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Well, in my humble opinion, the Genesis writers got more than a few things wrong.
That's only one.
Genesis may be the most true and simple books in all of the Old Testament. If you throw out that, you might as well throw out the rest of it and write your own bible.
To the OP, free will to me means "I am responsible." That's whether I do God's Will or not.
A better question might be to ask, "Why do we have free will? " To that I would answer, "Without it, things 'down here' would get mighty boring.'"
I guess this might be a very trivial problem but I don't know the answer to it.
The question I have is how humans can have free will when everything is according to God's will.
I know there is a long history of free will problem in philosophy and theology but I thought the churches should have a very simple answer to this question to the general church going people.
You might find the answer you were not looking for on this link.
Genesis may be the most true and simple books in all of the Old Testament. If you throw out that, you might as well throw out the rest of it and write your own bible.
To the OP, free will to me means "I am responsible." That's whether I do God's Will or not.
A better question might be to ask, "Why do we have free will? " To that I would answer, "Without it, things 'down here' would get mighty boring.'"
If we had no choice but were forced to love our parents, etc. would that be true love, or just being an automaton ?
Unlike robots, being created as free moral agents we get to choose whom we love and respect and will listen to.
If Adam had no free will, Adam could not have chosen to break God's law. By disobedience to God as his Creator and Life Giver [ Father ] Adam showed he loved God less than he did himself.
I'm not sure where I stand on this particular issue, but there are interesting Scriptures that challenge our thoughts:
The word proorizo occurs six times in the New Testament, each time demonstrating that God is the one who is foreordaining and bringing about certain events:
Acts 4:28, "to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur."
Rom. 8:29, "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren;
Rom. 8:30, "and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified."
1 Cor. 2:7, "but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our glory."
Eph. 1:5, "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will."
Eph. 1:11, "also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will."
The word "election," or "elect," comes from the Greek word eklectos and occurs about 25 times in the New Testament. It signifies "to pick out, choose, to pick or choose out for one's self, a choosing one out of many."The one who does the choosing, the electing, is God.
John 13:18, "I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ˜He who eats My bread has lifted up his heel against Me."
Eph. 1:4,"He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him."
1 Tim. 5:21, "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality."
My personal feeling is that the only thing I can control is me, then God foreordained me to control myself, to make an attempt every day to live as I believe Jesus would live today, this day, all day. And when tomorrow comes to prayerfully be foreordained to do it all again.
Last edited by Wardendresden; 07-28-2013 at 06:06 PM..
Reason: formatting
to ask me what the true nature is a start, but have anyone actually studied on what hell is, and all of the interpretation. As far as heaven goes, the same thing, study. See if i mention everything God taught me about heaven and hell, i won't have enough space. But to answer your question, heaven and hell doctrines created beliefs in making up the free will gospel. To some its hard to imagine our Holy father sending someone to hell, and on the other hand heaven. These two are discussions of their own. But to go further into explanation, heaven and hell doctrines and along with the beliefs that develop with them, creates other beliefs. For example, If we never heard or believed that when we die, we go to a specific place, then we would've created beliefs that we control, where we go.But because we have some kind of knowledge of heaven and hell, we see one as good, and the other as bad, so we don't want to go to the bad place, so we as christians, have taken God's words and misinterpretated and twisted it, to fit our lives and sins. We use them to tell ourselves , " That if i accept christ Jesus as my savior, I won't go to hell, but heaven!
That's religions way of saying it doesn't matter, everything that will happen is pre-destined.
I find that to be a total fabrication, and not represented by scripture.
We have free-will, and free-choice. What God has pre-ordained is thwarted by our choosing not to. That is free-will.
If it is all puppeted by God, then God made evil... And that is simply false.
Satan chose his destiny, and freedom allows freedoom..... For he (lucifer) was a liar from the beginning, by his choice to be above God, rather than like God.
Further more, Satan is the author of death, and pride and the father of lies. Not God. Pre-destiny as interpretted today, makes God the creator of evil.
Is it better to have freewill and go to hell, or a robot and go to heaven for eternity?
Considering how many angels rejoice at our salvation (it's probably telling us something of the importance of getting to heaven), I think I'd choose being the robot.
No one has a free will. Our wills are influenced by innumerable variables. The closest you can ever get to having a free will is when/if you have been enlightened by the light of Christ and dwell in perfect peace regardless of all that is happening around you.
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There may be some foreordained events
