Trouble, hardship, difficulty, pain, suffering, conflict, tragedy, evil - they're all part of the [Christian] Story. Indeed, the problem of evil is the reason there's any Story at all.

An alternate explanation is not a refutation.

Whenever someone tries to deny the truth, ultimately, reality betrays him.

Wisdom is an artful method—a skillful, tactical, fair, and diplomatic use of knowledge.

Nowadays, people have a habit of relativizing religion, reducing it to "your truth" versus "my truth" versus "their truth," and that's the end of it.

In matter-ism (materialism), there can be nothing wrong with the world since there is no right way for the world to be in the first place. Everything is just matter in motion and that's that. In Mind-ism (monism) there's a different route to the same problem. There cannot be a problem of evil, even in principle, since in Mind-ism even morality is maya; illusion. In neither story, then (if we're to be consistent with their principles), can the issue of evil be raised. But in real life the problem comes up all the time. That's the difficulty.

Everyone has a belief system in his or her mind, a story about the way they think the world actually is, even if they haven't thought about it much or worked out all the details.