Good questions all. However, if God is just, then He must hold us accountable. Even in mercy, justice must be satisfied to some extent, we cannot pretend that the offense didn't matter. Thus, we must want forgiveness to receive it, as a concession to the demands of justice. How that may come about, I leave up in the air.
As for allowing sin and evil, the universe was created postulating beings capable of free choice, able to respond to experience and participate in shaping their lives and character. They were, so to speak, co- shapers of the world. If freedom is postulated, rebellion and sin must be possible, and if they are possible, one cannot continually erase their consequences, or choice means nothing. One of the consequences is the disruption of the natural order, as evil undermines the human order and emanates beyond.
These, in summary, are more or less the traditional answers, as reworked by me...... |
