1. Introduction.
Evil is not just an illusion or something we do out of ignorance. It is prevalent everyday,
everywhere, every minute, so much so, that one has become used to living amidst it. Not only
skeptics and atheist but also many Christians often complain, “why did not God make a
perfect world without sin, suffering, or death? If He is all powerful, surely He could have
done that if He so desired. We say, “our body is the temple of the living God,” and yet when
we try to dig deep into our lives, we note that many a times our body is the most defiled. Yet
we choose to act ignorant of the evil that is growing within us, every hour due to our uncared
negligence. One cannot accept it. Reality dawns when our lives are shattered, that is when one
protests against God. But as true Christians we understand that our God is almighty,
sovereign and faithful. God is love and filled with goodness. It is the world that is stained and
afflicted. This paper deals with the origin of Evil, meaning, various perceptions regarding it,
menace of evil, types of evil, different religious views, various attempts to solve the problem
of evil, the biblical understanding of the origin of evil and God's solution for the problem of
evil.
2. Origin and meaning of Evil.
There has been this wrong assumption that evil is something that was created by God. But
John G. Stakehouse Jr. argues that God would not create such a thing as 'evil', God did not
proclaim 'Let there be evil.' Stakehouse thus states that there is no such thing as evil, it is but
an adjective and becomes a noun when used in an abstract.1 There have been arguments that
evil is the absence of good just as joy the absence of grief, death the absence of life and
darkness ...