To have free will, and to be able to actually make choices implies that we might make bad choices. And surprise! We do make bad choices. Then we suffer. If God wanted to eliminate all suffering, He would have to eliminate all freedom. He makes a choice on our behalf, and that choice is to allow us to choose as well, because we are made in His image.
Although suffering and sadness is not always the result of bad choices in the same way that ‘good’ choices do not inoculate us from suffering.
we also suffer from other folks’ choices. current choices and ones’made by people in the past.
....”To have free will, and to be able to actually make choices implies that we might make bad choices. And surprise! We do make bad choices. Then we suffer. If God wanted to eliminate all suffering, He would have to eliminate all freedom. He makes a choice on our behalf, and that choice is to allow us to choose as well, because we are made in His image”.....
Yes...and just to add to this....as Christians we never get the full measure of what our bad decisions deserve...God shows us great Mercy.