"With so much evil in the world, how can you believe in a loving God?" I'm sure we've all heard a nonbeliever utter something like that many a time. To me, this is a flimsy excuse for dismissing God. When you get down to it, if you will not put your hope in God the creator, then your only other option is humankind and what it creates. For example, if you put your hope in things like fame, fortune, possessions, comfort, convenience, praise, self, accomplishments, or relationships, it all comes back to mankind and its cultural expectations in one way or another. Yet there is no denying that all the evil in the world originates with selfish people. Specifically when people seek their own good, instead of following the will of God. Or sometimes people trying to misrepresent God for self-serving means. So why are we blaming the one individual who is not responsible for all the evil in the world, only to put our hope in what's actually to blame? To me, the question is backward. It is we the church that should be asking "With all the evil in the world perpetrated by humanity, how can you possibly put your faith in mankind?" The human race is the most unreliable thing on the planet if you ask me.
Granted, God could make all this evil go away if he made us all puppets, but that wouldn't actually mean anything. Nothing we do, good or evil, would have any relevance at all if we did not have freewill. People may like to self-delude themselves through forced submission, but an all-knowing God will not. The strange thing about humanity's relationship with freewill is we all want it for ourselves, but we don't necessarily want others to have it when it's an inconvenience to us. So we expect God to change the world to suit us, yet we ourselves refuse to change. Consider just how much of our energy is spent on trying to take away the freewill of others, just so we don't have to change ourselves. Just another example of how unfair humankind really is.
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? -Jeremiah 17:9
A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.-Psalm 33:17
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