7.1 God's Dilemma

God is faced with an IMMENSE dilemma that is part of the very fabric of His being. We can call this inconceivable difficulty by two ways, the way of Love and the way of Faith. These are two different ways to describe the same conflict.

The way of Love describes God’s dilemma in this manner. – God is Love, which means that God needs somebody to love. Thus God, needing somebody to love, brings forth His Beloved out from Himself. BUT – because God is love, He cannot force her to love Him in return. He must leave her free. When God’s Beloved chooses not-God, that is, evil, God cannot prevent her, for Love has already set her free.

God Cannot. The way of Faith shows this conflict inside of God to be even more impossible, if that is possible, than the way of Love.

Before we look at the way of Faith, let’s consider some aspects of God’s being. First, God does NOT know evil. In saying that, we are not saying that God is not aware of the actions of evil or the pain caused by those actions. Inside Himself, God does not know evil; He does not comprehend it. The doing of evil never enters His mind. God cannot sin. God cannot force Himself upon anyone, because He doesn’t know such a thing. Theft does not exist inside God’s thoughts. It never enters into God’s mind to take something that belongs to another.

The Way of Faith. God operates in an entirely different way. If God wants something from another, He gives to that other first the very thing He wants in return. God never gives without also expecting a return. That expectation of a return is the way of Faith. This way of thinking is not found in the foolish imagination that is the only fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. We must understand everything out from God’s way of thinking.

And so God gives LOVE and LIFE to humans through the good-speaking of Jesus. BUT – what does He get in return, as it now seems? He gets back screaming accusation that He is evil, hating God without a cause.

To Receive or to Refuse. Evil exists because God does not do evil. God does not force His knowledge on anyone. The knowledge of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, enters into any human only through their express permission, only through faith.

Every human is given by God the ability to receive or to refuse Jesus. And every human who refuses Jesus is then allowed the anointing required to spin a false story in their minds as an imagined replacement for the good speaking that sustains them. It is that false anointing, then, that first said, “Did God indeed say,” and thus challenged Jesus as every Word God speaks. That conflict between the speaking of anti-Christ and the speaking of Christ is secondary to the initial dilemma inside of God, but it is the means by which God’s difficulty is resolved.

What Is Love? So, since God was fully aware that bringing forth humans would cause Him pain beyond the ability of all created beings to conceive of pain, why did He not just refrain from creating us in the first place? That question then takes us right back into the heart of God’s immense contradiction that He carries inside Himself. God cannot refrain from creating humans. Such a thought never enters His mind.

What is Love that has nobody to love? What is Life that never brings forth life? What is Faith that never knows a return? What is Covenant that never walks with another? What is Giving without receiving? What is Joy that does not walk in liberty? And what is a Source that never sees a Completion?

As God Thinks. What is a God who is meek and lowly of heart who has no one to see as better than Himself, no one to lift up? And what is a God who carries, inside of whom no one dwells?

God’s Love is greater than all the pain of accusation. God’s Faith is greater than all the hatred without cause. As the Psalmist says, “Pause and think about these things.”

Yet there is more to God’s great dilemma. We must ruthlessly strike down all thinking that comes out from the imagination of good versus evil, especially as it is found in Nicene Christian thinking. To think as God thinks is to see everything in a completely different way, to see all only out from LIFE.

It Does Not Happen! Here is one of many wicked accusations levied against God inside much “Christian” thinking, especially “deeper truth.” Since God knows everything, good and evil, and controls everything, He purposed evil in the human experience so that He might bring forth a greater “good” in the end.

Is the existence of evil necessary for the fulfillment of God’s purpose? – As Paul said, “IT DOES NOT HAPPEN!” What then shall we say? Shall we continue in disconnection from God, that grace might abound? It does not happen! (Romans 6:1-2). When we know all things as God knows them, we understand that an entirely different paradigm is taking place.

Sustaining All. “Good versus evil” exists only in the imaginations of humans and angels.

Here alone is the existence of all things. In these present final days God has spoken us inside His Son, whom He appointed heir of all, and through whom He forms the ages. This Son is the shining forth of glory and the character and exact reproduction of God’s substance, bringing forth, carrying, and sustaining all by His word of power. – All through Him become, and without Him not even one thing becomes that has become. Inside of Him is life actively, and this life is the light of humans (Hebrews 1:2-3 & John 1:3-4).

Bringing forth, carrying, and sustaining all.

Subjected to Vanity. All things come out from the good-speaking of Jesus every moment. But in itself, no created thing can be either good or evil. As Jesus said, “Only God is good.” And, of course, LIFE is knowing God and death is not knowing God.

Every created thing must be turned into the knowledge of God in order to be filled with good, that is, God. And every created thing is free to choose ignorance of God, for God never forces His knowledge on anyone. Thus, as Paul says in Romans 8, creation was subjected to the vanity of not knowing God, not because it’s what God wanted, but in HOPE that someone would turn all things into life.

A Double-Blow. Adam’s choice in the garden was a double-blow to God, for God had appointed to Adam the task of sending forth the River of Life out from his decision to eat of life, that all creation could know their God. Instead, Adam sent forth a flood of sin and death, a complete double betrayal of God’s Heart, refusing Jesus for himself, and then sending the horrors of death into everyone instead.

Yet God’s great dilemma goes even deeper than His being skewered on the double horns of Adam’s vicious and un-provoked rebellion. You see, God’s incredible FAITH, His absolute confidence in a return coming back to Himself, had led Him to do what was simply the most RECKLESS thing in all the history of creation.

Subdue. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Subdue” (Genesis 1:27-28).

The writer of Hebrews asserted, in Chapter 2, that in saying “Subdue,” God, in those words, transferred all authority inside creation, inside the realms of spirit equally with the realms of physic, to mankind. God retained no authority for Himself. And Paul said, in Romans 11, that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. That means that it never enters God’s mind to take that authority back.

Authority to Act. God does not “allow” humans to do evil to one another. God does not “prevent” humans from doing evil to one another. God gave all authority to act inside our world to humans and it never enters His mind to take that authority back. Even more, there is no scenario or “universe” where God exercises authority over created beings. God does not operate in such a way. God never forces Life; God never forces Himself. The human word for forcing life is “rape,” something that never enters God’s mind.

Here is how God operates. – Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good (Genesis 1:3-4).

The Law of Reciprocity. Paul describes this way in which God operates, the means by which God accomplishes anything, in this way. This One who is continuously giving life to the dead and calling into existence things not existing (Romans 4:17). Here is how Jesus worded the same law by which God operates. – Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38).

God gives Himself, and then He waits in patience for that return that MUST come back to Him. It is this principal of reciprocity, the law of faith, by which God accomplishes all that is of Him.

Turned to Good. Here is how Joseph worded this same principle of God. But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive (Genesis 50:20). Joseph synergeoed with God and God with him to turn what was evil of itself into goodness and blessing for many.

In our world today, in this closing out of the age of human folly, we are that same Joseph towards God’s people. That creation itself will also be made free from the slavery of decay into the freedom and liberty of the glory of the children birthed out from God (Romans 8:21).

An Enormous Recklessness. We have not yet fully described the enormous recklessness of the faith of our God. God carries deep inside of His being, inside His Heart, inside all this immense contradiction, an incredible secret. God’s secret has a name – Jesus.

Here is what God said about Jesus in Isaiah 55. – So shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish all that I please and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

I have another title that I call this same Jesus – “The Great Story of God.” God sent His Word when He said, “Let there be light,” but the story begins when the antagonist speaks against that Word with, “Did God indeed say.”

God Expects. Here is even more the recklessness of God. – And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we looked upon His glory, full of grace (Father is always with Me) and truth (I can do nothing of Myself). Yet that recklessness just doesn’t stop. – The great SECRET, which has been hidden from the ages, but is now unveiled, which is Christ inside of you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1).

Let me sum up that mind-blowing recklessness of the faith and expectation of God. God EXPECTS that all creation will be restored back to Himself in life and joy through the Lord Jesus Christ revealed now as you and me. This is God’s dilemma and this is His answer.

The Great Story of God. In the third lesson of this chapter, “The Seven Dispensations,” we want to consider how God’s dilemma and God’s solution, turning all that is meant for evil into the outcome of pure and intrinsic goodness through you and me, called according to God’s Pro-Thesis, how this great development is spread across the history of humans on this earth. We want to see how God brings life inside of liberty in spite of all the hostility arrayed against such a wondrous thing.

Before we look at that history, the Great Story of God, we must first have a clear and final definition of evil, what it is, where it comes from, and what is its end. Evil is not a thing in itself, it is only the refusal of God and the actions coming out from such a refusal.