The Problem of Evil and Free Will

[Moral Orel]

No I did not, the gift is still God’s Love. But for humans to accept that gift as it is given, God makes some huge sacrifices which includes: Christ going to the cross, Satan roaming the earth, tragedies of all kinds, death of some innocent people, the existence of hell, evil in the world and man sinning.

Other than Jesus' crucifixion in you list, those are all hardships we endure. Now it's fine if you want to look at it as tough love that God suffers to see us suffer and all that, but sacrifice is hardly the word to use when God designed it to inflict hardship on us.

Accepting being “Loved” the way you are is to accept pure charity. Would you prefer to be rewarded a million dollars for doing some great accomplishment or inherit a million dollars from a hard working generous person you looked down upon and abused all your life?

How is that an analogy to what we're talking about? Did Adam look down on God and abuse Him all his life?

And all of this discussion is a result of you mixing up uses of the word "love" which is why I switched it to Q. You're switching between feeling God's love directed at us, and us loving others (including God) the way God does. I'm only talking about loving the way God does and I'm not talking about being the object of affection.

God has Q. God didn't choose to have Q. God will never not have Q. God will never do evil. Free will never comes into play.

If we always had Q, even without choosing to have Q, then we would never do evil, and free will never comes into play.

So why do we have to choose to have Q but God doesn't have to make that choice?

 

[miknik5]

I keep getting drawn into this topic in various threads that aren't quite on topic with this, so I thought I would start a new thread and open it up to the community to see if there is any other answer to The Problem of Evil other than "free will".

So basically the problem goes: "Why did God create a world that would be filled with evil?" We can call "evil" just any negative thing. Death is evil. Crime is evil. Pain is evil, etc.

The typical answer is: "He didn't, we made evil when we Fell".

Then the response to that is: "So why didn't God just make us Good from the start so that we wouldn't ever 'Fall'?"

And the typical answer is: "Because if He did that, we wouldn't have free will, and we would be nothing but puppets/robots."

If I've misrepresented either side of this argument, let me know, and I'll edit the OP to reflect it. This seems about right though.

Also, if anyone has a different answer to The Problem of Evil, feel free to argue that too. I just know that at least 90% of my answers are going to be "free will" so I'm getting out ahead of it.

So now my response is, "If always doing good means you don't have free will, then God doesn't have free will because He always does good". But maybe somehow God is an exception to the rule somehow.

So then what about once you're in Heaven? You have free will, you'll never sin again. Why not start people off that way? But maybe you need to go through a process, it can't be instantaneous.

So then what about babies that pass away? They go to Heaven without ever enduring any earthly, spiritual process. Without ever choosing to follow God here on Earth. Once there, they get the perfectly sinless nature and never do evil. They go through their entire existence without ever sinning once, but they still have free will. Of course, it would be ridiculous to think that God is incapable of letting that baby grow up in Heaven with his perfect nature in tact. Surely God isn't incapable of maturing an immature being if He can create a fully mature being from dust. So I hope no one is going to answer that babies stay babies in Heaven forever.

So, the alternate proposed process that God could follow is thus:

1. Create a being that is not mature enough to be held accountable for his choices/actions.
2. Bestow upon that being the infinitely good nature that allows it to never sin without controlling its will.
3. Mature that being into a fully mature, intelligent being that has free will but never sins.

Now honestly, it seems like I shouldn't have to go so far. God isn't omnipotent, in my opinion, if He can't just do all of this instantly. But whatever argument you have that pushes it to this point, let's just skip to here instead of dragging it out over the course of pages and pages.

Now if God followed this process, for every single being He ever created, including Satan and all the fallen angels, then the universe would have no sin in it whatsoever, and free will could still abound. Free will isn't what limits God's ability to create beings that aren't puppets/robots. So the question is, if God can avoid ever allowing evil to exist, why did He want it to exist in the first place? If anyone ever does something, it is either because they want to, or because they need to. So since God didn't need to create evil (albeit indirectly) why did He want to create evil (again, indirectly)?

Because HE already fire knew the victory and ultimate outcome would be a set apartment people called by HIS NAME

 

[miknik5]

We are like unruly children. We never ever and always do what is right in all situations and circumstances before all people. We never ever and always show impartial unbiased LOVE. And what we do has an effect on ourselves, on our relationships and on one another.

GOD doesn't change. HE remains constant. HIS SPIRIT is the same in seasons of sun and seasons of rain. We're the ones who change. And more often it is during seasons of rain that we... misbehave and misrepresent THE GOD whom we claim to know.

Because we do not always do what is right. More because we sometimes look to serve ourselves justify ourselves defend ourselves protect ourselves. Our pride our dignity. and we wind up doing more than we should do when we were told not by power or by might but by HIS SPIRIT

HIS WILL be done
Not ours
It's just that if we say we know HIM then we should know the right that we should do and do it

 

[miknik5]

and those who knew their fathers will and did not do it will receive more stripes than the one who didn't know and still did the many things deserving of stripes