Well, here's what the Bible says on the matter.
Gen 1:31,
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
The Bible was not written last year in New York or L.A. It was written thousands of years ago in a culture vastly different than ours. We need to understand what popped in the mind of the ancient Hebrew to get an accurate understanding. The word
good is the Hebrew word
tov. The Hebrews didn't think of that word as meaning a moral goodness. It simple meant that everything worked right, that it was functional, that it worked the way it was designed to work. When your car starts up and gets you to work it would be considered
tov. The Hebrew word
ra is usually translated as
Evil. Again
ra, isn't used in a moral sense, but it means something that does not work as designed, that it is dysfunctional. If your car didn't start it would be
ra, or evil.
According to Genesis 1:31 the original creation was good, it functioned as designed to make for a good life, which is God's will for us. Part of God's plan was to give man free will. That's part of love. Forcing people to act a certain is not love. Man could listen to God, do what He says, and all would be fine.
But man decided to go with the Devil. God was very forthright in telling Adam what would happen if he did that, i.e. he would die.
Gen 2:17,
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Along comes the devil and tells Eve something quite different.
Gen 3:4-5,
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall NOT surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
By his free will, Adam decided to disregard what God told him and listen to the devil instead. After all, it seemed like Adam and Eve had a shot at becoming gods themselves. Must have been pretty tempting. So what happened then?
Gen 3:17-19,
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed [is] the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou [art], and unto dust shalt thou return.
Just like God had warned them, things took a turn for the worse. It wasn't God's idea to make things so hard. But unfortunately, the very nature of the world was changed. It went from being functional to being dysfunctional. It certainly isn't the baby's fault it has a urinary tract infection. It's just the nature of the beast. A tiger can't change it's stripes, and man can't change the nature of the fallen world we live in.
Suffering is not any one individual's fault. Like I said, it's just the nature of our world. The nature of the world was fine the way God made it. He would have rather that Adam obeyed and kept things the way they were, but Adam had a different idea. Bottom line is that this world is not what God intended.
The good news is that in the future, God will create a whole new world where everything will be peachy for eternity.
Rev 21:1-4,
1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God [is] with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, [and be] their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
