One of the most pressing problems of theology has always been theodicy. Literally it means "justifying God", but more accurately it can be defined as a solution to the contradiction: if God is good, why did He create evil, and whether He did it at all. If He did not create it, why does it exist - after all, everything that exists was created by God.
The ratio of good and evil is often represented within the framework of Hegel's law of "the unity and struggle of opposites." From this point of view, evil even seems to be a necessary element of Being. It is noteworthy that most often this point of view is expressed by people who did not face real evil - did not survive the war, did not become a victim of crime.
Taking this point of view, one will have to admit that evil is some kind of independent entity, equivalent to good. For example, the Albigensian heresy was based on this: God (the bearer of good) and the Devil (the bearer of world evil) appeared to be equal creatures to each other, and God and good were associated only with the spiritual world, and the Devil and evil with the material, including human body. But this is precisely heresy - a doctrine rejected by the church, and not without reason.
Essence of Evil
It seems to a person that everything in the world - any object, any phenomenon - should have an independent essence. This is partly due to human thinking, operating with generalized concepts that reveal the essence of objects and phenomena. The fallacy of such a view can be proved even by the example of physical phenomena.
Here are a couple of opposites - warm and cold. Heat is the movement of molecules, and cold is their less intense movement. Theoretically, even such cold is possible in which there will be no movement of molecules at all (absolute zero). In other words, in order to define cold, one has to use the definition of heat, cold is a small amount of heat or its absence, it does not have an independent essence.
It is the same with light and darkness. Light is radiation, a stream of particles. There are bodies that emit light - stars, spirals in electric incandescent lamps - but there is not a single body in the Universe that emits darkness. Even black holes don't do this, they just don't emit light. Darkness also has no essence of its own, being the absence of light.
In the light of such analogies, the relationship between good and evil becomes clear. Good is the natural state of the Universe, corresponding to the Divine plan, and in this sense, good was created by God. Evil is the absence of this state, its destruction. Evil does not have an independent essence, therefore it is impossible to create it at all. Here is a man who has committed murder - he has not created anything, he has destroyed life. Here is a woman who cheated on her husband - she again did not create anything, she destroyed her family … examples can be multiplied indefinitely, but the essence is clear: neither God nor anyone else could have done evil.
Evil and free will
This understanding of evil raises the question of the reasons for such violations in the Universe. To a certain extent, this is due to the very essence of Creation.
God created man in His own image and likeness. He did not create a “robot” that can be programmed - He created a living, thinking, developing being that makes decisions independently. The same free will is possessed by other intelligent creatures of God - angels, and this allows them and people to follow the Will of God.
The will of God organizes the universe, and following it is the maintenance of order in the universe. If we turn to physics again, we can remember that maintaining any ordered structure requires energy. Following the Will of God also requires an effort that not everyone agrees to. The first "dissent" was one of the angels - Satan, who, thus, fell away from God and became a source of destruction of the world order established by Him.
People, too, regularly refuse to make efforts to "maintain world order" at their micro level. It is much easier to “throw out emotions” in shouting and insulting words than to think about the feelings of the interlocutor. Following a momentary carnal desire is easier than caring for your wife and children all your life. Stealing money is easier than earning … that's how evil is born. And there is no need to make God responsible for his creation - people do evil themselves, rejecting His will.
