God. Real. Right.

When Hurricanes strike, as Gustav is doing right now, age-old questions are raised again. Some are about how to react and why. But some are more basic, about the source of all kinds of problems persistently faced by man. This post is about that question: from where comes evil?
The first eight and a half lines of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” describe the immediate source (or proximate cause, using Descartes’ language) of problems:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs…

The first four lines point out the kind of destruction wrought by nature; the next four and a half lines that which comes from men. Since every kind of disruption or disorder is known as evil throughout the bible, the former is called natural evil; the latter, moral. “Nature” describes the way all things are–the fact that they exist and the regularity of their relations. Morality is about the judgments of right and wrong which can only properly be assessed about actors who could have done otherwise. (This post is not specifically about that claim, but it is accurate and will be extensively defended in later sections of the posts on this blog about Free Will.)
So moral evil refers to the pain and suffering which comes as a result of the wrongful acts of human beings. There are important issues to resolve about moral evil, but they are of a different sort than the problems raised by the other kind of evil. For Christians with any real regard for scripture, moral evil is a result of man’s selfish and wrongful motivations since the original sin. It is, or should be, no surprise to people when other people just like them do bad things!
But natural evil refers to all the other calamities and catastrophes people face. (In reality, this part of the question applies just as much to moral evil–but through the added step of God’s creation of man as a free moral agent.)
Here’s the (apparent) dilemma from a strongly theistic position. God is either responsible for evil or He is not. If He is, then it is hard to understand how He can be accurately described as good and kind–beneficent. On the other hand, if He is not responsible for evil, then it is hard to understand in what way He can still be thought of as the only true Creator since there would be things that really exist and are not caused (or created) by Him. (By the way, Plato’s answer in the second book of the Republic is simply not to attribute any evil to God at all; for Plato, God is the source only of good things, not of evil.)
From the atheistic position, the dilemma becomes an argument against the existence of God. Since God cannot be the source of evil and still be good, and cannot fail to be the source of evil and still be the creator of all things, and since any God which exists would have either to be the source of evil or not the source of evil, there must be no God. This line of reasoning is one provocation of the answers known as the Theodicy; that is, speaking in defense of God. Of course, God does not need defending, but those who do apologetics do desire to remove an excuse for disbelief from skeptics.
Theodicies are generally mammoth projects, so it would be silly to pretend to comprehend the issues here. But the basic issues are comprehensible in three short paragraphs.
First, the knee-jerk reaction of theists is the mistake of Plato. That is, many theists immediately assert that God simply is not the source of evil. Generally, the argument is the same as the one made regarding moral evil specifically. “All evil, moral and natural, is a result of the original sin, not God.” But God is the source of both the humans who chose the first sin and their ability to choose it. So while their position creates a step between God’s activity and evil, it is still God’s activity which brings about the step which brings about the evil. Worse yet (from the perspective of this answer), God Himself offers no hesitation at all regarding Himself as the source of evil:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)

While readers may be tempted to think “evil” in this verse only means “calamity”, such an escape from the issue is not sufficient. The word in Isaiah 45:7 for “evil” is the standard word for “evil” throughout the Old Testament, including in many places where it is clearly referring even to moral evil (as, for example, in Isaiah 7:15, that the messianic figure will know to refuse the “evil.”)
So the second position takes form. “God is the source of evil and people have no right to question Him about it.” This position makes good sense in light of the book of Job, particularly the last ten chapters, including Elihu’s and Yahweh’s answers to Job. Romans 9:20-23 seems to make a similar point:

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? 21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? 22 What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: 23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory…

But this position ignores that while God has every right to do whatever He pleases with no regard for the suffering of beings made by Him, He never so discounts the significance of the suffering of any persons nor their worth as objects of His compassion. Indeed, every passage which describes His absolute authority to do whatever He desires without question is bracketed by factual statements about what He has actually chosen to do, to act both compassionately and consistently in a manner consistent with the morality of beneficence He built into human beings so they would, after all, understand the nature of their Creator. Regarding Romans 9:20-23, Fisher Humphreys and Paul Robertson say it as well as anyone:

Calvinists read this to mean that one’s destiny has been decided in advance by God. We agree that Paul is affirming God’s power and authority to determine, but we think that he is actually affirming that God did not in fact choose to respond that way. Rather, God ‘endured with much patience’ (9:22) persons whose lives are fit for destruction. Paul is not saying that God determined that they are to be that way; rather God endures patiently those who choose the way of destruction.

The point for here is that while God could do anything He wants to His creatures, He has chosen to be kind to all of them, and when He exercises judgment on any of them (and He does) it is done consistently with the morality which He has defined for us precisely so we can understand how He has chosen to do things.
So the third position finally rises: God creates a real world with genuinely free creatures whose real choices to obey or disobey have real consequences on the entirety of creation. So God creates evil in the sense that if He does not create the choice to disobey Him disobedience is impossible. But He does not create individual acts of evil–as many passages make clear. James 1 puts it this way:

13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

1 Corinthians 14 makes the point in a different context this way:

for God is not of tumult, but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints.

The freedom of moral creatures sets the pattern for the solution of the problem of natural evil. That is, as God creates the real freedom which makes evil possible (but not necessary), so God creates and maintains an order which in its state (as a fallen world) faces the real consequences of the that fallen state. In reality, everything hinges on the word “cause”. In every case, the answer to the question of whether God is the cause of something is yes. But the conclusion taken in the offensive sense, that God is wielding imperious power with reckless disregard for human suffering, is patently false. On the other hand, the conclusion which is intended throughout scripture is true: God is actively in charge of everything that is happening. For a solution, turn to Him. For a purpose, turn to Him. He is, after all, the purpose and solution of everything that exists–good, bad, or what someone who does not know Him might consider indifferent.
To put the conclusion another way: in answer to the question of why some evil thing is happening, no human being has the prerogative of pronouncing the answer. But every person should know what can not be said. There are two things which no one should ever say in the wake of anyone’s pain or suffering. One thing that should never be said is that God is not in charge of whatever is happening. God is always in charge. The other thing that should never be said is that the speaker knows why God is bringing evil on someone. Claiming that God is punishing the Republicans because their convention is being interrupted by a hurricane is like claiming Job did something wrong to bring about the calamities which afflicted him. (Only his contemptible friends did so.) Instead, people ought always to be honest and humble enough to admit that however catastrophic things are, the world would be worse if it were not for God’s constantly gracious attitude toward every person–all of whom He loves and for all of whom He has inestimable compassion.