Why didn’t God create a world with a little less suffering and pain? Even if we accept that God needed to give us “free will” to make our own choices, it seems that God could have designed human nature and the earth so that there werent as many babies who suffer and die before they even reach one year old, werent as many murders of innocent people, rapes, etc. I mean all it would take is for human nature to be just a little more empathetic to each other, we could still retain our free will and be a bit kinder and sympathetic, have more of an aversion to cruelty and hatred and depravity.
But God made this world the way that it is, and so God shares at least some of the blame for what happens in it. I’m not saying we can blame God entirely, because he did give us free will so make our own choices, but God still must have known that many terrible things would happen to innocent people, that so many lives and souls would have only a short miserable life of pain and suffering, and then die horrible deaths. What makes those people less deserving of a good natural long life, where they can be happy and come to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior? What makes a poor african boy, who dies from tribal warfare by being dismembered and starving and rotting to death in absolute misery in the hot sun, any less deserving of the life and joys of an average middle-class american who has a normal and happy life most of the time? Even granting we have free will, how can God have set up the initial conditions of the world in such a way that it is even possible that life exists the way it does now? Doesnt God, in setting up the world this way, in knowing the depths of hatred and depravity and cruelty in so many humans, deserve at least some of the blame for the way that the world is?