If indeed God's will and purpose is ALWAYS for the growth and well being of his children, as you so eliquintly put it, then...
I'm guessing you don't believe in Hell like some christians do. The legendary place whereby people are tortured and tormented forever in the name of God's loving justice(as referenced in the Bible)?
Myself a parent, I would never want to allow my daughter to be tortured for one second let alone enternity. I love my daughter. I also wouldn't want anyone on the face of the planet, that ever lived or ever will live, to suffer.
I do believe though, that God's loving justice is karmic in nature, and that is fair. Cause and effect. We reap what we sew and continue on until we figure things out (so to speak). Balance karma by understanding and rising above ego.
This fits more into line with the analogy of a child learning to walk. It stumbles along the way but the child does eventually walk due to the loving parents patience and unconditional love. The child is never given up on..NEVER (not by a LOVING parent anyway). Imagine saying to a child "well you had enough time to try and walk so just forget it, you will spend the rest of your life in a wheel chair and oh, by the way, I am leaving you too."
The notion of Hell would be very unbalanced. Eternity of suffering for a lifetime of not accepting certain conditions (for whatever reason). Noone can ever reason to me that that mindset fits the picture of unconditional love. NEVER!
When you factor in the many strange mistakes in the Bible such as the earth being refered to as flat, etc, then it is not a stretch that there were some mistakes. When issues such as slavery come into the bible as an endorsement, then it can be intuited that there were other forces at play as well. We see today governmental influences (religious as well) in many things such as publications, media, info in general, so it is no stretch that in an even less enlightened time, where measures of control were always sought, that The Bible would be a likely source to be used for this purpose.
My dogma radar goes off when people refer to God as loving in one sentence then the next sentence talk about sinners being banished to Hell for eternity. *ping...ping*
