Every religion has its own way of explaining human suffering and the concept of evil. For Buddhists, understanding the causes of suffering and rejecting evil is part of the route to enlightenment.
Evil is a cause of human suffering. There are two types of evil:
These two types of evil can work together, eg human evil can make natural evil worse. If natural evil, eg a drought brought on by lack of rainfall causes crops to fail, the policies of a government can make the food shortages for the poorest people worse (moral evil).
Religions differ in what they teach about the origins of evil:
Suffering is the bearing or undergoing of pain or distress. Suffering is often a result of evil.
Most people experience suffering at some time in their life. Religions attempt to explain suffering, help people to cope with it and learn from it. For some religious people, the fact that people suffer can raise difficult questions about why God allows this to happen.
Some people say that God allows humans to make decisions for themselves and that suffering is caused by the choices that people make.