When God's children disobeyed their heavenly Father, they damaged everything. When Adam and Eve rebelled against the King of the universe, they broke the whole world. This is why there is evil and suffering. Bad things happen in a world that's broken.

Our reasons for believing Jesus existed and also that He was who He claimed to be - the God who came down - are the same reasons for believing any fact of history: the documentation is substantial and it passes all the tests of historical reliability. Scholars - both liberal and conservative - overwhelming agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a man of history and the Gospels, on the main, tell His story accurately.

You may be a fantastic person, and you may have some wonderful religious views that might even turn out to be true, but the religion you'd be following would not be Christianity.

Something good made something bad possible (though not inevitable). Humans, however, didn't use their freedom well. Instead of using it to honor God in friendship, they used it to rebel.

People are tempted to think (understandably) that if God were really good He'd never allow any evil in the world at all. But I don't think a perfectly good God would never permit any evil, and neither would others, I wager, if they thought about it. Rather, I think that a good God always prevents suffering and evil unless He has a good reason to allow it. That's the crux.

In the Story of Reality a man is a helpless slave - enslaved to his own passions, the flesh, and enslaved to a cruel master, the devil - a slave who God Himself rescues and adopts into His own family. It is the very worst news coupled with the very best news.

God created man to share friendship with Him and share in His happiness.