How far reaching are God's powers?

[HappySkeptic]

And that's why I answered that moral responsibility is maintained, to a degree, for the purpose of instruction. God is merciful and realizes what He is doing to us, so He doesn't punish us according to our sins, but according to our need for instruction.

Your hypothesis contradicts the bible, but that's neither here nor there.  I've heard many preachers say that bad things are God's wake-up-call, or that God wants people to turn to Him in tragedy so that through faith, good can come out of bad.

You have created a hypothesis - that God punishes for instruction.  So, bad things happen for instruction, not because the laws of the universe allow them to happen.  After all, if it is just the laws of the universe playing out, what is instructional about that (well, I guess it is instruction to better understand the universe's laws).

How would you test your hypothesis?  Would you scientifically measure the sin of a group of people and correlate it to the rate of their children getting cancer?  Would you find that adultery causes natural disasters?

It is. I've always known, at least the vast majority of the time, when I was doing something evil. Once the Lord brought me to repentance, that was when things became murky, because my sins became less obvious, as they must, or I wouldn't have really been repentant.

Everyone can feel regret over hurt they have caused others, or mistakes they have made that have harmed themselves.  No gods are needed for that.

Religious faith is always built on emotion.  Sometimes it has a source in a transformative or peak spiritual experience.  That's part of life, but it in no way validates a particular theology.