John Owen wrote:
"And this is a remarkable feature of God's providence in the world: He limits the flood of sin that would overflow the earth by restricting men's power to bring it to pass."
Couple this with the fact that in the last century over 800,000 million men, women and children have been killed in secular conflicts and I believe we should all be driven to our knees in thankfulness and humility.
Should God "blink" the evil we know would seem child's play - a mere discomfiture - compared to what sinful man is capable of.
Evil, as we know it within God's limits, must be a arrow pointing to a greater goodness we can only know in part. As great as the evil we can know is the goodness of God is greater. Every stick has two ends. On one end we see the limited evil man is allowed and on the other we see (in a limited way) the great goodness of God.
There has to be two ends to the stick or there is no meaning, no purpose worth our efforts.
In my work in law enforcement as well as in my ministry I have seen the raw effects of sin. I've smelled the bile and washed the blood from my hands. As a young child I was witness to terrorist actions up close and personal where there was no regard for any human life.
Evil is and will be until He returns but we must keep in mind and be awed that it is a very very limited evil, restrained by an utterly unlimited God. We need to not allow the commonness of evil in our world numb us. Terror should terrify, injury should hurt, fear should birth fear - these are normal, human responses. But none of these can be allowed to shock us into numbness.
Pray in gratitude for God's restraining hand. Somehow the truth that regardless of how bad things are they, "could always be worse," should comfort us as it is our God who restrains, prohibits, denies the greater evil of which sinful man is capable.
For a good insight into the problem of evil I suggest Oz Guinness' book; "Unspeakable' Facing up to the challenge of evil"
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