Root of evil? QUESTION from Michelle December 13, 1999 There is this question that I've been wondering about for months now and it makes me feel uncomfortable everytime I come across it. That is Lucifer's falling. I believe that God is perfect, loving, and immacculate, but I just don't understand how Lucifer and its gang became evil. Scripture says that Lucifer's falling is because of his pride and his turning away from God's love, but aren't angels created perfect? Thanks!
P.S. Even though this question bothers me, but that doesn't keep me from loving God and I completely put my trust into His hands, after all, He is our Father.
ANSWER by John-Paul Ignatius on December 19, 1999 Dear Miss Diane:
I first want to praise and commend you for your true faith -- a faith that accept the Church even if you don't understand something. That is a true and humble faith that we all should have.
I think that the problem you are having is with a misunderstanding of the nature of angels. Yes, angels are created perfect; so was man!
But, because God loves us and does not want us to be robots, he gave both angels and men free will. This means that we can choose between obeying and loving God, or turning away from Him.
Each angel had that moment of decision in eternity past. We don't know when, but it it was probably soon after they were created. Angels, as intelligent and thinking beings, also had free will given to them.
Thus, knowing with FULL knowledge and beatific vision of God, they made a perfect decision (that is a decision that was irreversible because they made it with perfect knowledge of what they were doing). Lucifer and one third of the angels choose to use their free will to reject God. As a result, they became demons adn Lucifer became Satan.
They cannot change their minds because thier decision was perfectly made with complete knowledge. That had all the facts, all the variables, all the contingencies fully known to them, thus their is no new information for them to know in order to change their minds.
For us, we can change our minds because we make decisions without complete knowledge. When new information comes our way, it gives us a chance to change our minds.
Thus angels made their decision and now must live with it forever.
We make our decision here on earth and may change it from time to time, but hopefully at the time of our death we have chosen God. Then, that decision, is ours, too, for eternity.
The theologians out there please don't beat me up. The above is a simple explanation of what Thomas Aquinas and others have taught with far more complicated verbage. Hopefully I have the central jist of it okay.
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