[unlearner]

How about comparing the three possibilities to what a small child might feel when getting an inoculation:

1) you're not my real dad

2) dad is evil

3) dad loves me but can't stop bad things from happening to me

There is at least one other option:

4) what is happening may have a purpose I do not understand yet

(Option 4 requires trust.)

John 13:7

What I am doing, you do not know now, but you shall know hereafter.

[LibertarianInExile]

Quoting the Bible to prove God is like quoting the Vedas to prove Hinduism or the Koran to prove Islam. And I'm pretty sure there are far more believing Hindus and Muslims than those who affiliate themselves with your chosen denomination.

One problem with your analogy is that daddies don't get a lot of say over why kids should have an inoculation--they didn't have anything to do with contagious illnesses--while God, as an omnipotent, omniscient being, could eliminate the need for inoculations. Certainly, humanity may have its destiny in God's plan, but saying that doesn't do away with the reality that, if He made the plan, God's plan included killing innocents with His natural disasters as part of it. It's difficult to overcome what we'd consider a great evil if done by Man with an anti-solipsistic 'it's part of His plan' when we DO know some of the details of that plan are what we'd consider evil were it not by the hand of God.