Does God proactively send evil?
Or is it something that occurs because the Lord has removed His protection?
I would say both.
There are times when God actively sends evil.
The great flood during Noah’s time and Sodom and Gomorrah are perfect examples of proactive punishment.
And there are times when evil freely reigns because God’s presence is no longer present.
I think the Holocaust is a good example…
And one could argue the October 7th Hamas attack falls under the same category.
We human beings are also good examples of this.
We can’t be spiritually neutral.
If we aren’t occupied by the Holy Spirit, another kind of spirit will come to take us over.
I believe this is what happened to Saul.
Once God’s Spirit departed from him, an evil spirit rushed in to take its place.
I believe the same thing also happened to Pharaoh after he chose to harden his heart against God.
In the beginning, God didn’t directly harden Pharaoh’s heart.
But after Pharaoh continued to defy God, his heart hardened beyond the point of no return.
So whether you say the evil spirit that tormented Saul was divinely permitted, allowed, directed, or whatever, I’ll leave that up to you.
The bottom line is that even though it wasn’t a holy spirit, it played an important role in Saul’s life.
This spirit was part of God’s plan to make David a leader and, in the future, prepare for the coming of the Messiah.
So what’s the takeaway for today?
The lesson for today is something I’ve touched on before.
It’s a challenge to communicate about God in human language because He’s not like us, and our words can’t fully describe Him.
The Bible writers faced the same difficulties.
We can’t explain everything about Him because God is not a human.
He’s not even a superhuman.
So our human language will always fall short when attempting to describe the spiritual mysteries of the Lord.
That’s why it’s important to grasp those precious few things the Lord has made understandable to us in His Torah.
Get the basic arithmetic of Scripture (the Torah) FIRST before moving on to Scriptural algebra and calculus.
If we don’t understand the foundation, we could easily misunderstand something in the Bible and go against what God stands for and His justice system.
Ya feel me?
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