Everything in the world, even seemingly evil things (except for sin), occurs by the will of God. Theologians explain it in the following manner. The origin of evil is sin. Each sin contains (1) the cause that led to it and (2) its inevitable consequence – correction through punishment. The cause of sin is the deceit and willfulness of the vain sinner, while the punishments (both correction and execution), being the bitter consequences of their cause, occur by the will of God, and are not the cause of sin, but represent its correction or destruction. Thus, if from the concept of sin we eliminate its cause – deceit and willfulness, then there will not be a single one of its bitter or evil consequences that does not occur by the will of God or is displeasing to Him. Just like the sinful misfortunes of an individual, so the earthly, so-called natural, disasters, such as: famine, drought, plagues, etc., which often bear no direct relation to individual sin, occur by the will of God. Therefore, all human disasters and misfortunes positively occur by the will of God for the sake of achieving the righteous goals of God’s Providence; sin alone is contrary to God (just as evil is contrary to good, or deceit is contrary to truth), but is allowed by God in order not to violate the freedom of man’s will.

Many are deceived, believing in their ignorance that only the evil occurring from natural causes, to wit: floods, earthquakes, crop failures, disastrous atmospheric manifestations, epidemics, unexpected death, etc., – occur by the will of God, for often such misfortunes have no direct relation to sins. But evil deeds, occurring from unlawful human designs, from falsehood, such as: offensive words, mockery, insult, deceit, counterfeiting, abductions, theft, murder, etc. – occur, in the view of these people, independently of the will of God and His Providence, but exclusively due to human malice and the depraved human will, which of its own accord causes all manner of evil for its neighbors. However, such views are unworthy of a Christian.

The subject of which we now speak can be best explained by means of an example. A certain person, intending to deprive his neighbor of all of latter’s property, and wishing to fulfill his evil intention secretly, creeps unnoticed into the neighbor’s house, places lighted fuel under the building, and leaves the house just as surreptitiously. Soon afterwards a fire starts; the flames grow, the wind spreads the fire to other buildings; people run from all sides to extinguish the flames and protect adjacent buildings from the fire. The arsonist also runs up together with the other people, as though to put out the fire, but he has a different intent: under cover of the fire alarm, he takes valuables out of the burning building as though to save them, but in reality he steals them for himself and hides them. Although all these actions of the arsonist represent the direct cause of the owner’s bankruptcy and loss of property, but examined by themselves, without any relation to the arsonist’s evil intent, they appear no different from so-called natural disasters. They stem from God: just as God allows thunder to kill a man, or lighting to ignite a house or a growing tree, a hurricane to sweep away a field of haystacks, so does He control the arsonist: the latter can neither enter the house, nor go out of it, nor ignite the fire without God’s allowance. Moreover, the actions themselves are indifferent – neither evil, nor good, because they can lead to evil just as equally as to good, for God could have prevented their being committed if He so wished. However, the Lord did not impede the committal of the evil intent, but allowed it according to His just judgment. The reasons for such allowance will be explained below.