The second reason makes sense, human beings are free moral agents that can choose to do good or evil. They aren’t robots, which the 1st reason implies implicitly, because if they were then the “robot programmer” would be at fault.
Discussion
I think both are somewhat correct. Thoughts?
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Your note leans more in the direction of 2 than 1 and I largely agree, but my only issue is the idea that He “allows suffering”. My view is that a lot of the suffering that takes place is not because God allowed it but because Christians allowed it. The earth is man’s domain and God gave it to man to dominate and thus He can’t unilaterally move without man’s invitation, not because He doesn’t have the power to do so, but because that’s how He chose to do things. Matthew 18:18 also supports this idea as well as Philippians 2:7-9 and Matthew 28:18-19. Christians haven’t been using their authority in Christ to bind the works of darkness in prayer and in casting out devils, not just out of people but of regions and territories on the earth; hence evil is prevailing when it shouldn’t be. (Matthew 16:18-19, Mark 16:17-18)
I think your emphasis on our responsibility as humans is entirely justified. But God did allow suffering if he allowed Christians to allow suffering. He chose to create this world.
My contention is that this doesn’t make God less morally perfect. Given the desire to have humans who can make non-coerced decisions, he has to allow suffering because evidently there’s no possible world where we are all truly free yet also don’t do evil.