2. Why doesn't God prevent crime and other bad things?

Answer: This is a paraphrase from "Letters from a skeptic" by Gregory and Edward Boyd.

"If God is going to give free wills to His creatures, He has to allow for the possibility of them misusing that freedom, even if this means hurting others. To be significantly free is to be morally responsible, and to be morally responsible means being morally responsible to each other. What is the freedom to love or not love unless it is freedom to enrich or harm another? God structured things this way because the alternative would be to have a race of robots who can't genuinely love - but that's hardly worth creating, is it?

So why doesn't God intervene every time someone is going to misuse his freedom and hurt another person? The answer I believe, is found in the nature of freedom itself. A freedom which was prevented from being exercised whenever it was going to be misused simply wouldn't be freedom. ......

If God really gives us freedom, it must be, at least to a large extent, irrevocable. He must have, within limits, a "hands off" attitude toward it. God creates free people who can do as they please, not determined instruments who always end up doing what God wants......

The horrendous evil we see people inflicting on each other in this world is a necessary possibility if this is to be the kind of world where love is possible. Even God wouldn't have it any other way." End of quote. (Glenn)