God & Suffering

God having a plan does not mean He is indifferent to evil and suffering. God's plan includes billions of wrong attitudes and actions, from trivial every-day slights to historic atrocities. But the Bible is also clear that God at the same time hates the evil-doer (Psalm 5:5). God's mind is too pure to gaze upon evil with approval (Habakkuk 1:13). 

God holds back from judging everything that deserves judging, because if He did that, everyone would die. If God bore down on every single sin committed by every single person, no one would survive (Ps. 130:3). It matters that there is an unending heaven and an unending hell -- the first rewards virtue that went unrewarded in this world, and the second punishes evil that went unpunished in this world. 

God is moral and administrative at the same time. God is love, and God is holiness, at the same time. God remonstrates with people He already knows will never listen. God created the human race, already knowing everything bad that would ever happen. 

God is inside time and outside time at the same time, all the time. If we try to shrink God down to being only an administrator (a king), then His invitations, warnings, promises, threats, and exhortations become empty. If we try to shrink God down to Him only being moral (a judge), then His claim to be in charge of the universe is false. If we try to shrink God to only a redeemer (a savior), then we are denying the king and the judge aspects of God. 

We must not restrict God to only being a king, or only being a judge, or only being a savior.  He is all three.