(I bet this is funny for you considering your opportunity to observe me over that past few years.)

Isaiah 45:7 says God is the “The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.”

…and then goes on make the analogy of sin and darkness — something not created, but permitted due to the lack of light.

Yes Eric. I am referring to the “ultimate, Gods-eye view.” The post-fall POV paints God as having to resort to plan B based on the situation He found us in.

Kind of like, God walks into a bakery and sees that at the end of the day any leftover donuts are going to be thrown out. So God, in His mercy, picks the elect donuts. (Now, I’m hungry.)

The only problem is that God IS the baker and He is the only one buying donuts. He is the one that makes the donuts and made the rule to throw them out at the end of the day in the first place. We as believers give Him credit for active salvation, but few are willing to give Him credit for sending people to Hell as well.

What God has revealed to us is that He hates sin and that man is responsible for it. How that can be reconciled with the truth of the paragraph above, God does not see fit to reveal to us. We are left to speculate, if we dare.

Augustine showing that evil is not technically created is a start in that it eliminates a potential logical contradiction within the Christian worldview, but is does not reconcile our two issues. That is where concepts like primary and secondary causes can be helpful.
Another idea that may help is to view God’s hardening of people or using their sin like this… After the fall, man became utterly inclined to sin. It is only God’s grace that restrains us from being as bad as we could be. However, God has no moral obligation to provide that restraint (that’s why we call it grace). So, all God has to do is pull back his grace and people do what they choose (in their sinfulness) to do. God doesn’t make them, He just stops preventing them. It looks like God is making them do it, but He’s not in the sense that they choose it. (If you want to jump back to the ultimate, Gods-eye view, then I guess you could say that God made him do it, but He makes it pretty clear that He reserves that view for Himself).
I’m not claiming to have it all wrapped up with a pretty bow on top. And, I’m suspicious of anyone who, after 2000+ years of the best minds seeking God, claims to.

“Right or wrong, this is something that I don’t want to attach to God – though I may assent to it with my intellect.”

And so it is with most folks and the ideas of unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistable grace.

Yes, making it personal always drives things home — it’s something I try to do. It makes us use words like “I, me, and mine.”

Job’s servants were murdered — possibly raped. Consider all that may have happened to Joseph on the way to Egypt. Consider all the REAL FAMILIES that were effected by the ACTUAL EXPERIENCE of God’s “raising up” of Pharaoh and getting Moses into the royal palace.

Exodus 1:22 – Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrew you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

I would have to answer, based upon the totality of Scripture, that there is nothing that has ever happened that God did not intend to happen.

I will use an actual experience as an example. The question that results blows my mind – but it is one that I wrestle with, nonetheless.

Here goes: “Did God plan for John Couey to kidnap, rape, torture and then murder nine-year old Jessica Lunsford – so that His punishment of sin – or the forgiveness of the sinner would bring Glory to HIs name?”

That is a tough question. Now replace the name of the pedophile with a random name, and replace the name of the little girl with a name of your own child (everyone who has responded here has a daughter) – now…. let’s affirm the “explicit” teaching of Scripture – or let’s examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith.

Right or wrong, this is something that I don’t want to attach to God – though I may assent to it with my intellect.