All right, Pastor John, here's a doozy of a question for you that we get via email from

time to time, so take a drink and a deep breath.

Here it is.

What is evil?

Evil clearly is something, is it merely the absence of holiness or is it the absence

of God?

Is there a way to explain the core essence of what evil is?

Wow, some of these questions, Tony, are just, I mean, they're just so ultimate, like

philosophers have been, and we're supposed to do this in five minutes.

Okay, the only reason I have any presumption to answer questions like this is because they

have a Bible in front of me.

I mean, if God hadn't said anything, I would be so stupid.

Okay, so I think, here's my answer that I'm going to try to show from the Bible in just

a few minutes, the core essence of evil is preferring anything more than God, loving

anything not for God's sake.

So evil is an act of preferring where there is no will, no volition, there's no evil.

Evil is a function of willing, Satan's willing, demons willing, humans willing, it's not

a function of stuff, it's a function of willing.

And evil is always defined in the Bible in reference to willing in regard to God.

God is the supreme value in the universe, and therefore evil is defined in reference

to this ultimate reality, it's this ultimate value, ultimate treasure, failing to value

the ultimately valuable appropriately is evil, that's what evil is.

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