As a philosopher, this kind of thing frustrates me to no end. From a recent book review:
"A solution to the problem of theodicy, that is, the reconciliation of
the existence and effect of evil with the righteousness of the
traditionally defined Jewish or Christian God is, to my mind, simply
philosophically impossible. The problem arises due to a certain cluster
of defined characteristics of God. God is one, omnipotent, omniscient,
omnibeneficent, omnipresent, immovable, impassible, the purposeful
creator of all, and involved in history. One simply has to give up one
or more of these characteristics to explain how evil came into the
world, or one has to argue that evil is not truly evil but only appears
to be evil from our limited human perspective."
It annoys me
when I see this kind of thing coming even from some otherwise good
evangelical theologians (having philosophical training, contemporary
theologians can often annoy me). One of my favorite Christian authors
has even stated that trying to do theodicy or answer the problem of evil
is immoral. Unfortunately, they do not give very good reasons -
showing that the existence of the traditional God and the existence of
evil are compatible is NOT the same thing as making evil good or
belittling it or anything of the sort (that is one way of doing it, but
only ONE among many). Some people need more philosophical training! I
for one would not opt for either side of the false dichotomy that shows
up in the quote above.