3X3: A Good God, and Evil in the World

My nephew's young daughter died last week. It's started me looking again at the question "If God is good, why is there evil in the world? Much smarter people have opined on this, but I've come up with three basic ideas, outlined as A, B and C below. Please bear with this non-philospher as I struggle
with this, and note, it's from a Christian perspective, not an all-inclusive one.

A. The Bible tells us God is good, and that God is love, but there is evil in the world.  Many respond in one of three ways:

1. There is no God, because a loving God wouldn't allow this much evil.
2. God exists but is powerless, so it's no use believing in him anyway.
3. God exists but obviously doesn't care.

Those are pretty stark choices. What if the answer is different from these three?  Please bear with me a moment longer.

B. If God exists, we might suggest that God could deal with evil in the world in one of three ways: 

1. Nuke anyone who does anything evil. Soon there would be no evil. (And no people, because let's face it, bullying, murder, war, slavery and hatred to name a tiny few, exist because some dark part of each of us likes it in some way.)
2. Stop all evil from happening. It might look like this:

• Put up an invisible, impenetrable wall between you and whoever was going to hurt or kill you. And vice versa. Stop all accidental harm as well -- same method. 
• Stop everyone from eating/drinking, smoking/inhaling, ingesting/injecting, filming/viewing anything that would cause harm -- same method. 
• Cure all diseases, however caused, including the above habits.  
• Or turn us into some kind of robots so we wouldn't even think of doing anything evil. 

3. Let people keep their 'independence' but reform us somehow, and help us learn how to solve problems, including disease, malnutrition, automobile accidents, addictions, and other evils we face. Since this method doesn't stop evil outright, it allows some evil to continue, at least for awhile.

I believe God chose #3. He did it like this:

C.  The unique Son of God, Jesus, died on a cross out of our anger, hatred, jealousy, cruelty and evil; and was raised up from the grave three days later. Because his Son gave up his life for us,  and was resurrected, God has forgiven us our evil (even our evil of killing Jesus). We can be sure God is good, and loves us, because he has given up so much to offer us life. Now he invites us into joy-filled eternal life -- but it's still our choice.

People tend to respond to this good news in one of three ways:

1. Ignore it, because they still believe God doesn't exist anyway.
2. Refuse it, because they think God would restrict their freedom, even if being 'free' means more pain, danger and evil.
3. Accept it, and get used to being absolutely secure in God's love. Learn to slow down and sense the Holy Spirit helping us live in ways that actually help others all the time, and helping us find solutions to some of the problems around us, like inventing accident-avoidance systems in vehicles, or providing proper nutrition for everyone, or eliminating disease. (Lots of dedicated people are already doing those.) Prepare for an eternal party of joy, love, and peace with billions of other people who have learned to love God and each other. How does that sound?

Personally, I've chosen this last one. One day at a time, I am learning how to love God and love his other kids -- and that is going to keep me busy for a very, very long time. Eternity, actually.

--I'm still in pain from the death of my great-niece. Her death was a terrible thing, an evil that hasn't yet been conquered. But I don't believe God struck her down, or was insensitive to the tears and prayers of so many. She died because we didn't yet know how to save her. And I'm grateful for the dedicated, hard-working hospital staff who struggled for days to find what was wrong and try to save her life.

This world still has much evil in it, but each person who loves God improves the space around them, one at a time. Eventually God will put a permanent end to our madness, and offer everybody the C3 choice in a way they can see it clearly.  I think they'll choose C3. After all, if there's a delightful party going on, why would people want to stay outside in the dark?

Which one of these makes the most sense to you? Isn't today a good time to decide?