How far reaching are God's powers?

[The Grand Nudger]

We can't be meaningfully good or bad; it's not within our power at all. If we are good, it's because God has given us the grace to defy our sin nature; if we are evil, it's simply because we act according to our nature.

And yes, you can make the argument that God is at least partly responsible for the evils we commit, and that He must take into account, at least to some degree, that we can't help but be evil.

I'm unconcerned with whether or not a god is to blame for this or that oddity of human nature.

And He does. For one, the Scriptures tell us that He does not punish our sins as we deserve (Psalm 103:10). We all, most likely, deserve to die many times over for the evils we've done. Yet we live, as we must, in order to learn. It also helps matters that the evils we commit serve as punishment against those who deserve it.

These are the sorts of things I was wondering.

If we can't be meaningfully good or evil, then how can we deserve anything?  How do we learn, and what use would learning be?  What evil we commit, and what is being punished in others through us?

None of this is cogent outside of a meaningful ability to do or be good or evil.  

But that doesn't excuse our sin. Yes, we were made evil, but does that excuse the evil you've done? And here is the key difference between us and God: God allows evil for the greater good, in fact He uses it expressly to do good. Our intentions are not for good, but for evil, and that's why we are unrighteous and God righteous.

If a toaster is made to toast that explains it's toasting.  Here again I'm unconcerned with gods, so whatever greater good they might be able to do is irrelevant to me and to human beings, who are not capable of doing any meaningful good.  

I realize that in the end it's difficult to accept because it seems unfair, and to a degree it is, but when you take God's intention into account you must exonerate Him of sin.

It doesn't seem unfair, it is unfair - but so what.  The universe may not be fair - and in point of fact, it's your contention that a god is unfair in precisely this way. Fairness, then, is no moral rule.

(god can't be bad - either god is not god, or being unfair is not bad)

As ever, I'm interested in the human angle.  How can I take a gods intention into account and exonerate it of sin?  Am I in the possession of a competent moral agency and an amoral commitment to some unspecified fairness...but simultaneously unequipped with any free will to use it? 

Is this an accurate description of your own experience?  Do you find yourself cognizant of the difference between good and evil, in a fair manner, but unable to choose anything other than evil?