3. Who is responsible for the evil on the earth?
Dividing the seven different responsibilities for evil: God has four, and people have three.
God is responsible for what He created, and humans are responsible for their choices and the effects of their choices.
God has four responsibilities. Three of those are the three parts of the evil that He created, as defined above;
evil could not exist in our universe if God did not create it. God’s fourth responsibility is the earthly reality of cause and effect He created.
This fourth responsibility means that every choice made on the earth, impacts the earth according to the God-determined effects a person choosing that option - good or bad.
God determines both the options and the effects of each good or bad choice, and those effects happen on the earth when a person makes a choice.
Those God-created effects of each option chosen must happen because it is the way God created our reality to work.
God makes no bad choice; humans make the only bad choices on the earth. As a result, all of the bad that happens on the earth, happens because a human makes a bad choice.
God is active on the earth, but all of God’s activity on the earth happens when people choose well; God’s activity always advances His purposes.
Humans have three responsibilities: 1) each choice made, 2) each action taken, and 3) each effect of each choice and action,
both good and bad, help and harm, blessing and cursing … happening on the earth. Each person is entirely responsible for each choice made.
While God creates all of the evil or ‘bad stuff’, a human must choose a bad option in order for any ‘bad’ evil to happen on the earth.
This means that God is not responsible for any evil on the earth, even though He creates every bad consequence that happens.
In addition, since God is the Sovereign Boss, He sets the rules; He never cooperates with any person making a bad choice … His purposes always and only advance.
Knowing about evil and these responsibilities does not solve the problem, because so much evil hits the earth.
If God, on His Own, could stop the evil effects before they hit the earth, then it seems that He should do so … but He does not stop many evil effects … and we wonder why.
Therefore, God's existence with evil is still an unanswered question. Believer's have explained that God has purposes to bring even more good out of evil,
and that is often true for those who trust Him, but God does not explain many of the details, so they are not generally accessible; these purposes are mostly hidden in God - we know
neither what God’s purposes are nor what effects might happen when a person makes a choice.
Thankfully, God revealed an authority structure (described next) that completes the answer.
He established that structure for our reality on the earth.