Horrible Histories is a children's show that intends to teach even the most gruesome facts of history to children through use of a number of comedy sketches, and in some cases even songs. One such comedy sketch involved Elizabeth I being given a wristwatch as a Christmas gift by Lord Robert Dudley. At first, the gift goes down well, as the queen joyfully puts it on, then settles down for a glass of wine. Lord Dudley then asks if the queen knows the time, causing her to check her wrist. Her smile quickly disappears, as this is the same hand in which she is holding her wine, which she promptly spills on her lap, before announcing "Oh dear, Lord Dudley. There appears to be a serious design flaw with your 'wrist clock'".
Anyone can see the flaw in the queen's reasoning. Rather than accepting her own stupidity (which is doubled when we consider that, initially, she held her wine in the other hand), she blames Lord Dudley for allegedly being a bad designer. I'm not sure how historically accurate the sketch is, but it does have some very interesting theological implications.
The most well known and obvious defence against the so-called "problem" of evil is the free will defence. Put simply, free will explains how evil can exist in a world created and maintained by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God. Yet, sceptics continue to object on the grounds that God Himself gave us free will, and thus still bears the blame for evil.
Free will is actually necessary in order to make a good deed worth more than a robotic action. Nobody thanks an automatic door for opening when it was programmed to do so, but we do thank even a stranger for opening a door for us. Thus we see that free will serves a purpose, that being enabling a real relationship to exist between man and his Creator. However, free will does come with a "wine and a wristwatch" disadvantage in that user error is a possibility.
Needless to say, the existence of evil is very much not the purpose of free will. Indeed, right up until Satan decided to misuse his, the world was "very good", even with free will being present. Adam and Eve didn't even know what evil was, hence the name "tree of knowledge of good and evil". Yet, by abusing the "product", Adam and Eve suffered the consequences, as do their descendants, who of course continue to abuse free will. Abusing our free will and blaming it on God is even more absurd than Elizabeth I blaming Lord Dudley for her spilling wine on her lap. Aside from the fact the spilled wine was an easily foreseeable consequence that could have been avoided by common sense, God leaves the consequences of sin completely unambiguous. Adam was explicitly told that eating from the tree would result in death, which Eve also seems to have found out about. When God gives commands, He usually tells us that breaking them has consequences. Even the law is "written on our hearts", according to Romans 2. So what excuse have we? "Oh dear Lord Dudley, there appears to be a serious design flaw with your wrist clock".
The truth is, far from God being responsible for the consequences of us misusing free will, He is actually responsible for our salvation from such. As Jesus received the punishment for those sins on our behalf, we can place our faith in Him and receive forgiveness, along with an inheritance of eternal life, and the guarantee of sinless perfection in Heaven. Sinner though I am, I will never understand these strange attempts to make God out to be the bad guy.