Either way, appreciate you

Likewise :)

It's hard to see that as the most ideal classroom.

Really? Don’t we compete over resources even in our cushy modern system? There can only be one Valedictorian in a class after all. And besides that, isn’t adversity a prerequisite to achievement? Without the existence of “evil”, (it seems to me that) “good” becomes meaningless. All that is, in that scenario, is good. Nothing can be chosen, nothing can be corrected… here is a powerful message on the topic you may be familiar with:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mZOM6hOnEBE

And here are two little short fiction pieces which may or may not resonate with you but which have certainly influenced my thinking on the subject:

Pleased to Meet You

One of your philosophers said, "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost in sorrow. There is no sorrow. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness." He was a shoemaker. He was right, and it matters more than anything.

According to him, the visible world is a manifestation of eternal light and eternal darkness, and it is in eternal opposition that eternity has revealed itself. The fall was necessary for creation to escape its first imperfect stasis and seek a truer form. Heresy? Well, then, I am the heresiarch. The philosopher died of a bowel disease. Those who do not exist cannot suffer and are of no account to any viable ethics. If the true path to goodness is the elimination of suffering, then only those who must exist can be allowed to exist. It is the nature of life to favor existence over nonexistence, and to prefer the fertile soil to the poisoned wind. Because those who open their mouths to that wind pass from the world and leave no descendant, whether of flesh or of thought.

But imagine the abomination of a world where nothing can end and no choice can be preferred to any other. Imagine the things that would suffer and never die. Imagine the lies that would flourish without context or corrective. Imagine a world without me.

https://communities.win/c/Manna/p/19BZpZpE27/but-imagine-the-abomination-of-a/c

"What is the Darkness?"

You open your eyes and gaze at your hands, seeking an answer to your question.

Searing glow from a tyrant light above you annihilates all shadow from the plain of sand you stand upon in a world full of L I G H T.

The last thing you perceive is a blazing outline of alabaster fingers gripping your wrist in a tight fist, before photokeratitis takes your sight.

The roar of the wind fills your ears.

Whatever has seized you is shaking you. You perceive shouting over the rush of air, but you can't make out the words. You lean closer to your hands, to whatever's clasping them, shaking them.

The shouting grows eager.

You can smell it now; whatever has seized you. Ancient. Rotting. Powerful.

Its grip is strong—as strong as yours, the heat of the Light coursing through it.

It can smell the Light on you, too. It knows you are just like it.

It has lived forever. A gift from your shared parent. Forever is too long.

You think you know what it's saying now.

It begs for death.

Your vision gradually returns…

A harsh glare blooms from the heavens above.

Your soul is weary.

Your feet find purchase in shifting sands.

Your cloak billows in the wind, yet something clings to it, weighing it down.

https://communities.win/c/Manna/p/1ARK0KPi2H/coda--a-world-b-e-t-w-e-e-n-ligh/c

Just so you know, im not approaching this conversation from the stand point of “the Bible is literally true and you must believe it.”, im simply using it as our shared cultural reference point for “God”. I think things are a lot more complicated than most Christians want to acknowledge, but at the same time, it is an excellent, perhaps the best we have, foundation to work from and build on