Why is free will a satisfying answer to theodicy?

The problem of **theodicy** is the answer to the question of God's justice posed by the evil plainly observable in the world: If God is all-powerful, he has the power to prevent evil. If God is all-knowing, he knows that evil is happening and how to prevent. How, then, can God be just if he does not prevent evil when he could? It's very popular to answer this with the idea of of **free will**. God could prevent evil, but he allows people to do evil because our free choice to do or not do evil is necessary in order for us to genuinely do good. In particular for us to have genuine love for God we must have a free choice with the possibility of not loving him. I'm surprised by how commonly people find this an emotionally satisfying answer to the theodicy problem; to me it doesn't help at all. When I first heard it, it seemed strikingly hollow to me. And it still does today. (Please note I'm only talking here about the emotional appeal, not the intellectual appeal.) First of all, it doesn't seem relevant to the theodicy problem. "People have free will, therefore God is justified in not stopping evil" seems like an obvious non sequitur. Free will doesn't generally justify non-intervention in our day-to-day lives. For instance, a police officer who failed to stop an active shooter could not make the excuse that doing so would have interfered with the shooter's free will, nor could the officer defend his own justice by saying that the only way for people to freely obey the law is if they also have the free uncoerced option not too. While it's certainly desirable for people to freely choose to follow the law, I don't see why one would infer from that that it's better not to enforce the law. In the same vein, I note that loving parents regularly interfere with their children's free choice in order to protect them from harm. A father who allowed his child to walk off a cliff when he could have prevented it would be arrested, and couldn't defend himself by saying that he was respecting his child's free choice. Secondly, the claim that genuine love requires the real possibility of not loving seems artificial to me. I don't think I've heard love defined that way outside of this specific context, and it does not seem to apply anywhere else in Christian theology. For instance, we believe that the persons of the Holy Trinity are all mutually loving one another. We would surely never say that the Father's love for the Son is not genuine, nor would we say that the Father might possibly not love the Son. But if neither of those is true, then it cannot be the case that genuine love requires the genuine possibility of not loving. Similarly, isn't the future we look forward to in the Resurrection a future wherein we no longer have the possibility of sinning? But surely we cannot say that in the New Heavens and New Earth we will no longer have free will. And even in popular usage, we often talk about "love" without thinking about whether there is the possibility of not loving. E.g. when I tell my mom I love her, neither of us are thinking that it necessarily entails the possibility it could have been otherwise. I'm sure free will theodicists would say that that is implicit, but it certainly isn't close to the top of mind in most situations. It's not how I *normally* think about love. I am certainly aware that it's possible to philosophize your way out of those problems. This is not intended to be a refutation of free will theodicy, I am simply explaining why it's counterintuitive to me. The solutions to these problems require complex, sophisticated arguments which sacrifice the simple satisfaction that so many people find in free will theodicy. **My question is primarily psychological:** I want to understand why the free will theodicy is appealing. Is it that people generally don't consider these objections, which appear to me to be both obvious and catastrophic? I'm skeptical of that because I don't believe I'm that much smarter than average. Or are the philosophical answers to them actually obvious and straightforward? I'm skeptical of that too because I don't think I'm that much stupider than average. I'd like to believe there is some other explanation which I'm not thinking of. For instance, perhaps there is a better framing of free will theodicy which shifts the intuition such that my objections don't seem so severe. I could imagine that might be possible without requiring too much complexity to be easily understood. **I'm not asking for an explanation that is both airtight and simple**. That's too much to ask from any theological idea. Rather, I'd like to see a simple explanation that doesn't have *obvious* holes. Or if that's not possible, then I'd like to understand the psychology a little better of those who are satisfied by free will theodicy. Perhaps the objections that seem natural to me appear forced? Or perhaps they really do find the sophisticated philosophical defenses of free will theodicy emotionally compelling even though the simple explanation isn't (except as a summary of something more complex)? ---- I apologize if this sounds like a "gotcha" question, but it is a genuine concern for me. Many people I meet put a lot of stake in free will theodicy and I'd like to understand why a little better. Also, to be perfectly clear, I don't believe free will theodicy is a useless or anti-Biblical idea. But I see it as a minor plank or supplementary to a broader theodicy, not as the primary defense of God's justice.