How Much Evil We Can Vanquish

One of the main points of contention between those who chose to believe in God and those who chose to disbelieve in God is the question of evil. If God is both all Good and all powerful, then how can so much evil exist in the world? There are perhaps many reasons for this, and some of them will forever be impossible to understand with our finite minds, but I believe a major reason that evil exists in the world is because of us, God's children. Evil is one of the main components of this test we must all go through called mortal life. But not just in the way that is commonly understood, which is to see how much evil we can endure while remaining faithful. The real test isn't how much evil we can endure, but how much evil we can vanquish. God has given us both the desire and the capacity to diminish the evil in the world. He created us to be Good, to overwhelm evil with our Goodness. He wants us to grow and flourish, to exercise our intelligence and our talents and our compassion to strike at and eliminate evil whereever we find it. Passing the test does not mean doing our best to ignore evil. Passing the test means doing our best to eliminate evil. If evil were a thick layer of grime coating the world, then God did not place us here to see how long we could endure slipping and sliding through this filth, but to see how much of it we could clean up. We have a tremendous capacity for good and we have so, so many opportunities to flex our righteous muscles. When a child is old enough to start learning to clean the house, the parents, who could clean a hundred times more quickly and effectively, hold themselves back and allow the child to clean up the mess the best they can, and everybody has to put up with a little less cleanliness because these are important lessons. God could, with one wave of His hand, fix all of the problems in the world in an instant, and do so without collateral damage or unintended consequences, but instead, He allows us to take a crack at it. If we're upset that God isn't using all of His power to clean up the world, maybe we should take a look at our own lives and see if we are using all of our power. Instead of despair when we look at the seemingly infinite array of evil and suffering in the world, we should feel hope and determination. We have been placed on this Earth to push back the darkness, to stand up to bullies, to heal wounds, to lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees. As much evil as there is in the world, there is just as much opportunity for us to exercise our talents, go forth with faith and with the grace of God to be a powerful force for good in this world and to weaken evil's power and influence. Without evil we could not be as good as we were meant to be. And if everyone on earth truly strove to be as good as God intended them to be, then evil would be swept completely from off the face of the earth.