The university
professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything
that exists?
A student bravely replied yes, he did!"
"God created everything?" The professor asked.
"Yes, sir," the student replied.
The professor
answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil
exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then
God is evil."
The student became
quiet before such an answer.
The professor was
quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once
more that the Christian faith was a myth.
Another student raised
his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?" "Of
course", replied the professor. The student stood up and asked,
"Professor, does cold exist?"
"What kind of
question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The
students snickered at the young man's question.
The young man replied,
"In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what
we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody and every object
is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes
a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (- 460 degrees F) is
the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction
at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe
how we feel if we have too little heat.
The student continued.
"Professor, does darkness exist?"
The professor
responded, "Of course it does".
The student replied,
"Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is
in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact
we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the
various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of
light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know
how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't
this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when
there is no light present."
Finally the young man
asked the professor. "Sir, does evil exist?"
Now uncertain, the
professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every
day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the
multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. "These
manifestations are nothing else but evil."
To this the student
replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto
itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a
word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create
evil. Evil is not like faith, or love, that exist just as does light and heat.
Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in
his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness
that comes when there is no light."
The professor sat
down.
The young man’s name
--- Albert Einstein
