The little boy was insistent; his mother both amused and curious. “Pastor Dale, why did God create mosquitoes and deer flies?”

Actually, I’m a little more tolerant of mosquitoes. A good repellent will keep them away. Mostly. But deer flies? Deer flies are the bane of my existence. They have this irritating habit of buzzing around your head, flying into your ears. I’m usually able to slap them into oblivion before they bite, but that buzzing drives me nuts, and slapping at them when they’ve flown into an ear can be a painful self-inflicted punishment.

The dogs snap at them as they form little clouds around their heads, but seem blissfully unaware of them after they’ve settled in for a refreshing snack of dog blood. On humid, breezeless days, I’ve taken to walking our road with net over my head, much to the entertainment of people who drive by.

The ancient Zoroastrians had an explanation for the problem of deer flies and other bad things. They believed that the Lord Wisdom created a perfect world, a world free of insects and crawly things and, more importantly, of disease and death, but his counterpart, the Evil Spirit, invaded and polluted the earth with all the things we don’t like.

Life is one long process of separating the good from the bad, both externally in the world around us and internally in our spirits. That’s the beauty of dualism. If there’s something you don’t like, you can blame it on the devil and then gleefully try to eradicate it.

Monotheists have a much more complicated problem. If God is good, and God is all-powerful, then why is there evil in the world? Why, indeed, are there deer flies, mosquitoes, and, now that you mention it, ticks? And, more seriously, why are there natural disasters and diseases? And, while we’re at it, why did a good God create people who could do such horrible things to each other?

Well, dear reader, a 500-word column isn’t going to answer a question that has troubled philosophers and theologians for centuries. Human behavior is actually easier to deal with theologically than the deer fly problem. God gave us the wonderful, and terrible, gift of freedom: freedom to make supremely awful and destructive choices; freedom to make responsible and sometimes sacrificial ones.

I know a couple in their 70s who chose to raise their grandchildren at a time in their lives when they could have looked forward to kicking back and actually retiring. They didn’t need to do that; they had no legal responsibility to do that; they could have relied on the tender mercies of the state. I’ve never heard a hint of self-congratulation from them; never heard a whimper of self-pity.

Sometimes explaining the existence of good is as difficult as explaining the problem of evil.

But the deer flies? I finally stammered out an answer to the little boy. Perhaps deer flies are here to keep us humble, and to scare away the most obnoxious tourists.