Your task for class reminds me of a question posed by a teenager in my Bible Study class, and the struggle I had in trying to come up with not only a coherent answer but the correct answer.
Her question was: 'How can a God of love allow such evil things to happen to the creation He loves, to the innocent in His created universe?... Does it mean that a God of love is coming up short, unable to prevent such atrocities?'
It is easy to pass the question off with a sweeping 'Because God made the universe the way it is, not the way we would want it to be.' It is a far deeper task to come up with the most succinct response that is correct, which is, 'If God the Creator became entwined in responding to every act of evil, the God Who created all would be subject to the vagaries of the creation and thus diminished in sovereignty.' Combining that notion with teaching on the role of free will and choosing right or wrong is why I really enjoyed that class so many years ago.
cf JRR Tolkien's Lord of The Rings, where Sam is in the topmost turret of the Towers of the Teeth:
Far above the mountains in the west, the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
God is neither sullied nor contaminated by evil: but His supreme love and generosity is that He suffered Himself to become subject to *our* weakness -- we humans, who rebelled -- on the chance of saving us.
Being born in questionable circumstances
in a working-class household
of a persecuted minority group
in a country occupied by a foreign military
growing up an iternerant dependent upon charity
rejected by the religious and political leaders of the day--
to the point of being called demon-possessed and treasonous
betrayed by a close friend
convicted by an illegal kangaroo court
sentenced to an ignominious death by torture
with no appeal.
Cheers!