so...many...questions...; okay, here I go, I hope I answer them all.
First, one of the most frequently asked questions concerning God is "If God is good, then He must not be powerful enough to deal with all the evil and injustice in the world since it is still going on. If He is powerful enough to stop the wrongdoing then He must be evil since He's not doing anything about it. So which is it? Is He a bad God or a God that's not powerful? Blah, Blah, Blah..." If you've been a Christian for more then 5 minutes you've heard that argument. The first thing you have to deal with is people's common misperception of evil. Many people say that the existence of evil disproves the goodness of God. The argument is that if God created everything in the world and evil is in the world, then God must have created evil, and if God created evil how can He be good?
The flaw here is the assumption that evil was created in the first place. Is there such a thing as light? Yes, of course there is. Is there such a thing as darkness, the opposite of light? No. Darkness is not the opposite of light, rather it is the absence of light, and an absence can't be created. If darkness was a thing in and of itself then we could make dark, but we can't. All we can do is take away light. Another example would be temperature, is there such a thing as heat? Yes. Is there such a thing as cold? No. The condition that we call cold, is not the opposite of heat, it is the absence of heat.
Now, how to relate this to God and the obvious existence of evil? If darkness is not the opposite of light but the absence of light, and cold is not the opposite of heat but the absence of heat, then is it possible that evil is not the opposite of good, but rather the absence of good?
If we classify evil as the absence of good, then it could not be a created thing, and if it is not a created thing, then God could not have created it.
So evil has always been here because God has always been here. God is pure good, and the absence of God is pure evil. Think of the yin/yang. For God to eliminate evil He would have to eliminate himself.
Now, about "free will"- The only way to have someone truly love you is to give them the option of not loving you. Would you rather have a girlfirend who has chosen to love you or a robot who is programmed to act as if they love you. There would be no true love with the robot, since it was not the robots choice. It would be acting out a series of programs, not love, which is a choice. You can choose to love someone, but you can't make them love you, otherwise John Travolta would return my phone calls... (just kidding).
God, in His infinite wisdom knew this at the beginning, and gave us the choice to obey or not to obey; to eat of the tree or not eat of the tree. And that brings me to another common misperception: The tree. God didn't want us to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because we would then know evil as well as good. Before, we were happy in our ignorence, like a child who doesn't understand death. Because of this knowledge, God didn't want us to also eat of the tree of life: we could then have all the capabilities of evil and live forever- and only God can have both infinite knowlege and eternal life, so he banished us. Now, that said, let's get to Satan.
The word Satan means slanderer, accuser. He is the one who is trying to use knowledge against us to confuse us with factoids, and he is the one who is trying to sway us. Why does God allow this? Why doesn't God just wipe him out? Let me ask you a question: If there were Superman, but no Lex Luther, would superman be super? No, he would not be able to prove himself a superhero by defeating Lex. He'd just be a farm hand who did all his chores really really fast. What makes superman a hero is his herosim. That can only be claimed by winning, and you can't win if there is no one to fight you. God allows Satan to exist because it glorifies Him, it makes him the Winner because He has defeated Satan. The bible says Satan was cast out, which if you look at the translation it's more like us saying "fallen from grace" It's not a change of location, but a change of status. From being God's right hand guy to being a outcast. This is more illustrated when you put it in the context that God defeated Satan at the cross, and will defeat him again in the last days.
As to why bad things happen to good people, think of this:
Dr. Brand worked for years treating leprosy patients in India and America. During his labors he arrived at an astonishing conclusion concerning the pathology of leprosy.
Leprosy victims suffer the curse of having their extremitiesfingers, toes, feet and even nose and earsdeteriorate and waste away, but no one knew why. Before Dr. Brands research, doctors assumed lepers were cursed with bad flesh. Dr. Brands remarkable discovery was that the problem lies in leprosy bacilli, which attack the nerves of body parts, triggering a process that leads to the death of the nerves. When this occurs, a patient who incurs the slightest woundeven a bruiseto an afflicted area feels absolutely no pain. Consequently he continues to use the damaged body part. This repeated use aggravates the wound. Eventually the tissue becomes so damaged that the flesh actually dies and sloughs off.
Dr. Brand began treating the wounds of lepers by protecting them, sometimes with casts. The wounds would often heal and not suffer further damage. The protected flesh would become sound again, even though the leper did not regain sensation in the affected body part because the neural tissue had permanently deteriorated.
Dr. Brand concluded that pain is a gift from God that alerts us to the fact that something has gone wrong.
The doctors determination applies to most diseases, not just leprosy. When we hurt, we should respond to our bodys signals and take measures to relieve the pain and eliminate the underlying cause. I had no idea how vulnerable the body becomes when it lacks a warning system, concludes Dr. Brand (Brand and Yancey, p. 121).
And another thing, pain has a purpose, to glorify God:
Studies have shown that a persons ability to endure pain is aided by a sense of control over it. We should do what we can to ease, manage and gain control over our suffering. Then we can realize we are not pawns subjected to the whim of pain, and we can choose to retain control over our attitudes and our responses to our pain.
As Gods servants we must learn that ultimately God is in control, and He is merciful. He is willing and able to deliver us. His ears are open to our prayers (1 Peter 3:12).
But He expects us to rely on His judgment and timing and trust Him implicitly. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia, wrote Paul. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us (2 Corinthians 1:8-10, NIV).
Hope this helps.....
