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Yeah, I try to steer away from having God just clean up all of the messes and have the humans take no accountability for their actions. I get why He had to with our sin, because there was not way the human race could ever redeem themselves. But in the course of stories, I think using a “deus ex machina” is like a bad parent example: A parent who just comes behind their “little monster” and pays off the damage they do, and never disciplines their child, setting them loose on society to grow up to believe that others will clean up their messes. It doesn’t work that way, and the child will often end up incarcerated or dead, broke, addicted or in an insane asylum.
God requires us to recognize that there are consequences for our rebellion, dire consequences. It cost Him a brutal death on the cross for us. The shock and realization of that should wake us up to the measure of God’s Divine Mercy and Grace unmerited. We are called to to serve Him out of gratitude, rather than compulsion. The Lord loves a cheerful giver, scripture says (2 Corinthians 9:7). Where much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48).
In the 23rd Psalm, God, as The Good Shepherd, walks through the Valley of the Shadow with us, rather than steering us around it. The purpose of this is He desires to teach us about His capacity to protect us and keep us under His Care. The Rod and Staff are Shepherd’s instruments. The Rod is used to beat down attackers, (wolves, lions, etc.). The Staff is hooked on the end, and it is designed to draw a wayward sheep back to the shepherd. It is also used to lift a sheep up when they fall into a miry ditch or narrow crevasse. God walks into our circumstances being our source of life, as the vine, but He requires us to be fruitful branches that draw from our lives in Him, to produce outward results, showing others the Nature of the Root we are connected to. (John 15:8)
God is a Good Father. He defends, but He also prunes and disciplines us as a responsible loving father does, to ensure that we become more representative of Him outwardly. (John 15:2, Deut. 8:5, Prov. 13:24, Heb. 12:6-11) That is why we go through the cycle of regeneration. To be purged of our old nature, that Paul alludes to (Romans 7:24), and to become servants under our new nature made alive through fellowship with Christ. That is the path of Lordship and communing in our love relationship with our Savior. This is the essence of what I am conveying through the story of my WIP novel series. The Lordship path of bearing fruit by connectedness, and the pruning of our old ways to give health and more fruit to the new branch that we are grafted into as being made the sons and daughters of God.