Why Doesn't God Stop All the Pain, Evil, and Suffering in the World?

If God were to restrain every person from doing anything evil, not only would He have to put everyone in a veritable strait jacket, He'd also have to lobotomize everyone and literally turn every human being on the planet into a robot.

If God miraculously provided food for every child, many parents would stop feeding their kids. If God hugged and coddled every child, many parents would spend less time with their children. If God did everything we can do ourselves, we would become more selfish than we are now.

Why doesn't God cure every disease? Diseases are caused by either behavior or a broken genome. Why doesn't God just fix the human genome and make it perfect? He'd then have to protect it from becoming corrupted again, but why wouldn't He do that? Come to think of it, why doesn't He just stop all death? Of course, that would mean He'd have to stop all suicide and self-starvation. He might as well just bring us all into Heaven! But if He just let everyone into Heaven, wouldn't things be pretty much the same as on Earth? It's not like people undergo a "reboot of the soul" when they go to Heaven. They're still the same people. If God let everyone into Heaven, Heaven would become Earth (a.k.a. "Hell Lite"). That is not an option, and turning everyone into a robot is not an option.

To answer the question of why doesn't God stop all the pain, evil, and suffering in the world?: It is an all-or-nothing proposition. You either expect God to fix all of it, or do nothing. If He only partially fixed this broken world, people would be demanding that He do more.

So why doesn't He just fix it all? Because to fix it all would mean casting the vast majority of the world's population into Hell in one fell swoop. He doesn't do that because He is merciful and desires that all come to repentance. He is patiently waiting for us to close our mouths, open our eyes and ears, and surrender to Him. He doesn't want anyone to go to Hell, but anyone who pretends He doesn't exist isn't leaving Him much choice. Would you like to live with someone who lives as if you don't exist, and speaks of you as if you are a fictional character? God is not mocked. He will not tolerate anyone who doesn't acknowledge His existence, which He has clearly shown through His Creation and the evidence of the Bible.

If He just erased all the pain and suffering in the world, most of the world would still reject Him, and probably more than reject Him now. If the world were perfect, most people would not even give God a second thought. But because the world is so obviously broken, people are forced to ask why. They are forced to look to the Creator.

Far from condemning God, the "argument from suffering" viciously condemns those who make it.