How do you deal with the tension between the all-powerful love of God and the fact that there is much wrong with us and our lives in this world?
One there is the problem of evil and two there is the problem of evil as in us not being smart or powerful enough to curtail evil or to help it destroy itself.
It’s the difference between suffering and evil happening that we cannot control or impact on and that which we should be (or are) able to.
If you could account for dangerous personality flaws and diseases just happening that does not help at all with how we face evils and nothing gives us the resources to fight them well. Even if you do fight something well you never know if it was as well as you think.
So there are two problems of evil.
One might fit God but that does not mean the other does. The problem of God’s silence as we battle and need guidance proves there is no God. It’s a contradiction wrapped up as a problem.
Anyway suppose we could call evil simply a problem.
It’s the problem of what evil is actually for or tolerated by God for. In this light, it is an expression of doubt. If your beloved comes home late you don’t assume they must have been with a love rival. To find evil problematic is letting evil let you doubt God. Yet if you don't question you break rapport with those who suffer who want you to understand a situation that forces them to doubt. Their doubt is pain. You dilute your empathy.
There is no plan for evil. This plan is really a summary of countless small plans where evil is used to do greater good. Even if evil destroys itself that is a greater good for the idea is that evil is an absence of good so if it evaporates then good has to come in. If there is no God setting up loads of plans for evil, then the space is there for you to help, to really help. If there is a God with all those plains then your efforts in fact do nothing. The plan is bigger than you which is why it uses you. It is the context that helps. It is not you. No matter how good God is, he still looks likes a monstrous tyrant. You will lose your motivation and pleasure in helping others.
Other problems arise as well. It is not just that evil exists and it is showing there is a problem. The problem is blamed on evil. God belief leads to a problem of evil. So God causes the problem not evil. It depends which side you blame for the possible contradiction.
Here is an example of how God belief sources the problem in itself.
If you knew somebody with medical training was going to set up on their own to abort babies late term on request you might decide to kill that person for that person is evil. No two situations however similar they seem are really the same. Nobody else is planning to do what they are doing so this is a unique situation. With the unique you have to expect the unexpected. So people telling you about the consequences don't really know what they will be.
You are doing it to save the babies and to remove an evil person to boot. What if it is not like killing a mere abortionist who aims to do what is for the best with abortion for doing that only brings a new abortionist in? So you get the gun ready. What if you think God wants you to shoot the person dead?
See what is happening. If you are atheist you see it as right no matter if God exists or not. If you area believer you see it as right anyway and God happens to agree and that is an added bonus. Belief in God's support then makes you that bit more likely to rationalise the murder and commit it.
What have we learned? The problem of evil talk waters down any clear cut separation of good and bad behaviour. It is an attempt to work around the moral dubiousness of the God concept in the first place. It is a diversion.
And if that is not enough there is the biblical problem of evil where God commands the brutal stoning to death of certain sinners. It changes the course of the conversation. It is now about a God who clearly does evil rather than one who sets up a universe where it happens in. We will ignore how a God setting up life for us that lets evil come in could itself be how he does evil. It depends on his motive.
Faith forbids any exaggeration of an evil or what it is. Religion says it is giving glory to evil to say it is like the evil mansion in the Fall of the House of Usher. There the house itself can attack a person and is itself evil. Faith in God says it is evil and immoral to see evil as anything other than the rubbish it is, a good that is in the wrong place and time. It says evil far from being a magical or any other kind of black energy, is nothing - the mere falling short that happens when a good that should be there is not there. The logic is that asking how a perfectly loving God can make an evil is a mistake for there is nothing there to make.
This dishonest argument ignores how we do in fact treat evil as a power and the evil person or dangerous animal as an incarnation of that power. The cold blooded murderer is seen as the finger of evil, its willing instrument. Our biology makes us do this for we are about survival and reacting to threats.
Religion fears us dealing with evil by trying to attack anything we think contains it. For example, if you think the evil is the house then blow it up. Or if you think if it is in the water then keep anybody from drinking it. With this approach you think what matters is getting the source of the evil and stopping it from there. The evil person then should hopefully break from evil and its spell. None of that fits how religion teaches that the person needs to repent and that ends evil and there nothing further to discuss. There would be no point if the evil power is still there when the person repents for it is going to just get another instrument.
It is very strange that a woman may be forced by panic to have a wrongful abortion and we can't blame the death on God. She is not doing it freely. If it should not happen then somebody is to blame and that is God.
The problem of evil is based on lie after lie. If evil is so terrible it is not to be lied about. There is thus just evil that is misrepresented as a problem. It is like calling the Holocaust a problem. Only one who cares about ideology more than truth and more than people thinks like that.