Did God Create Evil?
When believers think of God, they generally see Him/She/It as totally good and only responsible for light, yet the Bible itself says differently:
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Isa 45:7
According to Jehovah speaking through Isaiah then God makes both peace and evil and darkness as well as light. We are even told that God uses the evil ones as his “sword.”
“Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:” Psalms17:13
Indeed, God uses the evil ones to slay the wicked: “Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.” Psalms 34:21
Okay, so the Bible says that God created evil and even uses evil as a sword to destroy unwanted evil. This disposes of the idea of a god that exists beyond the existence of any evil. After all, aren’t we told that there was a war in heaven?
“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Rev 12:7-9
We can thus conclude that since Satan was in heaven when he rebelled that evil can even exist there.
All this may sound perplexing to the true believer, but what do other spiritual teachings besides the Bible say about this perplexing subject?
The Gnostics were a very popular Christian related sect for three centuries after Christ. These had a very unorthodox view of our creator God and Jesus, and were seen as heretical. They were suppressed and attempts were made to destroy all their writings. They were not completely successful as in 1945 the Nag Hammadi library was discovered in Egypt revealing many of their writings.
The Gnostics saw the Jehovah, the god of the Bible as an imposter of the true God and associated him with a being called Yaldabaoth often referred to as a Demiurge.
This Demiurge is born from Sophia (Wisdom), a spiritual female who acts without divine consent, producing a misshapen offspring cast out into the void. Yaldabaoth, unaware of higher realms, fashions the cosmos as a pale, corrupted imitation of the true spiritual heaven, populating it with beings of a lower order seeking to trap humanity in material bodies.
They see Jesus as kind of a rebel who saw the truth of the Demiurge, Jehovah, and achieved Gnosis, or knowledge of the true god of love who existed in the highest spiritual realm and was not touched by evil. He saw that Jehovah did indeed create evil and used it as a weapon. This he rejected and gave as a prayer, “deliver us from evil.” Matt 6:13
Madame H. P. Blavatsky seemed to support the idea of Jehovah not only being an inferior god or Demiurge, but the devil himself with her interpretation of Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees who insisted that God was their father. He told them:
“Ye do the deeds of your father… Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:41 & 44
She pointed out that the Jews claimed that Jehovah was their father and this was the being who Jesus called the devil.
This idea is backed up in the Old Testament where Jehovah is identified with Satan. Israel Anderson came up with these interesting scriptures:
“And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” I Chronicles 21:1
And who was this Satan who caused David to number Israel? None other than Jehovah:
“And again the anger of the LORD (Jehovah) was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” II Sam 24:1
The Book of Revelation gives this description of the Satanic Beast:
“And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” Rev 13:2
And Hosea gives these same animal symbols for Jehovah:
“Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.” Hosea 13:7-8
Both the satanic beast and Jehovah are represented by the leopard, the bear and the lion.
Jehovah is also linked to the planet Saturn for he commanded the Israelites to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” That was Saturday, which word is derived from the Roman “dies Saturni” which mean’s Saturn’s Day. St. Augustine went so far as identifing Saturn as a “god of the Jews,” and the early Gnostics identified Saturn with Satan.
A Course in Miracles has a similar take to the Gnostics except they do not equate the creator of time and space as evil, but merely misled.
According to the Course we all lived in peace and bliss in the heavenly realms until the Son, who is identified as the prodigal son in the parable of Jesus, decided he wanted to create and explore a universe of time and space where there would be great challenges of overcoming limitation and pain as well as the manifestation of love that they would take with them.
God, who the Course calls the Father refused to give the Son permission so he went ahead and created a universe based on illusion as if in a dream state.
According to the Course the rebellious Son was not one individual, but all of us as parts of the one life which is the Son.
Jesus, who is called our “elder brother” awakened from the dream state and assumed the position of helping the rest of us also awaken and return home.
As we return home God does not see us as evil or seek to punish us but merely welcomes us back as a parent would a wayward child.
According to the Course then, evil was the result of the creation of time, space and form initiated by the Son. The supreme God lives in a realm of pure spirit where pain, suffering and evil are impossible.
Most alternative and esoteric spiritual teachings deal with good and evil from the view of the universe of time and space and not a universe of pure spirit as taught by the Gnostics and A Course in Miracles.
Yogananda seems to side with Isaiah in his view of good and evil:
The Omnipresent Lord knows that He is the creator of evil as a test to encourage human beings to shun sin and thus recover their inner divine nature. By creating a film of light-and-shadow images and passing it through a movie projector, a director manipulates the one beam that projects the pictures of both the villain and the hero on the screen; the villain was included to make people disgusted with his ways and, by use of discrimination, applaud the great hero. For the same reason, evil exists to turn people’s attention to the better ways of virtue. Bhavagad Gita Commentary By Yogananda, Vol 1, Page 551
The Bailey writings make a number of interesting comments on evil. Here DK seems to agree with the Gnostics:
“The Forces of Evil are inherent in substance itself—of which all the many forms of life are constructed.” Rays and Initiations, Page 144
Think of it – without matter time and space – and the resulting pain, what evil could be committed? When God created the physical universe that which we call good and evil was a natural manifestation.
Now that we are here good is seen as that which takes us toward Spirit and away from pain and distress.
In a nutshell good takes us forward in spiritual evolution and evil takes us backward.
It will be considered a good thing to overcome all limitations here, awaken and return home to the house of our true Father.
Only the leading dog on a sled team has a good view. – Anonymous
Oct 14, 2025
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