EVIL!

An interesting session led by one of my volunteer leaders yesterday morning on Genesis 3 on the theme of temptation. The question was raised as to whether Eve would have been tempted given time without the serpent, this led to a fairly deep discussion and the following email from one of my young people, I want to take my time over my response but thought I would put it to the masses for your comment so let me know what you think (all three of you!)

Dear Simon,

Thinking about what you said in 14 Plus today about God not creating evil, but the devil and us misusing the gift of free will, it occurred to me that neither the devil or us can have created evil. After all free will is the freedom of choice, so we CHOOSE to do evil.
According to numerous passages in the Bible, God is pure Light with no Darkness, and therefore he cannot have created evil. But for evil to be a choice something must have created it. Which begs the question, What?
God is supposed to have created everything - but if he cannot have created evil then he did not create everything and hence there must be something on a par with God to have done so. Either that, or God does have some darkness within him (the Old Testament God was vengeful).
It can be claimed that God was vengeful for our own good - but to do this he would also have to be evil. This is perhaps a lesser of two 'wrongs' situation, so even God can do evil so he must have some darkness inside him.
If this is the case then the kindly, forgiving God we worship cannot actually exist.

Please could you help explain,

Yours sincerely,

I have removed names for obvious reasons, needless to say this young person is a very deep thinker and a real asset to the group, gets me thinking too!