Here's what I think: I think that there is a grand design, a needle's path that does its best to minimize suffering and provides meaning and joy to all lives. I also believe we as people have the option to ignore that path and forge our own, less optimal one. We have to be allowed to do that. Without free will faith is meaningless. God or the higher power, he wants us to be happy but he don't control us, that's not benevolence that's not what he wants for his children. He wants us to be kind, and caring, and funny, and happy but those things only mean anything if we find them ourselves.