It is benevolence, for sure, that caused Him to give us the absolute right to make the choice. WE make our OWN choices, and a sizeable number of us would make the same choice again. There are many who “don’t need no steeking “diety”.” Right?
There are even Christians who don’t realize that NO ONE is “thrown into hell” or DRAGGED into heaven. We CHOOSE and get to either on our own steam.
Thus it was God's plan that such suffering, even of innocents, would occur. If he is omniscient and eternal then he knew from the beginning every instance of suffering his plan would cause. All of that in order to let us choose, well, most of us -- the innocent victim of the earthquake didn't make any choices leading to his suffering. True, whether or not choice is worth it is a judgment call, purely subjective.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily, Occam's Razor.
On one hand, we require explaining, apologetics, extensive logical exercises to reconcile the bad in the world with God's stated attributes of absolute benevolence, power and knowledge. Probably billions of words have been written and spoken in order to reconcile this, up to and including your last post (and probably thousands more around the world since then).
On the other hand we have the premise that nature (or God, if you wish) is indifferent. No explaining, no apologetics, no logical exercises required. It's simple, it is straightforward, it fully explains everything, so it is more likely true.
Yes, I tend to operate on logic and reason, not much on faith. It works well for me. If you take the Martin Luther approach that faith must "trample under foot all reason" to whatever lesser or greater extent, fine, if it works well for you. Yes, my quoting of Martin Luther is perfectly within context.