Perhaps as many as 100,000 people have died in Sri Lanka since war began there in 1983. Since 2003 at least 300,000 people have died in Darfur at the hands of the Bashir government. Upwards of 2 million people have died in Sudan in a civil war that has lasted 20 years. As many as 50 million babies have been aborted in our own country since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Rogue nations today are testing missiles and nuclear weapons and threatening to use them. Countless examples of evil exist in the world. There are murders, kidnappings, rapes, extortions, robberies, and many more. And God concurs in all of them.

Wait a minute! How dare we say something like that? Isn’t it blasphemous even to suggest something like that?

The word concur literally means “to act together to a common end or a single effect.” With that definition in mind, it is indeed proper to say that God concurs in, that is, he goes along with, everything that happens, even everything that is evil.

God forbids evil

That doesn’t mean God approves of evil. On the contrary, God clearly forbids evil. In the Ten Commandments, God says, “You shall not murder . . . commit adultery . . . steal . . .” Through his prophet Isaiah he says, “Stop doing wrong” (Isaiah 1:16) and “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts” (55:7). The writer to the Hebrews says, “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” (12:1). The apostle Peter writes, “Dear friends, I urge you . . . to abstain from sinful desires” (1 Peter 2:11). There’s no toleration of evil in the Bible. There’s absolutely no laissez-faire attitude about sin and wickedness.

God prevents evil