Why Does God Permit Wickedness?

If he is all powerful, he could stop it. If he is love, why doesn’t he stop it?

This sounds very simple and straightforward to those who raise the question, Why does God permit wickedness?

But it is not all that simple. Are those who raise the question willing to accept the remedy? Wickedness does not create itself. Wickedness is an effect created by causes. What are the causes? If wickedness is to go, so must its causes.

Who or what causes wickedness? And who or what, therefore, must God eliminate to end his permission of wickedness, as these questioners apparently want him to do?

The matter is not so simple after all, is it? Other questions need our consideration: He permits wickedness, but who practices it? He could stop it, but what if he did? While it continues, what can it teach us? Finally, why does he permit it, and will he ever stop it?

The eight pages that follow probe these questions, their implications and their consequences, and the outcome.