If God exist, is good and gives us free will, how do you explain or console those that have no free will?

Question

Against their will, endure horrible things in their lives, especially children.

Is free will for those individuals committing the crimes or causing the pain, more important to God than the lives of the victims?

Answer 1

For those of us that don’t subscribe to Judeo/Christian texts, I will try to offer this:
As a young man I reflected on the Torah, the Kabbalah, Bible and Koran among other miscellaneous texts indented to offer solace, inspiration and guidance. With all this searching and education on the cumulative wisdom and guidance of the world I was left with a hole.

I asked myself if I was to stand be fore some all knowing and omnipotent being to be judged (with the free will I was given, if you believe in that model) I would reflect on the situation. Here sits, stands, etc. the creator of all that is or was or will be; and I grew sickened. With this power, this wisdom you “God” allowed rape, murder, molestation, etc. and the best that you could offer the world as guidance with your infinite power was free will. If this indeed was your promise and gift, in knowing all that was to happen you allowed others wills to impede and usurp the very gift you promised. You know and felt all that has happened and let it be.

As the replies manifest and various angles are explored from this or that view I ask follower of god this:

When you stand before your creator to be judged, will you even once ask yourselves if you want heaven in all its various manifestations (70 virgins, all those you loved, etc.) will you question? Would you accept that with this power, power to do anything, he/she/it allowed or accepted harm for any reason? And when you’re granted this heaven will you smile as you casually pass by on the streets of heaven: the suicide bomber (killed 11 men, 4 women, and 3 children), the priest (molested 76 young men), and the Christian soldier (shot three nurses and a doctor in the face for running a clinic).

If you can do anything, anything at all would you allow anyone, anything you created with love to be harmed. If you can say yes, I want them (my creation) to do what ever it wants and then I will judge it. Then when I decide its time to go, knowing what the outcome will already be, I will tell them what they did wrong and send them have the same kind of affliction I condemned repeated on them for all eternity. If you can say this is what you would do with this kind of power then “God” bless you.

As for me Coco, there is no God, I hope heaven or hell is what we are left with as we pass away and our souls/energy/life force dissipate and we are striped bare and revel what and who we truly are and remain that way for eternity. We are free we have will and we should judge ourselves and let eternity remind us of what we did and did not do. If I was god there would be no pain/hate/death I would never have made it. And for those that say children have free will with molesters; ask your self if you really think they (the children) wanted it, if the little girls deserved it or if the young men could have stopped it.

Answer 2

You are making the presupposition that God does exist and gives us free will.

The first scenario is flawed. The children have the freedom to react in any way they would like. The situation they are placed in isn't chosen by anyone. Many would argue that this helps prove against freewill and that the universe is deterministic (even many Christians believe this).

and for 2nd scenario: you might look at the situation and say that it is terrible, but God didn't create the world to be a utopia. Evil exists. As cruel as it seems, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" and the punishment for sin is death (damnation). God loves both the victim and the criminal, but it his action to save them in the life that matters, an eternal one.

All in all, I think the question is much much deeper than what is actually asked, and this answer, although insufficient, is the best I can do with the setup.

Answer 3

No, it is not. God even values and knows the number of ants on the ground all over the earth. So He values His babies even more.

I do not know what to say to you that will give you any peace about this situation I have a hard time with myself. Why does God take a young sweet child and place it into a house with a demon who will beat, sexually abuse, and sometimes kill it. Yet let the monster walk the earth to spread his terrors to other children. I do not know why it is this way.
I am very much in a position that sees good people getting terminal diseases 2 months after they have retired from a job of 40 years. Good God loving , fearing, spread His word, type people.They get cancer and die a hundred awful deaths.

Yet the lazy drunkards who never worked more than a week in their lives, and only then because they were forced to by some punishment by a court, live and are worthless sponging off our government programs and their poor mothers, never get ill, never seem to lose anyone they love to anything bad. They are just drains on the good moral people who unltimately end up taking care of them.

You can perhaps console those who are too young to leave a situation where there is abuse and horrible acts by their governments, by telling them that they are to be strong, God has a special place for them, He is putting them into bondage of pain here on earth so that they may become strong in mental discipline and strong in looking past the act as it is happening and finding a place in their minds to go be with Him when it is happening, therefore they are getting to know Him and to know that with Him, they can get through the devils own fire. And they know where He is any time they need Him. It is that way for all of us, inside is where God is if we only look to find Him. They have found that place that most of the people never have need of .

Answer 4

As to whether God is good or not I won't say, but here is something of a purely rational and perhaps useful nature.

First of all that is naive question. To say that children have no free will and suffer regardless is totally untrue.

Free will is an expression of the power to act in any given moment. Children,m unfortunately for them, are seldom able to act effectively as they would like.

The abuse to which children are vulnerable does not make them innocent, it only manifests that they are still weak.

Have you ever seen a criminal beaten in a prison. That same criminal, if given the opportunity might do great damage to other human beings, but at that particular moment in prison he presents a sympathetic figure because of his vulnerability.

Vulnerability however does not equate to innocence.

Children are perceived as helpless because they are susceptible to the wills of so many people who are stronger than them. That is people more able to exercise their will.

Have you ever seen two toddlers of the same age fighting over a toy.

Then you see children acting as equals exercising their own wills against each other, and the same hatred and selfishness that adults manifest in their behavior is apparent with those children.

I have seen very young children lash out against their parents, other children, younger children, older children, etc. in very vicious petty ways. That is that a child freely exercising his will in the moment when he has the opportunity.

Children are generally helpless because of their physical condition. If you took the heart of that vulnerable child and put it in a large body with physical maturity at a state of intellectual development, then it would behave just like anyone else.

Answer 5

Our flesh bodies don't have near as much free will as our spiritual selves do. Luckily, God created a provision so that when some evildoer is taking control of our flesh body, our spiritual (true) self can become 'detached' from it and this is why you will often read that during a rape or assault the victim feels as if they are standing off to the side watching it happen. That's because it is happening only to the flesh body, not the spirit. We are just witnesses to what happens to the flesh.

Our spirit selves (true self) has complete free will to think, reason and believe whatever we choose. Often times we can control what the flesh does with our true self, but the flesh always has limited free will because of natural laws of physics, disease, aging, government, criminals, etc.

You can console a person who has lost their fleshly free will by helping them understand that the flesh body is not 'who we are'. It grows old, withers and dies, like it is supposed to. When they understand their true self lies within the spirit self inside, and that NO one can take control of their spirit without their consent, they might begin to feel better.

God doesn't forget what crimes against the flesh have been committed, and the people who commit them will answer in His court of law, eventually. What He can do for the victim is give comfort to the spirit person within the flesh until justice is carried out for the crimes perpetrated against them, but only if they recognize Him and ask for His comfort to begin with.

Too many victims blame God instead of seeking comfort.

Answer 6

Another stupid atheist or agnostic question.

For the believer, there is the Christian bible that reveals God's words as given to the prophets. The bible is not a conversion manual but a tool for the believer. If you want to understand anything about God, it is there.

Now to your question: God is good, Man sometimes fails. Man can make choices, but must live with the consequences (Free Will). Man will be judge by God. Man can never understand God.

Revelation is not explain, it is given. Since all men have free will, there is nothing to console.

Please ask a more meaningful question next time.

Answer 7

Remember Coco, that God does not compel someone to obey Him. As the path of God is good and choosing that path has to be with your own free will, as it is a path of rewards and merits. If he would compel anyone to take that path, then he would be forced to have bad people take that path too (as he is just and does not take sides. We are all his creatures, the good and evil among us). If he would force the bad people to take the good path, then there will be no distinction between the good people and the bad people.

So, FREE WILL is the choice of a person who willingly and with understanding chooses the path of God.

A man asked Ali, the Nephew and heir of the Prophet of ISLAM where does my free will end and where does God's will begin. Ali said to the man "lift up your one leg and stand on one leg". The man did that. Then Ali said okay... now, lift up the other leg also... and the man replied I can not do that without falling down. Ali said the first action was your free will, within What God has allowed you. The second action is where you have no control at all!

Please remember also that the GOOD LORD loves everyone. Do not judge by seeing people die or face a calamity. If you would see that hardship raised them to a high level in heaven, many would want those things to happen to them. Because we do not see the other side of death, we may think of these things as bad, as we are only seeing from the Worldly perspective.

Answer 8

Everybody has free will even if you don't understand how that is. Most of us have had many lives before this one. It is our souls choice to choose a life that is difficult to balance out past deeds in a previous life time. There is many possible reasons why a soul would choose a difficult life. Another possibility could be that their experience would trigger compassion in someone else. Now that would be an extremely loving act on a souls part to choose horrible experiences for someone else's benefit (not the perpetrator's but the one learning to be compassionate).

Answer 9

We as humans whether young or old, good or evil, have free will. We all can choose what course of action we will take, Even young children can make choices. They may not make the best choices, none the less they are able to choose. God does not give a level of importance to the choices that we as humans make, rather he counsels us so that we can make good choices. Everyone does not heed that counsel and that is where the pain and suffering of the world comes in to play.

Answer 10

Sister, everyone at one time or another has asked:

"Why do bad things happen to good people?" Yes, the answer is "Free Will" -- because people can choose to follow Satan in performing evil acts.

If God were to choose to destroy Free Will (and thereby deny EVERYONE their right to choose either God or Satan), then we would be no better than robots, totally under his control. For some reason (incomprehensible to many) God would rather have children (with Free Will) than robots.

God suffers for the victims, and provides comfort to those who turn to him. He also suffers for the evil-doers who have turned away from him, because their souls are lost to Satan and Hell.

The victims have Free Will, as well. They may be powerless against their abusers, they may be innocent, but THEY have the ability to decide how to react to their abuse. Some use their Free Will to decide to become abusers themselves -- some use their history as a victim of abuse to turn away from God.

And some allow the memory of how it felt to be abused to soften their hearts and broaden their understanding of others who have been abused, and reach out to help and comfort them.

Answer 11

In a universe which contains an omniscient God, human free will cannot exist. In a universe which allows for human free will, an omniscient God cannot exist. The two ideas are contradictory. You can have the one or the other but not both at the same time.