The problem of evil is the struggle to understand how a good and almighty God allows evil and suffering to exist. Christian thought has long held that evil is not a sign of God’s absence, but part of the story in which human freedom, love, and redemption become real. If God removed all possibility of wrongdoing or pain, the result would not be a holy world, but an empty one, with people behaving like machines.
If human beings acted only out of fear—forced into goodness without real choice—then love, faith, obedience, and worship would lose their meaning. Scripture presents human life as a field of moral choice, not mechanical reaction. In Deuteronomy 30:19, God says, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life…” This assumes people can reject what God offers. Joshua 24:15 speaks the same way: “choose you this day whom ye will serve…” Faithful living has weight because it is chosen, not programmed.
Paul ties the idea to Christian liberty: “ye have been called unto liberty” (Galatians 5:13). Liberty implies risk, and risk makes evil possible. Without that risk, humanity would be no more than a set of instincts. The choice to love God, forgive others, pursue virtue, and trust in grace only matters because a person could do the opposite.
Many Christians understand evil not as a permanent feature of creation, but as something God allows for a time. In that time, God’s character becomes visible in a way it could not in a painless world. Mercy makes sense only where forgiveness is needed; justice only where wrongs must be righted; redemption only where something broken must be restored. God’s glory appears not in the evil itself, but in the way grace meets it. Revelation 21:4 points to the end of the story: a world without tears, where evil is finally undone.
@Billy_Graham I hope you don’t attend those churches where everyone assumes you’re a child.