An Inquiry: Why did God create us as sinners, then give us a choice, and then punish us for sinning?
How We Would Respond: This inquiry assumes three things.
1. That God created us as sinners.
2. That when we act we do so according to nothing but our unique individual will.
3. That God is punitive.
To say that God created us as sinners is to infer that God can, and does, create sin. For God to create sin God must be familiar with sin, and must be able to generate sin from Himself. Sin coming from God? This assumption is questionable, to say the least. I say that it is outright false: God and sin are mutually exclusive concepts.
Many of us believe that we are entirely self-regulated in terms of our behavior; that we can do whatever we choose. But if this be true then it is also true that God’s will can be overturned — because it is not God’s will that we should do evil, but we certainly seem to do just that. What is the truth: that we have free choice and the capacity to act as we choose, or that God’s will stands firm. Both cannot be true.
It is assumed by some, and even many, that God punishes. If it were so that God punishes then it would also be so, wouldn’t it, that God created something that sins and deserves punishment; and so sin comes from God.
There is a great deal of inconsistency, I believe, when it comes to thinking about God. People say, on the one hand, that God is pure goodness; but they also say that God created something (humanity) that is either directly sinful or has the capacity to sin — in either case, sin exists within God’s creation and so sin came from God.
I say that God is the perfect creator and creates nothing sinful. If I perceive something sinful within a creation of God the mistake is in my perception, not in God’s capacity to create.
