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The problem of human suffering and evil behavior is very difficult, not because it can't be answered from a Biblical frame of reference, but because it is highly personal and emotionally loaded. Many of the Psalms, and the whole book of Job, address the difficulty and distress and impatience of these conditions. There is no pretending that pain and suffering are not real, callenging to faith, and devastating in many ways. Concerning my own previous comments, I didn't say we have a perfect system, I said we have a working system, and in fact the best possible working system in which God anticipated all that could go wrong and chose to proceed, knowing what it would cost him. What would a perfect system be, by our definition? One in which nothing could go wrong? If nothing can go wrong, then self-determination cannot be a part of the system, there can be no personality. The only system in which nothing can go wrong must be a system without intellect or imagination, rigidly controlled by rules. Is that a perfect system? God didn't think so., If he had he could have created a sterile material universe and watched the atoms do their thing in rote order for as long as he cared to. Instead he chose to create living intelligent beings, flawless in the day of their creation but capable of imagining and choosing, and to offer perfection as one possible outcome, knowing that he himself would suffer in the process. God's design is not a system in which there is no self-will (and therefore no self), but one in which every choice has a consequence. It is not a system in which there is no injustice, but one in which every inequity will be addressed and rectified. A necessary part of the system is the day God has set in which he will judge the world in righteousness. Acts 17:31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." NIV
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