At no time did I say Pharoah's acts weren't his own or that he doesn't have responsibility for his actions or that he had no choice. But I don't know how anyone could read the text as plainly as it is in Exodus, Romans and other places and not see that God definitely influences people by either secondary means, his direct actions, or by withdrawing his Spirit or by sending an evil spirit as he did with King Saul.

If this bothers your conscience, then ignore it at your own peril. You either build who you want God to be in your own mind, or you let God tell you who he is. God's purposes are his own and they are manifold. If he wants to hardened someone's heart for the purposes of showing his power and might in judgement over an entire civilization of people, that is his prerogative. Place whatever caveat you want on God's actions over Pharaoh except that God did nothing and let Pharaoh just do what he was already going to do. That is obviously not the meaning of the text. God is not impotent and when the text says he does something, he did something.

I'm not saying people don't have free agency. I'm not saying God chooses for us. I'm saying God, who rightly so holds every human life in his hand; God who can take life or give it at his own command in perfect justice; He works for His own good pleasure His will. If that means creating a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction, then so be it. Those are His words, not mine. How else do you explain entire civilizations that God allowed to exist with no special knowledge of him, doomed from their inception. Our loving God didn't have to save one person and he would have still been perfectly loving. To insinuate that our loving God has to by the necessity that you place on him restrain his judgement on the wicked whom he created in order for you to call him loving is disgusting and naive. It diminishes the grace that he offered you. We should look at Pharoah and say, "there, but for the grace of God, go I."

I don't condemn your statements but rather admonish you to examine whether your ideas about God are His ideas, or your ideas. I once stood where you are and put God in my box, and I'm sure I still do in areas that I am still blind. I only call your idea disgusting and naive because I certainly am disgusting and naive in far too many areas of my own life. Thank our creator that his grace is greater than our sin. I have no doubt given what you wrote that He loves you with His redeeming grace and if we met in person I would call you brother.