The one question that Christians cannot answer. I dare any Christian to answer this question.

1. Did God ever “choose” to be good?

Christians would say God is goodness itself, not just a being who chooses to act good. In traditional theology (Aquinas, Augustine), God’s essence is identical with goodness, justice, and love. For God, to be is to be good. That means goodness isn’t a “choice” for Him; it’s His nature.

Humans, on the other hand, are created beings, not identical with goodness. We reflect goodness only to the extent we align with God’s nature. That gap between Creator and creature makes choice—and therefore moral growth—meaningful for us in a way it is not for God.

2. Why not make humans perfectly good like Himself?

Christian responses vary:

Free will defense (Augustine, C.S. Lewis): A world with free creatures capable of love is “better” than a world of automatons who cannot choose. Love without freedom is coerced, not genuine.

Soul-making defense (Irenaeus, John Hick): Humans are created immature and meant to grow into maturity by facing moral choices. The presence of evil is the “arena” in which virtues like courage, patience, and forgiveness can develop.

Mystery of divine purpose: Some Christians simply appeal to the limits of human reason—arguing that we cannot fully grasp why God chose this structure for creation, but that it coheres with a larger, hidden plan.

3. If God is perfectly good, how could He “create evil”?

Most Christians would say: He didn’t. Evil is not a “thing” created by God but a privation (a lack, corruption, or twisting) of the good. Augustine compared it to rot in fruit or rust on iron—real in its effects, but not a substance that exists on its own.

From this view:

God created beings with freedom → freedom entails the possibility of turning away from God → that turning is what we call evil.

Thus evil arises not as something God made, but as a misuse of the good gift of freedom.

4. So why give humans the choice at all?

Because (Christian response) the possibility of choosing wrongly is inseparable from the dignity of being able to choose rightly. Without the freedom to reject love, the freedom to give love would be meaningless.

C.S. Lewis puts it starkly: “God created things which had free will. That means creatures can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot.”