A Supporting Story

C.S. Lewis calls Christian belief a ‘shocking alternative’ to other views because humans have free will (Lewis 52). People might wonder why the ‘almighty’ Christian God unable to prevent humans from temptations. Free will is a gift to humans; God does not force people to do anything because He wants them to love Him ‘whole-heartedly’ (Matthew 22:37). This paper will explain why Lewis is right based on the possibilities to do evil and commit sin, and yet also be forgiven.

If God knows what we are going to do, he has no right to reward the good and punish the wicked. Discuss

God lets mankind fail through their own choices. At the start of the epic, Milton asserts that Paradise Lost will display “Man’s first disobedience” (1.1). Right from the get-go, Milton claims that the fall is mankind’s fault, so we know that Man must have made their ill-fated decision on their own free will. Jumping forward to Book Three, God discusses the future of mankind with the Son. Being all-knowing, God can see the choice Adam and Eve will make: “Man will hearken to [Satan’s] glozing lies… [and] will fall” (3.93-95). Despite knowing what is to come for the pair, God recognizes that mankind’s fall is a result of their own choices. God could have easily intervened and made the right choice for them, but he wants Adam and Eve to have the free will to make their own choices. In

Per Genesis God created humans on the 6th day out of his own image. Some people believe this refers to characteristics, while others believe this refers to physical likeness. The fall of humanity started with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. They were banished from the garden, and humans were cursed by God from that day forward. He made work hard, allowed us to feel suffering and die, made childbirth painful and more. Many people question why God gave us the ability to sin if he is so good and gracious. The answer is God gave us free will to make our own decisions. Adam and Eve had free will but were not sinful by nature. After the fall, God

Predestination, in the dictionary, is said to be "the doctrine that God in consequence of his foreknowledge of all events infallibly guides those who are destined for salvation." Scripture has 2 very good passages for defining what predestination is: Jeremiah 1:5 which says "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." God is talking about Jeremiah in this passage and how God chose him before time; he was predestined for his job. Romans 8:28-30 "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed

Mac left before the Sheriff or anyone else got to the center as he wanted to see how passable the trail was and if he could take the any vehicles up the hill. It was the smallest vehicle they had and it might make it. In several places, the trail wasn’t wide enough to take the quad so he gave up the quad and walked up. The distance to the site Jackie described wasn’t far.

As time passed, and the human race grew and developed on the earth, G-d realized that they are extremely flawed, and “that every imagination of the thoughts of [their] heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6.5). G-d “repented” (Gen. 6.6) for creating flawed individuals; “it grieved him at his heart” (Gen. 6.6). At this point, The Bible presents G-d as more human. G-d’s regret for creating the human race serves as a way to make him more relatable, showing that even G-d can regret his own actions. Therefore, humans can feel more connected to G-d, therefore being more likely to follow his will. Conversely, because humans became so fallacious, G-d no longer desired to preserve them. This interpretation completely opposes the idea that G-d is being

Writing and storytelling are powerful tools for change. An anonymous writer once wrote, “Your tongue has no bones but, is strong enough to break a heart.” Words have a lot of power especially with how you use them. Change has to be brought on by influence and one way of doing that is through storytelling.

He wanted man to be a free moral agent; having the choice between right and wrong. Man chose wrong, which caused pain, suffering, and death entered the world as a result. God has power to stop evil, but it is because of His everlasting patience and grace towards us that He allows our sins to continue. God did not want to end sin yet, because He did not want to lose anyone. A 2 Peter 3:9 puts it, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

In late September of 2010, was the year I learned a new word “Depression”! I was in 1st grade and everything was fun because I had no responsibilities or worries. I didn’t know how to feel grief for a long time because I was always happy. I didn’t know that a family member could own a child.

If it is so easy for humans to stray from the path of God’s love, why does he grant us free will in the first place? This begs the question of why God would give humans free will, and the meaning behind giving humans the choice to use their will to do either good or evil. Free will seems to be a representation for God’s love. If we were predetermined to serve God, our love for Him would lose the meaning it has when we choose to devote ourselves to Him. Free will also acts as a portrayal of God’s trust in us. Trust is an essential part of love, and one could argue that, without trust, love could not exist. God puts his trust in us to serve and love Him. Our free will allows us to either follow this or to turn away from it. It is up to us as to whether we seek God’s love, seek it in the wrong ways, or seek evil. The souls found in Inferno have effectively rejected God’s love in favour of

For us to be part of a future idyllic world, God had to plan thousands, millions, and even billions of years in advance in order to establish our world and create an imperfect human species to occupy and rule over it. He gave us Free Will to choose between good and evil, and through His gift of tiny fragments of His special Energy as our Divine souls, He became the omniscient scorekeeper of our moral choices. How we behave in our lives will determine whether we gain admission into the Messianic Age, and the biblical

Through this eternality and living in a moment that never passes our free will is not affected. If God does knew things of the future based on the necessity that they must occur. Then this would indeed alter the idea that humans have free will because if something is to occur out of necessity, then that thing was no longer chosen out of free will, but was chosen because it was a necessary action. Therefore, God’s knowledge of things that occur in the future is not based upon necessity, but rather knowledge based upon truth. All things that occur are thus done not out of necessity, but are done through the free will of its agent. Through this ability that God possesses to view all things in his present it would appear that all things then are, through the divine eye, out of necessity. No matter if you change your actions or your purpose God will still have foreknowledge of the events to come because man cannot change the divine knowledge. Since God is eternal and exists outside of time and through his abilities, we retain our free will, however God already knows what we have done or chosen before we have done these things. All things we do therefore are done through a free will however are seen as a necessity through providence to happen.

There is no guarantee that a free moral agent will never choose wrongly. For a person to say that God should not have created people with the ability to choose sin, is saying he should not have created people at all. J.L. Mackie contends that God could have indeed created beings that would act freely (but always right). If this had happened we would not be free, but more like robots. If God had created creatures of superior moral character but lacking the ability to choose, these creatures would not be what we call human beings.

Adam and Eve, as we all know, of course disappoint him. The avid church going individual will ask “Didn’t God know this was going to happen, being omnipotent and all?” This is the first contradiction to the assumption that God is acting with a plan. It seems more likely that he is acting out willy-nilly to fulfill whatever desire strikes his fancy. It is also the first example of mankind evolving by explicitly ignoring God, which I’ll come back to later.