Skavau said:
are you suggesting God is without knowledge of the strength of that particular persons faith and therefore, no longer in control of his creations and also unable to know everything about them & therefore inflicts suffering to find something out when he should effectively know it already.
It is reasons such as the unbalance of suffering globally, which lead me to disbelieve that all suffering is just. I cannot grasp the idea.
Most of the questions you asked are answered by normal observation. We can all see that God does not favor a particular type of person or a particular religion when there are natural disasters. The priests and the criminals are all saved or killed apparently at random. It suggests from your questions that we know what God wants from us. I suspect that we do not, but whatever it is, I believe that God just does not
want us to do it for him he actually
needs us to do it for him.
It is all related to what we are able to understand. Let me give you an analogy. (Please don't discuss the analogy, just accept it as illustrative)
Supposing a farmer takes his tractors and machinery and chain saws etc into a big wilderness area. He tames the wilderness, plants crops, and makes some fields of grazing. He then brings in a flock of sheep.
Imagine for the moment that you see the world from these sheep's point of view. They get on about their business and are happy in their own world. They know they have a higher being (a God?) Because he does good things for them.
He scatters magic powder to make the grass grow better. In the winter he comes with a magic snorting Dragon (a tractor) and gives us food. If we are ill, he gives us medicine and makes us better.
From the point of view of the sheep the powers that this farmer has make him a God. And indeed, compared to the sheep he is. If the sheep could listen, there would be no way we could explain the powers the farmer has or his objectives. They are simply so far outside of the sheep's understanding and experience to be understood.
But in this analogy we know two things. The first is that the farmer has staggering powers and knowledge compared to the sheep, but they are not infinite. Within the sheep's environment, they are powerful enough that the sheep would believe they were infinite. The second thing is that we know the farmer has his own objectives for the sheep and its offspring.
Please, don't take the analogy too literally. You know I am not suggesting we are here to be eaten or that we are sheep. I am simply trying to illustrate that there may well be limits on what God can do, and a purpose (spiritual) that we have to fulfil and God actually
needs us to fulfil it. "He waits in eager anticipation for the sons of man to fulfil his purpose".
Maybe if we were less certain, we would discover it.