This spreads waaaay too much in otherwise rational circles. Check your "if" statements, and ask for help from someone if you don't see where these Epicurian sup

This spreads waaaay too much in otherwise rational circles. Check your "if" statements, and ask for help from someone if you don't see where these Epicurian suppositions are poor rhetoric, patently misaligned with well-known scripture, and thus only serve as mental fodder for your own choir. Else, consider with an open mind that "God is love" and consider how loving it is for, e.g., a nanny state to care for all your needs and control you in pure utopian safety. Given our gift of free will, what an act of love it is to be hands-off so the subjects can learn (love - of self, other, environment, etcetera) how to impose balance of one's self within all of creation. God being able, but not willing, therefore, is clearly more nuanced than the "malevolent" conjurings of such a narrowed mind. That said, such God would be able, but unwilling, as the will is distinctly ours. Following along, still? Evil exists because we may choose it, giving good people the opportunity to do something other than nothing with it. Does God really punish, or is that something we do to ourselves? I, for one, am neither deceived by Epicurious nor you nor a pastor - were I to treat all above as true, there would indeed be suffering - but who would be punished, though, and for what exactly, by whom? The plan is apparently to give us free will and let us learn love in all its forms and functions - sounds like juvenile sadists can imagine all they want and tell us "this is true" and "this is illogical" and be believed for millenia, though they're just wrong and gaslighting a culture. As a reminder, an early creation, The Lightbringer angel, is known to be deceptive. Those who accept The Word for what it honestly is do not thusly suffer. A more loving, honest act would be to seek how such scripture is right and see how the falsified interpretations from some hateful few oughtn't give such trouble - but it's still your choice what you seek, and ye shall find it.