The most scary symptom of the disease of leprosy is that you develop nerve damage under the skin which means that you don't feel injuries. You'd think that not feeling pain would be a blessing, but it's not--we don't realize how often we bump into things one way or another that if not noticed, will damage your body. Sufferers need to constantly watch for damage that could easily cause more injury.
I suspect that "evil" is something like leprosy. It's not something we like to see or sense, but it can be a warning of worse to come. We all live with some level of evil, and it's easy to complain about it, and blame God (or everybody and anybody). When we as people were blessed with intelligence, that should come with the understanding that we are responsible for ourselves and each other. If we all lived by the Book, we would avoid a lot of trouble we can get into, but there are surprises as well. (God loves doing this for us!)
We can't always recognize evil for what it really is. Jesus, however, knew exactly what was up. One of my favorite verses is John 2:23-25:"Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man." Jesus lived in interesting times; His hands-on experience of human society was that of the Roman provinces of Judea, Galilee, and Samaria. What is interesting about this is that everybody who lived there was familiar with the Jewish Scriptures and other related writings of the era. He didn't have to convince these people that God exists and has rules for them to live by; people varied in the amount of attention they paid, but even the "sinners" who were not observant knew what it was that they didn't observe. Jesus was dealing with two major groups of people: those who listened and liked what they heard, and those who thought they knew it all and Jesus was not only wrong but dangerous. These were the religious experts, mostly Saducees and some Pharisees, who were expecting a military Messiah that would drive out the Romans. Meanwhile, they were on a tightrope of keeping enough order to placate the Romans and keep them in power until this Messiah showed up. When Jesus showed up, they were upset that he hadn't come to them first, and then that he told them that they were getting a lot of it wrong.
There is an interesting parable in Matthew 13 that came to mind when I was thinking about the evil in the world. The story is about a farmer who sows a field with wheat, and then an enemy comes at night and sows weeds in the field--and these are a weed that looks very much like a wheat stalk until they are pretty well grown. When the owner is asked if they should pull the weeds out, the answer is No, because it would damage the good wheat. The time to separate them is at the harvest, where their true nature will be obvious. We usually think about this in terms of unbelievers, but Jesus wasn't talking to pagan audiences, he was talking to his own people, which included both his friends and enemies. And often it was difficult to tell the difference. Looking around our own "'good people", there are people who look good, talk good, but the roots are not what they claim to be. There are preachers who have their own message, teachers who are offtrack in their teaching; people, even in churches, who do things behind closed doors that damage both their victims and the church's reputation, parents who should not be raising children. We, as resposible Christ-followers, need to make sure we are the true wheat, and try (carefully! very carefully!) to isolate the weeds until they can be judged.
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