banana, Good question, so good that I can't resist throwing in my thoughts. I agree that gloves' response has been the best so far.
Gloves helped you realize that, in your words, "God is really not all powerful".
And here's a really scary idea: maybe the plan is that there is no plan, except the one we choose to make. Deists believed that God made the world, then stepped back a left it to its own devices. I think you're making a mistake trying to look at this from a narrow Christian point of view.
I believe that we are free to become and do anything in this existence. That doesn't mean we should, just that we can. The Creator doesn't interfere. There are no miracles. Do people make "miraculous" recoveries and escapes from certain death? Yes, but not because a higher power intervened.
Taoist teaching says that for there to be good there must also be evil. They are created simultaneously, like light and shadow. For anything to exist, it's opposite must also exist.
If there is a Creator, why did it create this world? To create new, genuine souls/spirits? (That would be us, and any other advanced life out there.) I certainly feel that I am free to chose, at each moment of my life, how I will react to it and deal with other souls. This is a chance to become something....anything.
I have no religion, and believe that all religions are made by humans (mostly men), and usually from an age even less enlightened than our own. Nevertheless, following Taoist teachings, I believe it is important to admire the wise of all religions. So perhaps the Hindus are right when they suggest that we are reborn as higher and higher forms of life until we no longer have to come back and suffer existence. Or, if we make really bad choices we return as lower life forms, doomed to suffer many more lives & rebirths. Jesus said it was possible for a sinner to repent, change his ways, and still move onward spiritually. Who knows for sure. Not I.
For me, it is very hard to forgive a God or Creator who would create a world where such atrocities take place. My only answer is that there must be free will to allow us to become something unique. In any other kind of world, we spirits would be no different from the artificial intelligence in sims.
Perhaps existence is a means to produce companionship for a lonely God, and joy for those spirits that can co-exist in peace and love. Do the pain and suffering of existence justify that purpose? When I feel the answer is "yes", I guess that's what many people would call "having faith".
