Expert: Griff Ruby - 2/12/2007

Question
ho was evil brought into the world and why is there suffering

Answer
My extreme apologies for the delay.  The fault is mine, I am sorry.
Suffering is the result of sin, which is itself the one real evil.  All specific evils are themsleves sins, and have their root in the basic sin of all Mankind.
To get this all into the right perspective, picture a child growing up and going all through life handicapped because when he was small (but still old enough to know right from wrong and that he should have been trustworthy to do the right thing) he disobeyed his parent's injunction to avoid playing in the street.  Having disobeyed he got hit by a car and seriously injured, and the injury carries through his whole life.
Such is the condition of Mankind.  An early disobedience injured all of Mankind ever since, in a similar manner.  Suffering therefore is not some arbitrary "punishment" imposed for disobedience but the natural result of it.  And all of us are by our nature just like Adam who made the original sin.  We would have done the same thing and anyone who thinks he would not is only deceiving himself.
And evil is merely one form of disobedience, thus showing ourselves to be of the same stuff as Adam.
Sin brings all suffering, and that is quite a lot.  That is why sin is seen as being so very bad by God and why God does not permit sin in Heaven.  We are all very attached to our sins, and only with the greatest effort can we truly leave them behind as indeed we must as the price of entering Heaven.  For otherwise, if sin could be brought into Heaven, then Heaven itself would become as evil and loaded with suffering as we have here (or worse).  No, God protects His Heaven while also doing all that He can to help us qualify.
Just as the handicapped child in my illustration at the beginning of this must carry his defect and suffer from it as long as he lives, the effects of sin in general is also infinite.  It took and infinite God to be capable of taking that upon Himself, leaving to us only a small and finite amount that He knows we can deal with, enough to understand and appreciate what He has done for us on the Cross.  Think of a doctor who brings healing to the handicapped child, but by its nature not all at once, as the child must have surgery, and then heal from the surgery and then spend longer going through difficult and time consuming physical therapy, until eventually he is well and the result of his disobedience ends up being not permanent at all.
When Adam sinned, he not only brought down all humanity with him into his original sin, even the whole of creation, all the animals and plants, were also adversely affected, because the Man was set in charge of it all, and once evil and in a sinful condition, could only rule incompetently.  Picture a bad ruler who, because he is a ruler and not merely some private person, his badness ruins it for all his nation, and may even bring his own nation down.  Mankind was meant to watch over the animals and bring them peace and order, but having become wrapped up in his own sins he has neglected that directive and so even the animal and plant kingdoms descend to the "law of the jungle."  It was never meant to be that way.
Anyway, I hope all this helps, God bless!