A group of philosophers once traveled to Rome and put a question to the elders of the Jewish community there. "If your God takes no pleasure in idolatry," they asked, "why does He not simply destroy the idols? Wipe them off the earth, and the problem is solved."
The elders had thought about this. They answered with a distinction. "If people worshiped only useless things, small statues that no one needed, God would destroy them gladly. But you idolaters do not stop at small statues. You worship the sun and the moon. You worship the stars and the constellations. Should God destroy the sun because a few fools bow to it? Then the fields die and the just starve along with the unjust. The world depends on these lights. God will not unmake the world to punish the foolishness of those who misread it."
Then the elders pushed the argument further. "By your logic," they said, "if a thief steals a measure of wheat and plants it in his field, the earth should refuse to grow the crop. The grain should wither out of principle. But the world does not work that way. The stolen wheat grows into bread, and the season turns, and the rain falls on the just field and the unjust field alike. The world continues. But those who abuse it will one day have to give an accounting."
The Talmud preserves this exchange in tractate Avodah Zarah (54b). The argument rests on a striking principle: God's patience with creation is not the same as approval. The sun shines on idolaters not because idolatry is tolerable, but because the world is worth more than the satisfaction of immediate justice. The reckoning is deferred, not canceled.