Where religion gets it wrong is the idea that God created the world for the purpose of Judgment. God judges the world, but that doesn’t mean the reason for creation was to see which humans can pass a test.
The God of the Bible transcends time. God has a perfect understanding of all people and events from the beginning to the end. Creation may look like a test from our perspective, but not from God’s perspective. God did not “decide” to create the world as that implies a moment in time.
Creation is Essential
Since God transcends time, creation must provide something to God that is essential to the essence of God. Creation radiates from the essence of God. God’s real purpose for creation requires a world of good and evil, it requires suffering.
There are two types of suffering. There is personal suffering, and there is the emotional pain of watching the suffering of someone you love. For example, there is the child who dies a painful death from cancer, and there is the mother who watches her child die. God is with the child, and we do not know how much the child suffered.
As far as the suffering of the mother is concerned, the world was created for the suffering of the mother. It is inconceivable that a grieving mother who watched her child die, could one day stand before God, the Foundation of all existence, and the omniscient God might not understand what she went through.
It is inconceivable that a loving God might not understand what her heartache feels like. God does fully understand her heartache because He was with her, inside of her, and God felt what she felt. God has experienced that heartache millions of times. He has experienced it personally and has felt the same pain that every grieving mother has felt. God must experience sorrow through us. He cannot grieve for those who die, since He knows that death is nothing.
God is Always with Us
A loving God would need a world of good and evil to acquire the great array of emotions of the human experience. God has felt all the sorrow of all His children throughout all generations. God has wisdom that is essential to His essence by sharing the journey of life with billions of His children. A world of good and evil provides God with an understanding of what love is.
The purpose of creation requires that God be mysterious and leave us in the dark. If we do not know what happens to our departed loved ones, we experience sorrow. There needed to be waves of generations, many people over a long period of time, growing more distant from God, spread out over a large world. Different cultures and different ideologies would shape different societies.
The world developed into an unlevel playing field, and this fact has always caused difficulty for Christian scholars. The purpose of creation resulted in the world being an unlevel playing field, but this is not a problem. The world doesn’t have to be a level playing field because the world is not a test.
This Changes Everything
Angel and demons were said to be created the same, but with their “free will” they made different choices. If they were the same, why did they make different choices? It is certainly true that people are not all the same. If creation is not a test, if God created the world to know what love is, there would be no need for God to make everyone the same. There would be no need for God to make the world a level playing field.
If God is going to go with humans on a journey of good and evil, God had to create the conditions where evil would form. He also had to create creatures that are both good and evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil comes from the absence of love. Angels have the ability to love others, while demons do not. As created by God, all creatures are either given love, or they are not given love. They are either good or evil.
God needed creatures that are both good and evil. They had to be evil so they would die, but to grieve when others die, they had to be good. God created weak loving humans influenced by powerful egocentric spirits. It was the humans who gave themselves over to the evil spirits.
Humans Cause Suffering
Satan had to be egocentric. Satan hates God, but he is not so stupid as to openly rebel against God. The devil destroys the humans to grieve God because that is the only way he can harm God. Satan doesn’t realize that he is doing precisely what God created him to do.
God does not cause suffering, and even Satan does not directly cause suffering. Satan creates humans through lust and with the influence of the devil humans become part evil. Humans cause suffering. Suffering that is not caused by humans is caused by the natural forces of a fallen world.
For a benevolent God to allow suffering, it must be true that God will recompense those who suffer. We may learn that some of the most fortunate among us are those who suffered great emotional pain. They will have the gratitude of an incredibly loving God who created the world to share their journey.
Justice of God
In life or after death, God repays the victims, punishes all sins and rewards all righteousness. He executes perfect justice before the Day of Judgment. This is called temporal justice. The Day of Judgment marks the end of this world, and a transition to a better world to come. On the Day of Judgment God determines who is worthy to enter eternal Heaven. Only the perfect can enter Heaven so that Heaven will be a perfect world. The Day of Judgment is for the destruction of all evil.
We are subject to both temporal judgment and the Day of Judgment. This explains much of the confusion in the Bible concerning heaven and hell. Sometimes the Bible is talking about temporal heaven.
Eternal Heaven
We are part evil, and we are not worthy of entering the kingdom of God. This doesn’t mean we must simply accept Jesus. We cannot transfer responsibility for what we’ve done to someone else (Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:20). We know that would not be fair. Repentance can help us avoid punishment for our sins before the Day of Judgment. The Day of Judgment is not about punishing sin or rewarding righteousness, that will have already been achieved before the Day of Judgment. The Day of Judgment is to destroy all evil as evil cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Different religions have different methods for getting us to Heaven. Be it repentance, or confession, or accepting Jesus, or performing certain rituals, or minimizing our sin, or some type of penance. Either in life or in purgatory, there is a hope that we can gradually improve ourselves. This may be true, but we can never come even close to the perfection that is necessary to enter the perfect Kingdom of God. We will never be worthy of eternal life with God unless God changes us to make us worthy. God will not change us, and if He did, we would have no security in Heaven. God may later change us again and cast us out of Heaven. And changing us will not erase what we’ve done.
God Sends the Messiah
Satan has become evil, but he remains in Heaven because of his powerful will. The devil conceals his hatred of God, as he continues to do the job for which he was created. The children of God have no chance of eternal life in Heaven. God has a solution whereby He will destroy all evil and redeem all His children. God will achieve the purpose of creation in absolute perfection. Considering the absolute righteousness and infinite intelligence of God, there can be no other possible outcome. The solution is the promise God gave to Abraham that the nations would be blessed through his seed.
We cannot comprehend the structure of time and space, but there is one aspect of time that plays a key role in God’s design. There is only one God, but God created time in a way that allowed Him to send a Part of Himself into time. God transcends time, but there is a Part of God or a “Son of God” who travels through time. This “Piece” of God is one with God in the infinity that transcends time. He moves through time within the universe that God created.
This Piece of God is the Jewish Messiah promised to Abraham. The Messiah was born in the world as a human, but He doesn’t take our sins upon Himself. He overcame the Law, deserving resurrection to eternal life. He returns to oneness with God at the end of time, so He must also discard His earthly body. The Messiah justifies the separation of our spirit from our flesh. This is a one-time modification to us which is justified by Messiah who is one of us.
Separation Atonement
Our spirit is worthy of eternal life. In this way the Messiah redeems to eternal Heaven all the children of God regardless of their religious belief or non-belief. This is not to say that our flesh is evil, but as Christ said the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41). The material world is good as God Himself declared (Genesis 1:31). The flesh is weak, and it is influenced by the devil, resulting in our sinful nature.
This is not to deny the resurrection of the flesh. The flesh is resurrected for the Day of Judgment, but the flesh falls short on the Day of Judgment.
This is also not to deny the unity of flesh and spirit. It is the complete unity of flesh and spirit that requires the Messiah. We are each, body and soul, one person. Just as our body has different parts but is one body, likewise our spirit and flesh are completely one. Christ is fully God in that the spirit that came into the body of Christ came from the essence of God. He is also fully human. Like us, Christ is one person, spirit and flesh.
God sees all human events. God is witness to the fact that the spirit of love within us has never committed any sin. The spirit of love within us deserves eternal life and can enjoy eternal life. We will not be disembodied spirits; we will have new glorified bodies.
How the Messiah Destroys Evil
There is something else the Messiah must do. Satan hates God, but he is still in Heaven doing the job for which he was created. The Messiah redeems all love, and He also destroys all evil.
There is only one God, and the inhabitants of Heaven know this to be true. Jesus is at the right hand of God (Psalm 110:1; Psalm 91:1). The right hand of God is a transcending level of Heaven. The inhabitants of Heaven do not know that Jesus is a Piece of God who came from God and will return to God. They do not know that Jesus is still alive.
When Jesus was on the cross, God forsook Christ (Psalm 10:1; Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46). God looked away from the crucifixion. Satan didn’t bother to suppress his hatred of God because he believed Jesus was a mere human. Jesus is not a mere human, and He was able to witness the devil’s hatred of God (Revelation 1:5; John 15:22-25; Psalm 21:8). This is why Jesus had to be crucified. The physical pain was nothing to the Lord. The crucifixion provided cover as Jesus responded to the unimaginable hatred that was directed at Him. As Jesus returns to oneness with God, there is already a second witness against the devil.
The revelation in Heaven of who Jesus really is, and the true relationship between God and Jesus, reveals how Satan is condemnation. This will cause the devil to be cast out of Heaven.
