I've heard quite a few different responses to my question, on and off forum, and nothing is really convincing. Aside from maybe the atheistic one, and I really don't want to become an atheist....I want to believe, like the old X files slogan put it, although in a different context.
Have you ever explored the big picture rather than just concentrating on a few details? What possible reason could there be for God to stand back and watch the world implode like it is?
Consider the issues raised in Eden.....God's creation finishes with man, who is then appointed as a caretaker for all the rest. He has his every need met abundantly by a generous and loving Creator, who has never lied to him or treated him with anything but love. There was a single tree in a huge garden filled with fruit trees, all producing much variety of food and flavors ...only this one tree was off limits....the one tree that God said was his. No hardship was imposed by the tree being there, because all the fruit that they could ever need was supplied, along with everything else that promoted peace and security for them.
They had no enemies and there were Cherubs appointed to stand guard making sure that no harm came to them. They then had instructions to "fill the earth" with their kind, and extend the borders of their paradise home to cover the whole planet. Can you see any reason why the humans would rebel against their Creator and steal from him something that he told them not to touch under penalty of death? Wasn't the penalty alone serious enough to make them want to leave it alone?
So what happened? One of the guardians was harboring aspirations of being a god himself, envying the worship that God would receive from these humans. The only way he could gain worship was by lying to them about God. He waited for his opportunity when the less experienced of the two was alone.....he deceived her, telling her than God was a liar who had bad motives in keeping that one fruit to himself.....and as a result she ate of the forbidden fruit imagining that it would benefit her.
When Adam saw what she had done and she offered him the fruit also, what were his choices? Obey God and lose his wife? Or obey his wife and lose his life? They were told that they would die within the day that they ate.....so why didn't they? Why did God allow them to fulfill the first part of his mandate to "be fruitful and become many"? They had become defective now due to sin, and had only this imperfection to pass on to all their offspring. The earth is now filled with sinful humans making a mess of everything....so why did God permit it?
Imagine that you are a teacher in a classroom full of students and one of your students stood up in front of the whole class and called you a liar and said that what you taught was rubbish? Would you expel him? You would be within your rights to do so...but if you did not defend your position, wouldn't the other students wonder if he was right? Would another student and then another, use this one's accusations to keep repeating the charge? What would be the best way to settle the issue once and for all? Wouldn't it be to allow the student, with no intervention from the teacher, to prove his accusations were true?
In Eden, that is exactly what God did. The usurper, satan the devil, wanted to be a god to humankind and the humans had accepted that what he said was true. So God granted him time and ample opportunity to prove that he was the better god and ruler of the human race. He gave him an allotted time....but universal time is not earth time. According to the apostle Peter "a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" to God. (2 Peter 3:8) So time is a factor in this for us earthlings. Interestingly not one human has lived longer than a "day" in God's counting of time....so the humans did die in the "day" they ate the fruit.
Secondly, any intervention by God to interfere with the devil's agenda would make what the devil was doing appear to be good. So only on rare occasions did God intervene and only to keep his original purpose on track.
We are living in an object lesson, because written or spoken laws can be ignored, just as they were in Eden and just as they were with the nation of Israel. If humans had just obeyed God in the beginning, nothing bad would ever have happened to anyone. And if the Jews had obeyed God's laws given through Moses, we would have a written record of their blessings instead of their punishments. Do you see what God has done? He has created an historical account of what happens when humans obey him and what happens when they don't. This then creates precedents that will apply for all time to come. No rebel will ever be able to raise himself up against God ever again, ensuring that eternity will be trouble free and free will is preserved as the gift it was meant to be.
Only those who see the big picture will understand why God has done things this way. Had he disposed of the rebels in the beginning, there was nothing to stop other free willed beings from following the same path. This way we see firsthand what happens when both angels and humans try to do things their way....independently of their Creator and in opposition to his reasonable commands. It only ends in disaster!
The Bible indicates that soon the lesson will be over, and all will return to the conditions that God first set up in Eden. (Isaiah 55:11; Revelation 21:2-4)
There are good reasons for everything if we just look in the Bible and read what it says, rather than skimming over what we think it says.
God knows what he's doing.
That could be time-limited, we'll see.