The Statler Waldorf Balcony

[Statler Waldorf]

In reply to something you wrote a while back, Statler:

So how is this at all fair? It's like raising a child to be bad, then punishing him for it. Except for eternity.

It's actually still fair because man is responsible for his sin. Adam was man's represenative, so when Adam fell all of man fell. Rather than punishing all of man (which would be completely just)- God chose to punish some and give others saving grace (even though all man gets some grace because God let's them live longer than they deserve to). Both actions bring glory to God. This is why God does not even let Job ask why everything that happened to him happened. Despite everything that happened to Job, it was still better than he truly deserved. So to second guess God in giving you something better than you deserve would be wrong.

It's a pretty bizarre way of doing things, not to mention arrogant. Couldn't he just have had breakdancing angels or something if he wanted to impress?

I actually think being glorified by exercising perfect judgement and grace is a pretty cool way of doing things.

And their intentions were evil because of their fallen nature, for which God is either directly or indirectly responsible. So the punishment is not just.

I would not argue that God is responsible for Man's sin, or fallen nature. Rather than blaming God for something that Adam did, we should be thanking God for not punishing us to the fullest extent possible.

So if God's purpose were, say, to cause pain to babies, would that be evil?

Not using the Bible's definition of evil no. Evil is defined as something contrary to God's purpose or nature. Now if you wanted to make up some new definition for evil, like "causing babies pain" then it would be under that definition. However that would not really prove anything because we just changed the meaning of the word. I like the first definition of evil because it makes it so evil is not dependent on era or race, or anything arbitrary like that.

How do you define evil?