To understand the context in which suffering exists, we must understand something far greater than our own experience in this fallen world. We must understand the great controversy between God and Satan.
God
God is the source of all things good. He is the source of existence, life, power, space, matter, love, truth, etc. And God is infinite. Everything about God is infinite. He is infinite in power. He is infinite in knowledge. He is infinite in existence. He is infinite in location. And every quality of God’s is infinite as well. He has infinite love, infinite forgiveness, infinite patience, infinite justice, infinite mercy, and so on. God has always been, and God will always be. God never had a beginning, and He will never have an end. There was never a time when there wasn’t God, and there will never be a time when there won’t be God.
Before God made the first thing, He had already existed forever and possessed every quality He possesses to an infinite degree. God was infinite in power, knowledge, existence, location, love, forgiveness, patience, justice, mercy, etc. before He made the first creature. And God was complete in Himself and perfectly content for eternity before He ever created the first creature. God has no needs.
God did not create creatures because He needed them. He didn’t need their service. He didn’t need their praise. He didn’t need their worship. He didn’t need anything from them. God created creatures because He wanted them. He created creatures so that He could supply their needs.
God created all things dependent upon Himself. He is the source of all things good, and He created His creatures to need that which is good, such as love, truth, righteousness, respect, and gain. And He created His creatures in His image—to reflect aspects of His character. Because God is loving, joyful, and purposeful, to be like Him brings love, joy, and purpose.
God is love—unselfish love. Unselfishness always does what it does for other’s sake and not for its own sake. Therefore, God always does what He does for other’s sake and not for His own sake. Yes, what He does is because of Who He is. And yes, what He does results in good to Himself. But He doesn’t do what He does for the good that comes to Him. He does what He does for the good that comes to us. What God says, what He does, how He responds, the directions and commands He gives, what He permits, and the consequences He gives are always for the good of others and not for His own good.
God does not contradict Himself. As He possesses His qualities to an infinite degree, He cannot have the slightest lack of that quality or be the opposite of that quality. He is the truth; therefore, He cannot lie (see Titus 1:2). He is unselfish love; therefore, He cannot be selfish. He is righteous and just; therefore, He cannot be unrighteous or unjust (see Deuteronomy 32:4). God will never do anything that is inconsistent with His character.
Intelligent Creatures
God created all things to function in harmony with His law—the Fundamental Law—taking power and resources from their appointed source and using it to pass power and resources on to others. In other words, God created all things so they would take to give.
And God created each intelligent creature to take in the love they need and to give love away to others. In other words, God created each intelligent creature to be loved and to love. Love cannot be forced. It must be voluntary. And it can only be experienced by a creature that has the capacity of self-government. If I programmed you so that you would always do what I asked you to do, that you would always be cheerful while you did it, and that you would always respond in a loving manner, but you had no capacity to govern yourself, could you love? The answer is no. You would be a robot, and a robot has no capacity to accept or give genuine love.
Love can only be love when there is a capacity to freely govern self. So, God created His intelligent creatures to be free—to only govern themselves and to never be governed by others. For this is the only way that love could be preserved.
God created every intelligent creature with the capacity to govern themselves, but He also created them dependent upon Himself and the resources that He created them to function by, such as power, materials, love, truth, etc. Every resource that you need to exist, to function, and to live comes from outside of you. And it is you who must bring what you need inside of yourself so that you can live. While something can be forced into the body against your will, nothing can be forced into your mind without your will. Why? Because you were created to govern yourself. Therefore, only you can control what is accepted and brought into you or what is rejected and left outside of you.
There are physical means of bringing into yourself what you need physically. You breathe to bring in oxygen. You drink to bring in water. You eat to bring in food, etc. And, under usual conditions, only when your needs are taken in and become a part of you, can you live. But when it comes to your spiritual needs, there is only one action that brings in all the things you need spiritually, and that action is faith. Faith is belief that results in active dependance upon what is believed. And faith is what brings in from outside of you the spiritual things you need, so that they come inside of you.
Everything you need comes from a source, which is God. To take what you need from God by faith, you must first bind yourself to Him by trust. And to bind yourself to Him by trust, you must first know who you are in relation to Him. God created each intelligent creature with an identity, and that identity is a child of God. When you know that you are a child of God, that you belong to God, that He is the source of everything you need, then you can bind yourself to Him by trust, and take in by faith the love, acceptance, respect, understanding, etc. that you need from Him. So, identity is the very beginning of the individual. And it is from identity that you govern yourself.
When you have the right identity, you govern yourself correctly, putting your trust in the right source, and exercising your faith to take from that source what you need. And that is how God created every intelligent creature to function. As God is the only Source of all things we need, He created humanity dependent upon Himself, with an identity that we are children of God, with our trust placed on Him as our source, and taking from Him by faith everything we need.
And God created us that we would have pleasure as a result of fulfilling our needs. It is pleasurable to eat. It is pleasurable to drink. It is pleasurable to breathe. It is pleasurable to be loved. It is pleasurable to be respected, honored, understood, etc.
But God did not create us to keep things to ourselves. He created us to take what we need and then give to others. Imagine how huge (and uncomfortable) you would be if you kept every bite of food you ever ate, every swallow of liquid you ever drank, and every breath of air you ever breathed. No, God did not create you to be a Dead Sea. He created you to be a channel, taking what you need and freely giving to others.
And God made it pleasurable to give. It is pleasurable to love others. It is pleasurable to respect others. It is pleasurable to understand others. It is pleasurable to help others. It is pleasurable to give good to others when you have already taken what is good from God.
Created by God to govern ourselves, God gave us the correct identity by which we orient ourselves to Him, put our trust in Him, accept His standard as the standard by which we evaluate information and determine what is truth, and by faith accept (believe) what we determine is truth. That standard is used by us to also determine what is gain. By that standard, we evaluate information, accepting what we determine is truth, and doing what we determine is gain. We cannot accept what we determine to be a lie, and we cannot do what we determine to be a loss. We can only go after the truth and gain, not lies and loss.
And the standard that God created all creation to operate by is the Law of Life—the Law of God—taking to give. When we have the Law of Life as our standard, we accept and believe all truth as truth, reject all lies as lies, see all things that are gain as gain and do them, and see all things that are loss as loss and avoid them.
Created by God to govern ourselves, nothing can force anything (information, another standard, etc.) into us without our consent. We are always free to govern ourselves. Only thus could our capacity to love be preserved. And God Himself will never overrule our self-government, for how He created us to function was perfect. There was nothing wrong with anything He created, so there isn’t anything that He must fix or change in what He created.
Because God created intelligent creatures to govern themselves, He has no responsibility for how His creatures govern themselves. Their own self-government is their own responsibility. Having created His intelligent creatures with the right identity, source, and standard, they always accepted the truth, pursued the gain, bound themselves to Him by trust, took in their needs by faith, had pleasure when they took in and supplied what they needed, and had pleasure when they gave to others what the others needed. Hence, there was never a reason that any of His creatures should ever do anything wrong.
Operating as they were created, all would take what they need from God by trust & faith, and give freely away to others, thus living a life of pleasure, believing the truth, and doing what is gain. All would be in perfect harmony, taking from God and giving to others, having greater and greater pleasure and purpose in taking and giving more and more to others. And all would be joyful and at peace living freely a life of unselfish love. But something happened. Something unexplainable.
In heaven, there are various angels, with different positions and different capabilities. There were two angels who were the closest to God, standing in His immediate presence. These angels are called covering cherubim and were symbolized by the two golden angels over the ark of the covenant in the temple. The highest ranking of all the created angels was Lucifer, who was one of the covering cherubim (see Ezekiel 28:14). He had great responsibility and was greatly respected by the other angels.
The Fall of Lucifer
The reason for what happened next can never be understood or explained. We can never answer the question, “Why did it happen?” But we can answer the question, “What happened?”
Unexplainably, Lucifer became self-deceived, thinking that his great beauty, wisdom, and influence came from and belonged to himself (see Ezekiel 28:17). His focus turned from God as the Source of all his needs, and he began to look more and more to himself. As he continued to do so, the deception grew in his mind until he began to see things from a wrong perspective—a perspective which appeared to him to be right.
Lucifer began to think that he was the source of his qualities and capacities. He began to think that the good he was doing was coming from himself. And he wanted more and more for himself. As impossible as it seems, he was a creature desiring to be a creator. He was an effect desiring to be the cause.
Created to govern himself, Lucifer unexplainably deceived himself into believing that he was a god. With his identity changed, he removed his trust from God and put it in himself and began to depend upon himself, rather than upon God. As all creatures could only attach themselves to their source by trust and take from that source by faith, and as all creatures were dependent upon the power, love, truth, and resources that came from God in order to live and function, the moment that Lucifer removed his trust from God and put it in himself, he should have died, for he removed himself from that which he needed to live. But, instead of allowing Lucifer to die as a consequence of this deception, God artificially preserved his life.
Why did God artificially preserve Lucifer’s life? Wouldn’t it have been better for him to just die and all the suffering that has resulted since that time to never have happened? Didn’t God know what was going to happen if Lucifer lived? If God knew, and He preserved Lucifer’s life anyway, doesn’t that make God responsible for all that Lucifer has done and all the suffering that has come from it? Isn’t God the real monster in this story? This is what many believe—many whom I counsel with who have a hard time trusting a God who would allow so much suffering in their own lives and in the lives of others.
So, why did God artificially preserve Lucifer’s life? It wasn’t for God’s sake. It was for the sake of all His creatures. No creature at the time knew what sin was. It had never existed before. They didn’t know to what depths of hell it would lead. They had no clue. If God would have allowed Lucifer to die the moment he removed his trust from God, the other intelligent creatures would have questioned his death. “Why did he die? What did he do? What he did didn’t seem so bad, but the consequences God gave were horrible. It looks like God is the one who is evil. But God wields all the power, so if we don’t keep trusting him, we, like Lucifer, will all die as well.” They would then live in fear of the One who would “pull the plug” on them if they did anything wrong.
If someone puts a gun to your head and says, “Sweep the floor!” Can you do what they ask? Yes! If someone puts a gun to your head and says, “Clean my room, and act cheerful while you do it!” Can you do what they ask? Yes! If someone puts a gun to your head and says, “Convince me that you love me!” Can you do things that may look like you love them? Yes! But if someone puts a gun to your head and says, “Trust me!” Can you trust them? No! You can never trust one who forces you. You can only trust one who leaves you free to govern yourself.
Obedience, peace, joy, and harmony are only the fruits of love. They are never the fruits of fear. Fear can result in compliance. But fear can never result in obedience. Fear can result in uniformity. But fear can never result in unity. Fear will never bring lasting allegiance. Only love can do that. If God allowed Lucifer to die when he unplugged himself from God, fear would eventually take the place of love as the motivation of all God’s intelligent creatures. This would destroy unity, allegiance, obedience, and love, and would result in rebellion and the loss of ALL God’s intelligent creatures.
So, for the sake of all God’s intelligent creatures, and for the sake of preserving love, God artificially preserved Lucifer’s life when he removed his trust from God and placed it upon himself. Lucifer continued to govern his own life wrong, believing that he could live independent of God, while God’s mercy in preserving Lucifer’s life became “proof” to him that he could live independent of God.
As trust in himself continued to grow, Lucifer became more and more jealous of God. He wanted to make the decisions. He wanted to sit on the throne. He wanted to be worshipped, praised, and served by all (see Isaiah 14:13-14). And he became suspicious of God.
As Lucifer was now motivated by selfishness, even though he didn’t know what selfishness really was, he began to think that God was motivated by selfishness. He began to think that God did what He did for His own sake, and not for the sake of others. He believed that God wanted all to worship Him for His own sake. He believed that God wanted all to praise Him for His own sake. He believed that God wanted all to serve Him for His own sake. And He believed that God would do everything necessary to retain power and control of all things for His own sake.
Now, everything that God did was viewed through this false worldview, and everywhere Lucifer found “proof” that what he believed was true. He “saw” the selfishness of God in everything that God did. And if there is one thing that selfishness cannot tolerate, it is being treated selfishly by someone else. Evil cannot tolerate evil being done to itself. Only love can tolerate evil being done to itself. Evil will respond to evil with evil. Only love can respond to evil with love. As Lucifer perceived God as ruling with evil motives and purposes, he could not long tolerate God’s rules, requirements, and responses. And as he was the only one “smart enough” to see the “problem”, he must somehow save the foolish angels who didn’t see the problem as it really was. He must save them from their ignorance and blind subservience to God. There was a tyrant upon the throne, and that tyrant must be unmasked, and the masses freed from His tyrannical rule.
Of course, Lucifer believed that his own mind was perfect, therefore he was not subject to error. He truly believed the lie of his own false perceptions. And when it was revealed that God had a law by which all creatures operate, and to which all must obey, he saw this as an unnecessary imposition for the purpose of enforcing God’s dominion. “We angels are perfect,” he thought, “therefore we don’t need a law to govern us. Our own minds are a sufficient guide.”
Lucifer permitted these thoughts to grow until he believed he could take the place of God and rule heaven better than God could. So he devised a plan for the government of heaven that he considered to be superior to God’s government. His plan would discard God’s law, remove the “selfish” God from the throne, and have Lucifer as the ruler of all, giving all the freedom to follow their own will without restrictions. He truly believed that he was devising a way to save heaven from a tyrant ruler, and that he would be the benefactor of the hosts of heaven.
With the deception strongly entrenched in his own mind, Lucifer went about sharing his thoughts with others. All the time he was subverting God’s government, he claimed that he was only seeking to maintain the peace and harmony of heaven. While working for the destruction of heaven, he claimed that he was working for its good. He shared his thoughts of the selfishness of God, and many began to see things as Lucifer saw them. They began to see “proof” of God’s selfishness in how He ran heaven.
Do you have questions or need more information? Reach out to us! We would love to help you in whatever way we can.
