“So God created ravagers. They do real harm. They cannot destroy God’s people. But they are appointed for a providential end, for a good purpose that could otherwise not come through any other means. And each ravager will be judged for his evil actions. Thus, says Calvin, ‘we must not, on that account, lay blame on God, as if he were the author of the unjust cruelty which dwells in men alone; for God does not give assent to their wicked inclinations, but regulates their efforts by his secret providence’ so that he can employ them, when needed, as his ‘instruments of anger.’ Within God’s good plan of providence is a place for sword-wielding ravagers who level ancient cities. No matter how nefarious their motives, the smith and the ravager exist by divine appointment because their activity in this world ultimately brings about a greater good in God’s greater glory than if they did not exist.
Here’s my point. In any discussion of technology, many Christians get hung up on the most powerful technologists in the world who are inventing the most threatening innovations on earth—nuclear power, killing weapons, space rockets, modified genetics—and assume that these men and women fall outside God’s governance. They don’t. Isaiah 54:16–17 shows us how God creates and governs the most powerful technologists. Reckoning with God’s power over big tech is essential for many Christians who must resolve this obstacle before they can see and worship God for the tens of thousands of innovations they use every day.”
Excerpt From
God, Technology, and the Christian Life
Tony Reinke
This is what Tony Reinke had to say about the evil people in the world, and he based it on Isaiah 54, which says,
16 Behold, I have created the smith
who blows the fire of coals
and produces a weapon for its purpose.
I have also created the ravager to destroy;
17 no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed,
and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord
and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”
So God creates the ravager to destroy. This makes sense, especially considering this passage from Isaiah 10, regarding punishing Israel for turning away:
5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger;
the staff in their hands is my fury!
6 Against a godless nation I send him,
and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
But then, later in the same chapter, God says:
12 When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes. 13 For he says:
“By the strength of my hand I have done it,
and by my wisdom, for I have understanding;
I remove the boundaries of peoples,
and plunder their treasures;
like a bull I bring down those who sit on thrones.
14 My hand has found like a nest
the wealth of the peoples;
and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken,
so I have gathered all the earth;
and there was none that moved a wing
or opened the mouth or chirped.”
So here, God will punish Assyria because of their king’s arrogance after destroying Israel, which God appointed for them to do!
So God will create evil people and allow evil in the world for many reasons, some of which we do not know, but others that we are allowed to know, and I would like to try to list some of them, keeping in mind that He orchastrates all things for His glory.
The first thing I’ll mention is he creates evildoers to punish other evildoers. This is seen in Isaiah 10, but is also seen in other things God allows to happen, including natural disasters, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). Of course, if there was no evil in the first place, God wouldn’t create evildoers for this purpose, so this can’t be the only reason.
The second thing is that evil is used in the life of God’s elect for good. This is seen clearly in the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50), and is also described in the New Testament epistles:
3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5
Now suffering is only in our life as a result of sin in the world, but God uses it to produce sanctification in the believer. But even then, if there was no sin in the world, there would be no need to be sanctified, so what is the purpose in that?
Well if God did indeed ordain salvation from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), that must have been the best possible thing that he could have done, for a perfect God can’t do anything less than perfect work. God’s plan for the world had to involve evil, so that we could be saved from sin to himself, and so that his love could be displayed in Jesus all the more. If we didn’t live in a world of sin, we wouldn’d have seen the glorious salvation found in Jesus Christ, and God wouldn’t have been glorified to as great an extent. That is the ultimate reason for evil in the world.
{I will mention, as stated by John Calvin in the Tony Reinke quote, that just because God allows evil does not mean he approves of it. He will allow some things but in a sense doesn’t directly cause them (He himself tempts no one, James 1:13). I suppose this same logic could be applied when asking why God allows people to go to hell, if He should “not want any to perish (2 Peter 3:9).” I am not completely sure how to articulate or think through this, so I’ll end that line of thought there.}