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God and Suffering
Evil is not in the world by the choice of God but by the choice of man. Man was the one who ate of the forbidden fruit and subjected himself to Satan instead of to God (Genesis 3). Evil entering the world is only a consequence of man's actions and not of God's. God gave man free will. Has God intervened at times? Yes, but only after man has made the decision and carried it out. God destroyed the world through a flood because the thoughts of MAN were all evil. Sometime we to see that the universe around his is really very beneficial. Humans do not look for the good, they look for the bad and they focus on this as a reason that God must not exist. This is foolish.
When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden they both made the choice to eat of the fruit and disobey God. Romans says that from this act sin entered the world. God has not always allowed evil men to continue to live. He destroyed the world by a flood (Genesis 6-8). He struck down numerous people in the Old Testament. However, now Romans 12 says that "vengeance is mine" I will repay and says that he has set a day when he will judge the world (John 5:28,29). Job was a man who God allowed Satan to have at. Job suffered horrible things but his faith was refined in the fire. I don't think that God uses evil to make us better, but he does turn the evil that Satan does to us into good if we are faithful to him. God has chosen to let men follow their own way in this life, but he has also promised that they will get their just reward/punishment in the next life. It is not because God is not all powerful, it is because he is powerful enough to let men have their own choice. In one of the Old Testament prophets God said that they sacrificed their children in the fire to idol gods, something that "had not even entered his mind" (Jeremiah 7:31). Why had this not entered his mind? Was he not all knowing? No. Man succumbs to the temptations of the devil to degrees of evil that God does not even imagine. However, the way in which he has chosen to allow the world to work means that his righteous judgment may not be carried out in this world. It will surely be carried out in the next life. Evil is not here because of God, evil is here because of man, and the devil working through sinful man.