“Why does God allow Satan to exist?”—Emma
This question haunts all of us. Put another way, “If God is good, why does He permit evil to continue? Furthermore, how could God create Satan, the very personification of evil?” I suspect the full answer, though shrouded in dimensions and purposes beyond our understanding, has something to do with us.
Scripture is replete with invitations to humans to come to know God, to love Him and trust Him. True love and loyalty, however, are not coerced. Every person is free to choose God—a genuine relationship with Him is possible only in the context of this free will. The freedom to accept God has another side: it inherently contains the freedom to reject God.
In simplest terms, the freedom to deny God is what keeps Satan in business. Called, among numerous names, Enemy (I Pet. 5:8), Accuser (Rev. 12:10), Tempter (Matt. 4:1), and Evil One (Matt. 13:19), Satan schemes to blind the minds of unbelievers (II Cor. 4:4) and distort the truth (Jn. 8:44). These activities of his are implicit in and abetted by the “dark side” of man’s free will. That is, humans, who are by nature inclined to follow the ways of this world as opposed to the ways of God (see Acts 26:18), provide an arena in which Satan, “the power of this dark world, the spiritual force of evil” (Eph. 6:12), is enabled to do what he does best.
But wait—there is good news! Next column.
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