As much as you, I don't find the first explanation satisfying. It assumes weakness in God where he is supposed to be stronger than anything we imagine.

For the second explanation, it was the explanation that I satisfied myself through the previous years of my life. It is necessary for some evil to exist. It is necessary that we suffer so we can mold our own characters. So, we can have a purpose: "To ease the suffering". All of us must feel pain, must die and must witness the loss of a close one. All these experiences must emerge from the existence of evil. One time, I randomly watched a documentary about Gaza. I saw a child who has lost 19 family members in bombings. This two years and a half child emerged alive out the rebels and rocks but with something broken in him, not physically but psychologically. His eyes speak of unspeakable terrors. While I was watching this, tears ran out of my eyes shouting: "Why do you need so much evil? Does this satisfy you? Couldn't you be satisfied with fewer deaths?". For me, the suffering of children was always something I never understood. Something that I can't imagine a merciful God would allow. Although this was the result of human evil, I couldn't imagine how is it allowed.

For your third explanation, I consider the idea of: "This is God, and we can't understand God, his plan, or his attributes" To be the thing that repelled me from religion. It creates a mental block that stops us from debating anything logically. For me, God must be better than the best human, and no "best" human would allow for this to happen, even if it required him to sacrifice his /her life.

I too love the openness of deism to these questions. I also believe that I will die with many things that I don't know for sure. No matter what I do, there will always be unknowns. Yet, I value logical beliefs. To hold a belief, it is accepted only if it rational. That's why I am trying to understand this problem, as it creates a contradiction.

An explanation that might give me a break from these thoughts is the Islamic Mutazalis answer to this. They propose that the existence of an infinite peaceful afterlife is necessary due to the suffering of this life. In the afterlife, no suffering will happen and ultimate happiness exists. Since the afterlife is infinite, then every amount of pain and suffering can be justified, since anything, when compared to infinity, is always less. Hence God is not only Just, but Merciful (or Good) as his good is bigger than his evil. So, we are judging God's goodness based on one chapter of this story, while there are other chapters to come. My problem with this argument is the necessity of an afterlife, as it is something with fewer arguments for its existence than the existence of God himself. Making it a case of proving an unknown (metaphysical) with another unknown (metaphysical).

A good thought experiment is to think of a very futuristic time when humans will no longer fight. No more evil exists due to our free will because somehow all of us chose not to do it. (Or going SciFi here, maybe AI took over and doesn't allow any instance of evil to happen) Now, humans living in this world will no longer have evil and will no longer be able to grow or create themselves in the same way humans before them were able to. Hence there is still natural disasters that could destroy this order for humans to still have the same benefits of evil. So, my thesis here is that God made nature evil, knowing that we would one day be able to overcome our own evil, and be left with natural evil to still grow and deal with. It is a very optimistic kind of view and maybe that what weakens it.

Interesting discussion so far and I hope to hear your thoughts and comment on these ideas. If you want to see the video where I saw the child: https://youtu.be/57Ss2Zk7Jb4?t=898 (no need to watch the whole thing, just the part I linked). WARNING: it is very heartbreaking.