I have a question about free will. Can someone give me an answer that makes any sense?

Question

IMPORTANT: I will be adding notes because my entire question is over 6,926 characters, even with spaces. After about 60 seconds, refresh and the whole question will be there. When you see “::END::”, that is the end of the question.

I ask, "Well, if God (yes, the Christian God) knows what I’m going to do, how do I have free will?" I, personally, haven’t found an answer that makes sense to me. About 90% of the people say, "It is still free will, because you don't know what’s going to happen." I don’t think that makes any sense. Here is the definition of free will:

free will
n.
1. The ability or discretion to choose; free choice: chose to remain behind of my own free will.
2. The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will.
Basically, it’s just the right to do what you desire.

The other 10% of the time, I get two other answers. One time, I got this as an answer: “All you have to do is read the bible and God will lead you to your answer. Use your faith to guide you”. It’s kind of hard to follow a faith that tells me something that makes no sense to me, like free will. But I do understand that some things out there that God has shown us are not even capable of being understood by the human mind. But anyways, back to the point. The other answer I get is, “When you die, you can ask God yourself”. Now isn’t that just the most helpful answer of all? But anyways, back to the point.

But isn’t life really like a book, with God knowing the end and the middle and the beginning and so on? How can it be called the ability to choose, if your choice is already definite? In reference to the most common answer, “Well, you don’t know the choice you will make, so it is still free will”, if someone knows what your going to do, is it really your choice to do it, or are you just going along a guided path? Are you writing the book of life or simply reading it? I think your reading it. In order for free will to exist, God has to be up there thinking, “Will he go to school, or will he not…” That would be free will. But if he is up there saying, “He will choose to go to school”, did that person really choose to go, or did he just follow his predestined path? This is the one and only question that just KILLS me! I have a certified IQ of 153, and I still cannot understand; how can we have FREE will if the end is already known? Isn’t that like someone freeing you into a cage?

Now, I see life as a book. If there were free will, I would be writing it as it were told. If there weren’t any free will, I would simply be following along. So, because God knows what’s going to happen on page 5, whatever that may be, I cannot change that. Even if I looked at page 5, there is nothing I can do at page 4 to change it, because God saw me doing whatever I was doing. It’s also parallel with time, if what I believe to be true were true. If I ride my bike at 11:30pm up until noon, at noon, I might realize that I had something important to do at 11:30. So at that point, I could go back in time, and do what I was supposed to do. I would want to go to work, but I would still hop on the bike, because God saw me doing it.

If God tells me, at 5:30am, that I am going to eat cereal for breakfast at 6:00am, I have no choice but to do so. I can’t not do something that God saw me do, and that’s a fact. If God sees me playing Tetris at 5am, not even he can stop me from playing, because if he had, then he would have seen himself stopping me playing. So what he foresees to happen WILL HAPPEN, no matter what. Now that I have that over with, I can continue.

So, if I am correct, when God test someone, he isn’t looking for one of two results, he is just verifying, or something? He created Sodom and Gomorrah, knowing, without a doubt, that he would destroy it some time later? Well, why did he create it then? Furthermore, and back to the original point, those people in that city, did they have a choice not to die? God saw them being destroyed before he even created them. They didn’t have a choice to not be destroyed, and didn’t have a choice not to sin, because god saw them do it.

So, it would be useless for God to ever ask an informal question. He would ask a question though, to make a point. So, that is why I am confused with “free will”. I don’t think it is possible if god really exists. If we had free will, our life would be a tree with an infinite number of branches, and we would start at the bottom, and climb up to the top, climbing up whichever branch we choose to climb. Then, we would, at some point, reach the end of a branch, and that would be the end, period. But what we have is more like a maze, I think; a maze that has no dead ends. It might be our choice to turn left, but if there isn’t a right turn, or a forward, or a backward, (because time only goes forward) was it really our choice to turn left? I think it sounds like our choice when it’s out of context, but is it really our choice? It might be our choice to an extent, but if we had no choice but that make that choice to begin with, that’s sort of contrary to free will.

I wish someone would make me go, “Oh my God, thank you Jesus! It all makes sense to me now!” but that hasn’t happened yet. I find myself to be a thinker and a knower, half way decent intelligence-wise but this still doesn’t make any sense to me. When someone says, A, “Because you don’t know what choice your going to make”, then B, “that means you still have free will”, I get almost angry. It sounds like someone said, “Well because 2 is 2, and 3 is 3, 2 + 3 must be 6”. That makes as much sense to me as the other one. It just eats away at me. I understand why god gave Lucifer so much power, and I understand why some parts of the bible contradict each other, but the free will dilemma is the only one that just irks me. These people out there, who think that they have the right to choose, I think they’re living a lie, maybe for the better. It would really suck knowing that your fate has already been chosen, and that there is nothing you can do about it.

But I think this is true. I think that ice cream tastes good because he makes us think it tastes good. I also think that I disagree with freedom of choice because God made me that way, which is even deeper. But why does a 12 year old kid tell me that, “Well if you know its going to happen, then its free will”, and also believe it, whereas a 17 year old intellectual person such as I cannot even conceive of this? Is it because I’m just can’t grasp the truth that is right before me, or is it because other people cannot grasp the truth that I see? About three times already, people have called me stubborn, stupid, blind; a menagerie of put downs.

Using common sense, I conclude that we both cannot be right; so either I’m incapable of contemplating free will, or the entire human race is stupid. I like to believe that I am incapable of contemplating free will. But I shouldn’t be, I don’t think. If a 12 year old kid can not only understand it, but explain it to me, why can’t it at least make even a little sense to me? I believe in God, and I’m a Christian I think, but I cannot live a lie and say that I have free will, just because the bible says so. I wish it could make sense to me! Does anyone out there have a good explanation of why it makes no sense to me? The only actual answer that I have ever really gotten is that “Because you don’t know the choice, that doesn’t mean you cannot still make it”. This answer makes no sense to me, if not less than that. Can anyone out there help me?
::END::

Answer 1

Admittedly, I did not read that book of a question.

However, I can tell you that you are thinking too much.

Right now.. you could get up, get a gun, and go on a shooting spree.

Right now... you could gather all your money and give it to a charity for orphans.

God gives you the ability to make your own choices. Otherwise he would have created a robot instead of a man.

Thats Free Will.

The fact that God knows what you will do before you even do it, does not take the choice away from you.

You are trapped in time. He is not.

God Bless You.

Answer 2

Yes, there is free will. And yes, "God" knows which choice you will take. But there are still choices which were not taken. It is much more complex than you are even thinking.

God knows All possible futures. You choose which one you live in.

Keep pondering. Read lots of philosphy. This question has been going around a long time. I don't think anyone has really explained it well enough to stop the wonder. It is wondering, wonderful.

Don't be confused or confounded by people who have stopped wondering because they found an answer they can live with. Hopefully you will find a way to explain it, for yourself if not others.

Answer 3

No one has come up with a Calvinist viewpoint yet, so I'll try this one on you: have you ever considered that free will just might not exist? Your definition is a philosophical one, not a theological one. In religious terms, it has to do with fellowship with God. Therefore Adam did not have free will before the fall as the issue was not about whether he had freedom to sin. After the fall, he still had that freedom to sin, but since he lost his fellowship, he spread that "original sin" to all of mankind, who would never have fellowship with him again except for his grace.

Yes, God did see all of history, and in spite of our condition, he somehow chose to save some, not all, and he is glorified in both the salvation of the elect and the punishment of the reprobate. Does this make God a monster? No, it is we who are born into sin, we do not deserve heaven.

As for the "loss" of the ability to choose, so what, all it means is that the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of the sinner without the need to ask for approval and "acceptance." And the believer believes. Christ bought the ones that the Father had given him, and we rejoice because of what God has done for us, we don't pat ourselves on the back and thank ourselves for the great decision that we made.

Answer 4

I have struggled with that also,the way I try to understand it or even try to explain it: I have a 3 yr. old grand baby and he keeps wanting to do something that I know will cause him pain, I can tell him once not to do that or it's going to hurt him, I hope he chooses to not do it again, I know he will attempt it again, so I know the outcome of what he is going to choose to do, but he has the free will to go ahead and do it again, he made the choice,I knew he would get hurt ahead of time, so did I make him do it by knowing he would ? God may know where we end up @ the end of our road but I feel we make our own choices along the way, that's only the way I believe, so not everyone has to believe the same, that's what makes us all different, what you choose to do or say along your journey will be different than what I choose,I think God may know ahead of time,but we don't know so we are free to choose our path, kinda like a psychic, they may see our future but it's up to us to choose it, I hope I made some sense, this is a very good subject though-

Answer 5

The 90% have not given you a good answer. Neither have the other 10%

It's free will because you CHOSE what your actions are going to be. But God doesn't chose that for you.

There's a difference between chosing for someone and knowing their choice.

I am a teacher (Preschool and Kindergarten mostly) One child, every time we hit the playground, runs up the ladder and slides down the slide. I did not decide that for him. But I knew he was going to do it. Why? Because of my knowledge of who that child is and what other choices he made in the past.

I might be wrong at times. But I don't have as much information as God does regarding these things. So you can expect I will be wrong at times :)

Answer 6

When God made Adam, He put Adam in charge of the earth.
Adam had free will to obey God or not.
Adam chose to rebel against God and listen to the devil.
That is when sin entered the world.
Adam forfeited his authority over the earth to Satan.
All mankind born after Adam are born with a nature that rebels against God (or a sin nature). The Bible says we are spiritually dead (Book of Ephesians, chap.2). We do not have the free will to choose to obey God (Adam forfeited that).
But those who sincerely seek God will find Him.
He made a way for us to be reconciled to Him by sending His Son to pay the penalty for our sin. If we believe and repent (change our thinking to God's way), He will give us a new heart---one that CAN obey Him. Now, we can choose to obey or disobey. But believers' are called to obey God.
Yes, God has a plan but we are not robots.
Those who do not believe, cannot obey.
(even if it seems like obedience, desires and motives are wrong)
Those who do believe, can choose to obey or not.
But to love God is to obey Him. Disobedience has consequences.
And this is only because of God's grace.

Answer 7

Free will, as I understand it, is our ability to make choices.
As Christians, we can exercise our free will in two ways:

1.) we can choose to honor God by making decisions that are in line with the Bible, or
2.) we can choose to make decisions apart from God and apart from what we think God would want us to do.

Without free will, we would merely be robots guided by a divine hand.

God wants us to choose Him of our own free will, not because we have to.

If God knows what you are going to do, you still have free will because God did not make you choose that direction - He simply knows you so well that he knows what you will choose.

It's like a parent...we may know our children so well that we know that given a choice (italian ice or icecream for dessert), we know which they will choose. At the same time, we do not choose for them.

I hope this helps.

Answer 8

The dictionary defination you quoted is dead on. God has given us the ability to make choices. To simplify them you can do good or bad. And contrary to what alot of nonbelievers may say the basic things that God wants from us is to love and respect Him, ourselves and others. He did not make us to be mindless worshippers, He could have but what would that mean? Nothing! He wants us to CHOOSE Him! But you can choose to not to. In the end the decision is yours, and that, IS free will!

Answer 9

i know how you feel
but what if there is no god
then that blows your problem into the wind
or maybe there is a god
but he doesnt know what is going to happen next
because it hasnt happened yet
just like us
or maybe there is no free will
because the universe runs by a set of immutable laws
like the law of gravity
maybe free will is just an illusion
i dont think einstein believed in free will
although its hard to imagine it not existing
maybe we are just watching a movie
and we are so caught up in the movie
that we think we are the lead character
just a few possibilities for you to ponder

Answer 10

...I will try to address a couple of points.
...You and I are finite human beings, with a very limited intellect, and we cannot in and of ourselves understand the ways and intellect of the Creator God. Keep in mind that we are morally responsibile to God and not vice-versa. He is almighty, all-knowing, and yes, He knows what you and I will do.
...In the Old Testament we are told that God does restrain sin, for if He didn't, evil would be much more rampant.
...He also works in us and calls people to Himself. If He did not intervene and regenerate us, none of us would be saved - we are dead in sins and trespasses (Ephesians 2:2) - spiritual corpses, and unable to respond to Him - read all of Ephesians 1 and 2.
...We make choices every day, what to eat, what to wear, etc - but we are so corrupt we cannot choose God - we are dead spiritually.
...But rather than worrying about your "free will" and whether or not God is "violating" it, be thankful you have knowledge and grace to choose Jesus as your Lord and Savior. I recommend you make sure you have trusted in Jesus Christ to take you to Heaven. I am sure you He will be glad to give you the "full scoop" when you get to Heaven.
…Did you ever read the story about Mary and Martha? Here it is, from Luke 10:
…38 As Jesus and His disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to Him.
…39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what He said.
…40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
…41 "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things,
...42 but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
...Application: it is okay to plan, prepare, and be busy, but listen to Jesus – that is most important, and then obey Him. Worries of this life and endless philosphical questions can shorten your life. Listen to Jesus.
...Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved.
Acts 16:31
...Whosoever will, may come.