Evil, suffering, and the fall of man.

In the greatest of Dostoevsky’s novels, The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan challenges his brother: “Assume, that you are constructing the edifice of human destiny with the ultimate aim of making people happy, to give them peace and tranquility, but to make all this to do this, it is necessary to allow the suffering of one man of one small child… and to base his work on his tears – can he dare to do so with this condition? “No, I cannot,” replied Alosha. If we cannot dare to do it, for what then, what does God do? After seeing a small child slowly dying of brain fog, a man said he could no longer believe in a God of love. Others have the experience of caring for a spouse or a wife, a child or a parent who has fallen into total depression:
In the realm of suffering, there is perhaps nothing more terrible than to watch a human being in helpless despair. What is our answer? How do we reconcile faith in a loving God, a creative …who says that there is a “good beyond measure.” With the existence of pain, sin, and evil?
I must admit that the answer is not easy, even if it is obvious, but reconciliation is possible. Pain and evil touch us as something irrational. Our suffering, and the suffering of others, is an experience we live, not a theory a theoretical problem that we can push aside by explanation. If it can be explained, it can be explained in other ways than words. Suffering cannot be “justified,” but it can be experienced, accepted, and transformed through this acceptance. X suffering and evil,” says Nikolai Berdyaev, “is resolved in the experience of compassion and love.” But if I am distrustful of any easy explanation of the “problem of evil,” we can look at the description of the human fall as given in the third chapter of Genesis – interpreted literally or symbolically – where we see two vivid indicators that need to be carefully considered.
The account of Genesis begins with the speech of the “serpent” (3:1), that is, the Devil and – the first in the host of those angels who turned away from God and to the hell of their own will. There was a double fall, the first of angels and the second of man. For the Orthodox, there is no fall of angels but spiritual truth. Before the creation of man and the South, there was a separation of paths in the spiritual realm: some angels remained steadfast in obedience to God; others rejected it. This “heavenly war” (Rev. 12:7) is the subject of this question, we have hidden messages in Scripture, no narrative of the details that took place; we know little of God’s plans for a possible reconciliation in the spiritual realm, or of any (if any) the Devil may eventually be redeemed.
Perhaps, as the first chapter of the book of Job depicts, Satan is not
as black as he is usually painted. At this stage of earthly existence, Satan is the enemy, but Satan also has a direct relationship with God, of whom we know nothing, and has no, so there is no point in speculating about him. Three questions may interest those trying to understand the problem of pain. First, beyond the evil we are, we humans are personally responsible for, are present in the universe forces of immense power whose will is turned to evil. These forces, which are not human, are nevertheless personal. The existence of such demonic powers is not a hypothesis or a legend but – for many of us, perhaps – an object of direct experience. Secondly, the existence of fallen spiritual forces helps us understand why there was disorder, devastation, and brutality in nature before the creation of man. Third, the rebellion of the angels makes it clear that evil has no origin “below” but “above” that it is not of matter. Still, Evil, already been pointed out, is not a “thing,” it does not exist in itself, as a substance, but as a bad attitude towards that which is good in the thing itself. The source of evil lies in the free will of spiritual existences, endowed with moral responsibility, which has this power so much for our first indicator of direction, the mention of the “serpent.” But (and this may serve as a second indicator) the reports and Genesis clearly show that although man comes into existence in a world already corrupted by the fall of the angels, at the same time, nothing compels him to sin. Eve was tempted by the serpent but was free to refuse. She and Adam’s “original sin” consisted in a conscious act of disobedience, a deliberate refusal In freely choosing to turn away from God and himself, God’s love. ( G n 3,2, 3, 11).
By stating that man has and uses free will, we want to avoid giving a complete explanation but to show that there is an answer to our problem… Why does God allow angels and man to sin? Why does he allow evil and suffering? We answer: Because he is a God of love! Love and desire to share contain freedom. How about the Trinity of love? God desires to share his life with created persons in his image who can freely resist him. In a relationship of benevolent love. Where there is no freedom, there can be no love. Submission excludes love, he says.
Pavel Evdokimov. God can do absolutely everything except to make us love him. God – because he desires to share his love, he does not create robots but angels and human beings, who have the capacity for free choice. God is aware of the risk that he has also given the possibility of sin with this gift of freedom. But those who refuse to take risks do not love. Because of space, there would be no sin. But without freedom.
The man could not be the image of God. Without freedom, there is no
a man fit to enter into communion with God in a mutual love relationship.