Theodicy and kicking the can

[Neo-Scholastic]

The most common answer to this lately is the notion of free will. It's basically the idea that we're allowed to do evil because it's super important

What I as a believer finds super important is love in all its forms: love of God, brotherly love, romantic love, and, yes, erotic love. What is at stake is whether people love of their own accord or if external influences fully override their ability to decide who they love.
How someone feels about their role in loving. For example, suppose someone was under the influence of a ‘love potion’ or some form of mind control, such that they had no say over the feelings of affection and duty towards another. Can anyone claim that such a person truly loved the object of their love. Now replace the love potion with the initial conditions of the universe. I don’t see much of a difference.

Given free will, someone has the potential choose to love some and not others. Anyone can see that the absence of love introduces the potential for relationships based on indifference or malice. Which potentials, for good or ill, are actualized depends completely on the free agent.

Determinism is expensive and taking a compatibilist position doesn’t really solve the problem either. To have free will means being the originator of your will. Compatablism gives someone the appearance of being the ultimate source of his or her love, while in reality he or she has been conditioned to love by prior states of being.
Whether reality is in fact deterministic, indeterminate, or participatory is not germane to whether free will adequately solves the problem of evil.

Now, take the concept of heaven… why can't we be set up on Earth to just "never be bad", even if we technically have the choice? So, the apologists will come sweeping in to say things like free will is super important on Earth to test us, but then once we're in heaven, it's served its purpose.

Calling life a test is a metaphor. I don’t take it too literally any more than when people call it a game or journey. I think journey is the more apt metaphor since it implies moving forward toward a goal. Sure there are many tests along the way, but they all serve to further our personal growth.

Why not just make Earthly life “never be bad”? Because removing the potential for moral evils simultaneously removes the potential for moral goods like love. For example, learning to harness the power of fire is a tremendous benefit, but the same power can be misused, as in the case of arson, or handled carelessly, as in the case of grease fires from cooking.

Then how can Heaven be a “never bad” place? Because Heaven is a state of being only attained by a process of moral development*, either by experience or instruction. One objection to this position, for which I do not have an adequate answer, concerns the fate of unborn and young children who have neither experience and/or instruction. Here I rely on the promise of Scripture that teaches that there are “many mansions”. I take that to include specific provisions for the innocent.

*New Church theology denies both Salvation by Faith Alone, as in having the correct intellectual beliefs, and Eternal Security, as in “once saved, always saved”. We believe that people work out their salvation with fear and trembling.