Camody Grey writing on the nature of evil ('We are to say to the victim...', 14 Nov) is absolutely right. Evil is indeed, as she tells us, "an outrage, an affront, and God will not have it."
In the Genesis 1 account God does not create darkness. The darkness was already there "in the beginning", before He began His work of creation. The first thing He did was to create light, and distinguish it from the darkness.
St John's take on this, in the prologue to his Gospel, was that this mysterious darkness was an active force in total opposition to Christ.
The image is of a race in which darkness never overtakes the Light (John 1:5; katalambanein, almost universally translated as 'overtake' in John 12:35, used again in Paul's image of a race in Philippians 3:12-4).
God has been totally at war from the very first with this active and personal force, whom Jesus calls the ruler of this world (eg John 12:30) and whose works He came to destroy (1 John 3:8).
Final victory was assured by His cross and resurrection, but will not be complete until the end of all things.
So we should indeed be indignant about the continued presence of evil.
It is our job as the Church to oppose and conquer it in Christ's name.
No apology is required.
Alas, all too often today Satan is treated as an optional extra to our belief, rather than the active, powerful force that he is.
Such teaching does us a grave disservice.
It suggests that our Redemption story can be adequately told without him, thus misrepresenting God by allowing Him to be blamed for all the suffering and evil about us.
But it is God's conflict with Satan which provides the context of our Redemption from the first page of the Bible to the last: "...whom resist, steadfast in the faith" (1 Peter 5:9).
(Dr) Martin Mosse, Emsworth, Hants
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