Yup. I know it's an ancient one, like your god, but it still applies: the question: "Why does god permit bad things to happen to innocent people." The standard lame excuses are that we can't know the mind of of god, or his ways passeth all understanding, or his bad is really a good we don't understand. So, if any of these excuses are your explanations of why god harms innocent children, save your breath.
One people often forget, yet I live it every day of my life. Perhaps you just have no scope, I don't know. Try this:
Matthew 5 said:
45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Or as it's sometimes said, the rain falls on the righteous and the wicked. God is so good, in fact, that He blesses those who hate him, and do harm. Where sin is more, grace abounds? Am I losing you in this?
Are you actually saying that we can't know good without experiencing anguish, woes, and evil? That good requires these extremes? How about a world in which only good things happen? Or are you hung up on the value of the word "good"? We need the word "good" in our vocabulary because . . . . . . ?
Surely you've heard of duality, or dualism?
A world in which there were only good, good wouldn't exist. Normalcy would. You'd have no concept of the opposite, so it would just be regular.
That, also, would be heaven. Or, here, prior to sin entering it.
This suggests that god is so demented that he created evil so that he may be glorified because we have something to compare good to. That's absolutely daffy.
...snip mockup conversation...
It doesn't surprise me you don't understand, you reason from the mind of a man. In your depravity, you assume He is depraved. A better explanation would be that God uses the evil we do and turns it into good.
God is holy and pure. He is incapable of sin, evil, or wrongdoing. The other guys in this thread are going around in circles on this one concerning Isaiah 45:7 at the moment....