Likewise, I believe that God didn’t make the devil bring calamity to Job. God didn’t make the evil spirit vex Saul. The devil and the evil spirit more than willingly subjected Job and Saul to torment. That was their thing. But as I understand it, God can and will limit the will of the devil and his dominion to suit His perfect plan. However, God will not limit the free will of a human.

As for people that do evil as a result of mental problems or a chemical imbalance in their brain, I can only trust that God is just. If God is worth His salt, He knows when someone is culpable…He knows when they aren’t. As for free will vs. determinism…I think determinism is an illusion. Determinism says that God ordains everything mankind does. What i think God actually does, is that He permits everything mankind does, because free will is an inexorable attribute of mankind being made in God’s image.

I suppose spontaneous gene mutations like the point mutation that allows progeria, can’t be blamed directly on anything induced by a chemical spill or over-exposure to x-ray, ultra-violet, possibly caused by our depletion of the ozone layer, sloppy disposal of toxic waste or reckless use of cathode-ray tubes, sunlamps, or too many days at the beach. Point mutations are spontaneous diversions in gene replication that should’ve gone off without a hitch. But a hitch, nonetheless, occurs. It is just a hitch with consequences that are rare and tragic. My nephew wound up with an old man’s brain cancer at the age of 18 months. It was a random fluke. The first human on medical record to have this cancer before the age of 72. I cut my spiritual teeth on the event of watching my brother’s only son die at home over the course of three weeks. Shaking my fist at God, flipping off the Almighty, and shouting a few choice insults, I asked God WHY? After I was over my temper tantrum, I was putting my Bible away and I dropped it on the floor. You guessed it, it opened to Isaiah 57 and verses 1 and 2 seemed to float off the page and catch my eye.

1 Good people pass away;
      the godly often die before their time.
      But no one seems to care or wonder why.
   No one seems to understand
      that God is protecting them from the evil to come.
 2 For those who follow godly paths
      will rest in peace when they die.

Maybe not the “why” for everyone, but it suited me fine.

Viruses. Earthquakes. Multiple Sclerosis. Progeria. Things like that.

Now, I personally think that, sometimes, natural pain is necessary. If we were to design complex robots (more than just Roombas) for instance, we might have to program some kind of wiring/software for “unpleasantness” to keep them from destroying themselves. Without our bodies being wired for pain, we’d burn ourselves becasue fire wouldn’t be “hot,” we’d chew out our own tongues because we’d not know or care when we’ve bitten them, etc.

Even things like predation, parasites and mass extinctions in nature serve purposes – control of animal populations, change inherent in land and climate to promote change and diversity in species…

Yet, bring that up to someone who’s had a loved one die painfully of some genetic disorder, and you get called evil for believing in a God that’s apparently even (even if you try to bring up “just believing that something brutal *exists* doesn’t make a person evil, but whatever, people get absorbed in their own pain and inevitably look for someone to blame).

Still, I wonder about some of those “natural evils” that *don’t* seem to have a rhyme, reason or purpose. Why progeria, for instance?

The conclusion that I usually come up with is that these things are allowed in creation because God is incomprehnsible and, like the author of a novel, may put his characters/creations through things that they are incapable of understanding in order to bring about some kind of overreaching plot that will make sense in the end. Even if it doesn’t now.

Of course, I try to express that to angry people and they just hate and call me evil for having an explaination that isn’t “I’ve stopped believing and become like you.”

In the end, though, I’ve decided I’d rather not be a character in a story without a plot.

If I keep going I could write a book. It is very good to plunge the depths of the old while we savour the firstfruits of the new wine.

A logical God He is.

Take God out of the picture and explain why people do bad things to this creation, the earth and all that is in it, including each other. Has not any friend of yours who doesn’t believe in any kind of God done things that bring harm? Have you, the one with no God done harm to others?