Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

God's Gift of Free Will

Anonymous asked for this post, so here it is.

(Ze asked me to cite chapter and verse, but, dude, go read the opening chapters of Genesis. It’s not hard to find. Here, I'll let you skip chapter 1; start with chapter 2 and read through to the end of chapter 3. If you don't like that version, find another, that's just the first one that Google spat out when I typed in "Genesis." I'm not going to argue details or individual words, I'm talking about the main events in the story. You can even read the LOLcats Bible, if you want.)

God gave us free will.

Adam and Eve chose to listen to the serpent and eat from the tree in the middle of the Garden, the only tree from which God told them they could NOT eat. Yet they did it anyway -- because God had given them free will. They made their own choice, followed their own will, not God's.

Now, if you remember, God is the Alpha and the Omega -- He knows all. He knew, before He went through the trouble of creating Adam and Eve, or the serpent, that Adam and Eve would eat from that tree. BUT HE LET THEM DO IT ANYWAY.

Adam and Eve controlled their own fate, but God knew what choices they would make and what that fate looked like. And God chose to NOT interfere with that.

If God did not want things to go that way, if He did not want Adam and Eve to disobey Him, why did He make it so easy for them to do so? He’s all-powerful. Could He really not manage to put a little fence or something around the tree? Or, heck, put the tree somewhere else, where Adam and Eve couldn’t get to it?

The only logical conclusion is that God wanted Adam and Eve to “screw up.” He wanted them to KNOW. He wanted them to make their own choices, and live the lives that we lead now, with the good and the bad and the ugly -- and everything else.

Because without evil, how do we know what "good" is? Without pain, loss, hardship, how do we know what "happy" is?

If we were still living in the Garden of Eden, would we understand how happy we would be? How could we, without having something to compare those “good” feelings to?

Yeah, maybe the very first (recorded) thing Adam and Eve do with their free will is something most of us would consider “unwise.” So what? Who cares what you think? God gave them the ability to make that choice, and I happen to think God does things for a reason. Maybe you think God’s kind of stupid and didn’t know what He was doing... I happen to think He knew exactly what he was doing.

He chose to create Man and Woman, and He chose to let them “muck things up” like this.

What you personally think of Adam and Eve’s choices is completely irrelevant in this conversation. What you personally think God’s choice to grant us free will is also irrelevant. And, if I may, perhaps a little blasphemous? But, hey, if you want to question God, that’s up to you. Have fun.

The fact remains: God gave us free will. Because He wants us to make our own choices. That includes women, and what they chose to do to and with their bodies.