I confess you skeptics about the goodness of God have given me food for thought, as it pertains to such a calamity. Could it be I've had my fill of the spoon fed doctrine I've leaned?
It's a fair question. I don't have an easy answer, but I do have what I think are a couple of good starting places.
First: God gave us free will. The implications of free will are not particularly pleasant. For example, free will means that the actions of evil people can and must have consequences. But as we know from Jesus' own example, it's not what happens to us that matters, but how we respond when things happen to us.
As Christians, we believe that God intercedes when it suits His purposes, too. But again, the implications of free will are far ranging, and continual intercession would tend to preclude free will.
Second: God promises us eternal life. The more you think about eternity, the more you realize what a very different thing it must be. If we believe in eternal life, then the things that happen to us here may not matter in the way we think they matter.
Like I said, these are not answers. But they do help me to put questions like this into some sort of perspective.
In order for suffering to have meaning, God must exist. If God doesn't exist, then suffering is merely part of the overall machine and is neither good nor bad nor profound, it just is.
Secondly, Jesus Christ suffered more excruciating pain than we will ever suffer, and He is God. Therefore, we do not go through anything that God Himself has not been through. And it is thru Jesus' suffering that we attain eternal life! If God himself suffered, how can I say that I should not?