Tough Question for Christians #3—Freewill
Tough Question #3
AZ quotes a Christian friend of his: “Sin is doing anything opposed to God’s will.” Building on this, AZ wonders why God gave us freewill, if we could never use it. After all, he says, if we act according to our own will, God will kill us. If we don’t sin—acting not according to our own will—only in this way can we live. So God’s gift of freewill is one we cannot use.
This shows a strict Calvinist idea of human activity. That everything we do on our own is motivated by evil, and therefore everything we do is evil, and so God will kill us if we do anything. That didn’t stop the Calvinists from killing the Native Americans, I notice, but whatever.
The fact of the matter is, God gave us freewill so we can use it. Not every human act is intrinsically evil. Evil, in reality, is acting in ways that God specifically told us are evil. Evil is hating others, acting on that hatred. Evil is acting in unfaithfulness. But there are many more opportunities to act according to what is good than evil. And God gave us free will to act in love. Evil is so limiting and sin is unimaginative. It always seems to go down the same paths. Love is limitless, having infinite varieties.
God gave us general principles which to live by, and it is necessary to live according to those principles. But God’s path of action isn’t narrow. Rather, it fills the world with good things to do.
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