How does evil enter the world pt.2
By Ivan Ho 23 Feb 2025
How does evil enter the world pt.1
During the term break in my second year of University in Sydney, I was invited to a student retreat, the first time I’ve ever been to a Christian gathering (apart from the chapel I had to attend every week in year 12 in a Christian boarding school). On the first evening at the camp site, after some games, they started to worship during which something touched my heart, and I remember thinking to myself: “They are genuinely worshipping a God who I don’t know”.
The next day, we sat together in a small group bible study session. I remember we were reading the book of Romans and the group leader called Patrick explained to us about the sins of man, how man sinned by disobeying God resulting in death and separation from God. Then he went on to talk about God’s Grace and goodness by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, that forgiveness and Eternal Life is offered to us as a free gift. When I heard about Grace for the first time in my life, my heart was touched. Then out of nowhere, a thought popped up in my mind and I asked Patrick: “If God is good, why are there evils in the world? Why are there people born blind and so on?”. The leader tried to address my question but I wasn’t satisfied with his explanation, so I just left it at that.
The year before that, a friend of mine from University introduced me to a Buddhist sect, and its karma philosophy would offer explanation why some people would suffer, due to the bad things they have done in their past lives.
During the next couple of days at the camp, different students would come up to me and talked to me about Jesus but I wasn’t impressed. Thank God, before we left the retreat, Patrick gave a book called “Know why you believe” for me to take home.
The next morning, I woke up sitting on my bed in my room by myself and prayed to God: “Jesus, if you are real, I would really like to know you“. Then I picked up the book Patrick gave me and began to read from chapter to chapter. By the time I was half way through the book, I knew without any shadow of a doubt that Jesus is real, that He is God who died on the cross for the sins of mankind, and rose from the dead 3 days after! There were undeniable evidences and eyewitness accounts of His death and resurrection being recorded in the 4 gospels in the bible.
There was a chapter towards the latter part of the book on sufferings and evil but that was no longer a critical issue for me. I knew that Jesus was real and He was who He claimed to be, the Son of God who came to our world as a Man, to bring forgiveness of sins and reconciliation between man and God the Father.
Since then, I was no longer into Buddhism and by God’s grace, never wavered in my faith in Jesus.
Why does evil enter the world ?
If you have the same questions about evil and sufferings like I did, if that issue becomes a stumbling block to your faith in God, I hope you would take this to God and ask Jesus to reveal Himself to you.
I will continue to share my thoughts on this subject in the next episode. Stay tuned.