An 11 year old boy from our school asked his mother, "Why did God make evil?" He had been watching a movie with some very violent images of evil and wondered why God let this kind of thing happen. His mother answered and said that evil comes from misusing our free will to do evil. So, the boy said, "But why did God make it that way?"
Doesn't everyone get to ask this question? And don't most answers leave us unsatisfied? This is a longstanding philosophical issue that is known as the problem of evil, or theodicy. One man's answer to the problem of evil, St. Augustine, is that evil is a result of the Fall of Adam and Eve. A key element of the possibility of evil is having the free will to do right or wrong. Since God made us in His own image, and since God is free, so are we free: free to good or to do evil.
This is one of those questions that leads us either to greater faith, or into waves of doubt, or even to a loss of faith. How many of us know someone who has faced the problem of evil and gave up on religious belief? On the other hand, the persons with the deepest faith are people who have also been tested severely by some evil and wound up believing in the loving providence of God, despite terrible suffering caused by some evil.
The problem of evil will either lead us to know the absolute freedom God offers us, or will lead us to question everything. Far better to take a leap of faith.
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