention free will, but again, being omniscient, He knew (if He created evil) what would happen. Why do it? Thank you.
To give everyone the opportunity to choose good over evil. Free gifts are nowhere close to as rewarding the reward of working hard.
Shalom my friend, you ask a great question that is often asked. If there were no evil, in effect there would be no free will. The existence of only goodness would preempt the exercise of free will. This would cause us by default to be nothing more than a robot who always has only one option. It would prevent us from shunning evil and drawing ourselves closer to G-d by choosing goodness over evil. I hope this helps.
Lol Tov
Dsvid Lobell
I can't remember exactly how one of the answers I heard to this was phrased, but it had to do with evil not being a separate entity, but what we choose to do while waiting for God to handle it for us. This seems like small comfort, if any, but at the time, it seemed true...