Fantastic article Dan.
What we know as the Scriptures were written many, many years ago in Aramaic and Hebrew. Countless stories and historical facts have never been written or lost.
Scholars with cultural and social biases translated these Scriptures into what is known as the Bible, a vast collection of stories and events told by various people over extended time frames.
It’s difficult to believe we have every single cold fact necessary to have the complete manual for living a Christian life.
Tradition and changing cultural practices skew our idea of God, Jesus, faith, etc.
Each individual in the world has their own unique concept of Heaven or Hell.
Education and life experience play a role in our belief system.

How can we possibly come up with a one-answer-fits-all in regards to a loving God allowing suffering given the conglomeration of challenges the interpretation of the Scriptures provides?

Victor Frankl, in “Man’s Search for Meaning” (based on his own suffering from his incarceration at Auschwitz and other camps) concluded that we are able to choose one’s attitude in ANY given set of circumstances, to choose our own way.

This is significant in that it recognizes the role of free will, to choose something as an ordeal or as a difficult lesson.
Genocides and rape and pedophilia are at the extreme end of the range of inhumanity, and yet the pattern is repeated continually.
People don’t choose to have those things happen to them.
By allowing them to happen, however, are we not all in some way complicit for knowing about the atrocities and doing what, exactly, to end them?