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Theodore Pitcairn

Posted:January, 21 2015

An excerpt from Reverend Theodore Pitcairn’s Book, My Lord My God.

It is often wondered: Why, if He is omnipotent, did God permit evil to arise in the world? The answer to this question is as follows. God wishes above all else to have those He can love and who, out of free choice, love Him in return. If man were not free to choose to love or not to love, he would not be man; a compelled love is not a genuine human love–it is scarcely even an animal love. Therefore, because He loved mankind, God necessarily had to let man choose, first between what was higher and what was lower–between what was more noble and what was less noble. It was owing to man’s choosing the less noble that evil arose. God looks in the first place to the preservation of man’s freedom, including his freedom of choice, for He prefers having evil men and devils to having automatons, compelled to love Him.

Metropolitan Museum of Art – NY – First visit