God vs evil

I didn't post this is the wrong blog, I figured even non-Christians can benefit from this, so here's something from my fav theologian-- NT Wright. This is part of his answer for the question-- "Why would a merciful God allow disasters -- natural or manmade -- to happen?"

Big Question, Bigger Assumptions

This is one of the big ones, of course, and if there was a straightforward or easy answer someone -- Irenaeus, Aquinas, whoever -- would have come up with it. The problem is contained in the assumptions in the question: 'a good God' and the like. We are never, repeat never, in a position where we can size up God and decide what such a being ought really to do. A lot of people today assume, vaguely, that God ought to be running things, stopping earthquakes, preventing road accidents, whatever. They seldom stop to imagine what their own world might be like if God really stepped in every time we were about to do something wrong.

The Bible doesn't pose, or answer, the question that way. It tells a long, complex narrative about a plan launched by the creator God to heal creation. This plan, begun with the call of Abraham, reaches its climax in Jesus and his horrific death, and works out from there, not to the rescue of souls from a doomed world, but to the healing and renewal of the whole creation. That is the framework within which we may be able not indeed to answer the question as posed, but to grapple with the actual world in which evil remains so powerful yet Jesus and his followers declare that the creator God is becoming king.