Amen. I enjoy your analogy with the cards: it is spot on. I haven’t heard that one before, but I shall certainly remember it because it is a good precise illustration to your point.
And I agree: God could have created robots and didn’t — for the reasons that you gave. He wanted free-will worship, and to get that He did need to allow for the possibility of Sin: by definition. Else it would not be “free will”. And humans being what we are, we all too often exercise that option to sin.
Mrs Don-O’s point about the effects of sin on the Sinner is also well-made (seems like a natural opportunity to discuss that, so I’ve copied her in).
I agree that the outcome of Sin on the Sinner is often injury, and that Sin often hurts and the Sinner often needs to recover from that.
I do not agree that this makes the Sinner a “victim” merely because they were deceived by Satan. Sin is a self-inflicted injury which God is always careful to punish as such. We know this to be true else Eve would not have been cast out of the Garden of Eden.
(Adam sinned knowingly and thus has absolutely no excuse, whereas Eve was tricked by the serpent)
I have not decided whether there is any such thing as “Satan” or “The Devil” beyond it being a metaphorical reference to Mankind’s inherent sin nature. (I’m still on a steep learning curve on religion — plain fact is I haven’t got one. Looking at Catholicism.)
Is there a being known as “Satan”? I am tending to think “no”: I was never afraid of the boogie man and I have always been more than capable of raising merry Hell all by myself without the help of Beelzebub. That’s my nature, and my current thinking is that everyone is similar to that, thus obviating the need for a pitchfork-wielding Boogie Man with pointy horns and a pointy tail. I can sin all by myself, as a matter of free will choice.
Thus, such sins are self-inflicted injuries. I may well need to recover from them, but in so doing I am not a “victim” in any reasonable sense of the word.
Victims are always innocent. Sinners are never innocent.
That is why I reject totally the concept of someone choosing to abort being a victim. They may well be hurt, they may well need to recover, and they may well require assistance and kindness — which, as Christians, we ought to give. But they are not victims because they are not innocent: they are recipients of injuries that they have caused themselves, and those injuries are natural consequences of wrongdoing.
None of that absolves us from behaving decently. Neither does it permit us to call wrong “right”, or to call Sin anything other than what it is: an offense against God.
Anyrate, that’s how I see it...
What you said about perps not being victims is true, too, but a tautology because it's governed by your definition of "victim." Which is, however, a reasonable one. (Many people use "victim" to mean merely "somebody who suffered something," as in "a cancer victim," "a victim of Communist propaganda," "a victim of alcoholism," whatever, but I think I like your more restricted definition better. Due to the elasticity of current usage,though, you're always gonna need to spell out your definition explicitly. Duty to define.)
I am convinced that Satan, a real, personal, evil being, fallen angel and enemy of mankind, truly and non-metaphorically exists. He is not the ONLY source of evil: the Church typically cites "the world, the flesh, and the devil", meaning external environment, internal weakness of nature, and --- that wild card --- a personal enemy (actually, a legion of them) seeking the ruin of souls.
I believe this because Jesus actually encountered Satan and his posse on many occasions, and I don't think the Gospel writers were lying, or the Son of God hallucinating.