The Problem of Evil Never Stopped Bothering Me

Of all the arguments that get discussed in philosophy of religion classes, the problem of evil is the one that actually mattered to me personally, not as an abstract puzzle but as something that kept surfacing every time I encountered suffering that had no discernible point to it. A child with a terminal illness. A natural disaster that kills people indiscriminately, believers and non-believers, good people and bad people alike, without any apparent pattern of moral consequence.

The standard responses I was offered growing up, free will explains moral evil, a greater plan explains natural evil, suffering builds character, always felt like they were doing more work to protect the premise than to actually engage with the scale of what they were explaining. Free will doesn't explain a child's cancer. A greater plan that requires this much unexplained suffering to unfold is a strange thing to call loving, even if I can't see the plan myself.

I don't think I ever "solved" this problem in the sense of finding a satisfying resolution, and I've read enough theodicy to know genuinely brilliant people have spent careers on it without reaching consensus. What I did eventually do was stop forcing myself to accept an answer that didn't actually satisfy me just because walking away from the question felt like the safer, more comfortable option.

For me, the honest conclusion wasn't a triumphant argument, it was just admitting that the premises don't fit together for me, and living with that conclusion rather than performing a resolution I didn't actually feel.