SCUBA, God and redundancy.

This week I signed up for a SCUBA diving class. My wife, some college friends and I are going to Tahiti this summer and I thought it would be a good idea to learn so that we could do something adventurous on the trip. In my normal line of thinking being adventurous on a beach vacation would be trying the free range chicken as opposed to the regular kind at a dinner out. Adventure is not exactly my middle name, so I dodged and procrastinated for about as long as I possibly could before signing up for the class. Anyway, this past week I decided to go for it, damn the torpedoes, go for the gusto and all that rot.
No sooner had I made this decision, did I read in the local paper about a 60 year old guy (obviously light years older than me) that evidently decided to try something adventurous. This fellow chose to try hang gliding. On his maiden attempt he came back, uh, how should I say, er, in a word, DEAD. This got me to thinking that maybe God was trying to tell me something. My normal reaction to God's messages is "What? I can't hear you!" Anyway, I got to thinking of all the prior messages I had been sent and ignored and I had a real crisis of faith. OK, so it has been building for awhile.
I know God exists (his existence was confirmed in a wrestling match on Monty Python). But lately, I have been having doubts about the goodness and loving nature of God. I mean if God really loves us why did he create death, disease, pestilence, and lawyers? Wait, that's redundant. But you get my drift, right? I mean it seems to me, that the God Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen and Jerry Falwel preach about would not have made our existence a "hell on earth" just because SOMEBODY A LONG TIME AGO, SNACKED ON A DAMN APPLE (not that I'm bitter).
I mean wasn't God's reaction a tad harsh? Oh sure, I know God also gave us love, music (with the exception of anything by Neil Diamond), beautiful natural scenery, Catherine Zeta Jones (there I go getting redundant again) and lots of other neato stuff, but why all the bad. Pain, suffering and republicans just to name the obvious. (For all you Neil Diamond fans I know it's alright for me to slam God but that hitting Neil is just too much. So please don't send me any angry missives, I am just stating my opinion. It's a free country despite what the Bush administration says.)
We Christians believe that God has a plan and that everything happens for a reason. Of course we only say that in the face of grief, disaster or a really lousy Tom Cruise flick. I know, redundant.
My point here is why shouldn't I be able to just enjoy signing up for a simple class without constant reminders that I might get very sick or possibly even die. These risks are clearly spelled out in the application to sign up for the class. The application requires a doctor's consent if you have ever had virtually any malady known to man, with the possible exception of being an insurance salesman. Somebody please tell me why God created "the bends". My guess is he is still ticked off about what we have done to everything else he created and doesn't want to see McDonald's billboards next to the wreck of the Titanic.
I guess there are no real answers to these profound issues, and I'm not really sure why I brought them up, but advice to the kids... if you are going to do something adventurous don't wait until you have one foot on a banana peel and the other in a bingo tournament.

Love,
Dad