After the Fall, What?

AR asked in response to my post about our fallen condition:

"Could [God] fix it if he wanted to?"

It's an excellent question. I answered "yes." Nice, short, succinct, but not very enlightening! AR was patient in accepting it for the time being.

What about this? Is God able to fix the "flawed design" problems of the world, including sickness, pain, death, and evil? Is he doing anything about it? The problem is presented in the first three chapters of the Bible, and the answer fills the whole rest of it. The difficulties are faced as squarely there as in any literature you could look at, yet there is hope resounding all the way through.

The problem is evil among mankind, with effects reverberating through creation, as it is poetically and powerfully described early on. One way of viewing AR's question is to ask, why doesn't God just stop it? Why doesn't he just fix it right away? I'm afraid we wouldn't like that answer, though--because we're all part of the problem. If God intends to eliminate evil in the world, he has to do something about you and me. What do you propose? He could deal with it summarily--but then you and I wouldn't be around to see the benefit. We'd be gone.

"Wait a minute!" you object. "I wasn't talking about me, I was talking about the murderers, the terrorists, the thieves, the drug lords, the really evil people." If God really did grade on a curve, I don't know what it would be or where I would stand, but the point is moot. For God, and thus for the nature of all reality, evil begins with losing touch with him as the foundation of all that we are. It's not recognizing his ultimate and glorious greatness. I don't know how good or how bad you are, but I know that none of us, myself included, have acknowledged and followed God rightly. Thus we all fall short.

So maybe we're not so keen on having him wipe out all the wrong and evil in the world so quickly. How about if he repairs us instead? What if it takes some time? What if he gives persons a choice as to whether they'll participate or not? I'll leave the question at that for now, for your responses.