Why Would a Loving God Create Self-Destructive People?

So here we are.

You have your struggles and I have my struggles.

But why?

Why would a God who loves us create us with tendencies, desires, and sometimes even passions for things that hurt us? For example, depression or anxiety. Both of these symptoms in many cases are, to an extant at least, proven to be neurologically wired in a person's brain. If God "knit me together in my mother's womb" (psalm 139:13), why did he tweak some of the stitching and intentionally leave holes in the cloth?

For surely, God could have created perfect beings without any self-destructive tendencies.

Now, at this point, many people will bring up the point that God gave us free will and he valued our free will above making us perfect against our will. I think however that this point has a faulty premise. For it could be argued back that God could have simply created people with desires and passions that were not self-destructive. But then, of course, someone will argue that a persons passions and desires are not created by God, but created by man's own experiences and devices. This argument runs into the problem that if I continue to ask you the question "where did that desire come from?" for any individual and so on for the next individual and the next back to the beginning of everything, you must eventually say "God created." And in creating, God knew, thus he must have planned. For there is no blind creating with God, only purposeful creating.

For the above mentioned reasons, I'm going to dismiss the theory that self-destructive tendencies exist because God desired to give man free will. For there is something more to this. God, for some very specific and intentional reason gave man desires that have the potential to destroy him if submitted to.

The two possible reasons seem to be that

1. God gains from our self-destructive tendencies.

and/or

2. Man gains from his self-destructive tendencies.

These seem to me the only plausible reasons for creating humans with self-destructive tendencies. Either because God is going to be more glorified in some way, or because man is going to benefit in some way.

I'd like to note a somewhat interesting phenomenon at this point. What is absolutely fascinating about self-destructive tendencies including people who struggle with depression and anxiousness, is that these people nonetheless often come to believe in Christ. Rarely does a person logically and fully renounce God because of a difficult experiences in their own life, but more often because of difficult experiences in others' lives.

We don't renounce God because our mom died, we renounce him because of all the suffering in Iraq. It is at least peculiar that our anger towards God regarding suffering is more often enflamed outside the realm of suffering than it is within. Basically, we don't disbelieve in God because our mom died, we disbelieve in God because our friends mom died. We disbelieve in God because of general suffering in the world, not specific suffering that effects us personally.

Nonetheless, I think that the two possible reasons listed above hold truth about our scenario.

God gains from our self-destructive tendencies

At first glance, no one likes the looks of that title. How would God possibly gain from the suffering in the world? Here, we have to step outside our comfort zones to examine the mind of the creator.

A few possibilities.

1. It reminds humans that God is God and they are not. 

When we have things we personally struggle with in life, it is a great reminder that God is all-powerful and we are not. Perhaps the very problem with Satan when he fell from heaven was that he believed he had no bad tendencies and that made it that much easier to consider himself without need of God. This benefits God because God desires that his creatures glorify him, and creating creatures who have certain self-destructive tendencies reminds them often that they need God to sustain them.

2. It makes for a more glorifying big picture.

It would be easy to read to the middle of any great novel, act as though that is where the story ends, and become enraged by the horrible ending (actually the middle). That is what we humans do with the story of the earth and humanity. We read the part we play and the parts that have come before and are dissatisfied with the story. Have we forgotten that the hero usually saves the day at the end of the story? Have we forgotten that the best stories include great suffering? Let me suggest for a moment that perhaps the end of the story is going to magnify God's glory that much more because of the difficulties found in the middle of the story.


Man gains from his self-destructive tendencies

This seems like a bit of an oxymoron, but again, we must examine the big-picture.

1. It reminds humans that God is God and they are not.

Yes, the same as the first one for God. It's basically the same idea. Anything apart from it's creator, when it is made for the purpose of being in relationship with its creator will be miserable. So perhaps we benefit because it reminds us to pray to God, to depend on God, which then leads to our greater satisfaction in the end.

2. Humans get to be the hero now and again.

When you have experienced something self-destructive in your own life, you are more equipped to help someone, experiencing a similar thing, overcome it in their life. It can be argued that God should have just created us to not have self-destructive tendencies in the first place, thus this is more of a secondary benefit that makes humans feel purpose in their life as they get to be the hero and help others.


The important thing is not to have all the answers, but to recognize you don't have all the answers. Simply recognize that there are other possible reasons that God created man to have self-destructive habits. The fool's choice is to say either God is evil or he doesn't exist, but this is faulty reasoning.

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord."- Isaiah 55:8