Reduced To Robots
These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.
John 20:31 JB
In Christ we can become new people. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV) God can produce great good out of any life dedicated to Him.
If God were to remove all evil from our world (but somehow leave man on the planet), it would mean that the essence of “humanness” would be destroyed. Man would become a robot.
Let me explain what I mean by this. If God eliminated evil by programming man to perform only good acts, man would lose his distinguishing mark—the ability to make choices. He would no longer be a free moral agent. He would be reduced to the status of a robot.
Let’s take this a step further. Robots do not love. God created man with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one’s right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one’s freedom to choose to respond. Man could be programmed to do good, but the element of love would be lost. If man were forced to do good, suffering would be eliminated—and so would love. What would it be like to live in a world without love?
Thus we can see that God’s use of His power to eliminate evil would not prove to be a positive solution to the problem of suffering. The results of such action would create greater dilemmas. Either man would be reduced to the status of a robot in a loveless world or he would be annihilated. Given the choice, I would choose to be responsible for my actions rather than to be a robot without responsibility!
Our Father and our God, I dedicate my life to You. I bring it willingly and lay it at Your feet. Take my life and use it to magnify and glorify You and You alone. Make my life a conduit of Your love and compassion to the world through the strength of Jesus Christ, my Lord. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).