Just wanted to say thankyou to those of you who left a thoughtful post about my questions.

I haven't resolved them yet and am still keeping them as open questions in my mind.

Another thing i was wondering how i would answer the other day was Why does (if He does at all) God seem to bless Western Christians more than "eastern" or third world ones?

My first thoughts were that you could answer it by questioning whether money and material wealth is really a blessing at all or more of a curse. The bible does spend a lot of time talking about how having money and follow God are hard things to do (i.e. the camel through the eye of a needle story told be Jesus). But then God does seem to bless his people (the Israelites) by making them materially wealthy, Abraham and co have heaps of animals and land. In Solomon's time Gold is really really common.

I will continue to ponder...