Freewill???

Just think as if there is no God and your actions will send you simply either to heaven or hell. It will bound you to do the right thing. Its not fair to pull the poor God in every aspect of our life. Many a times, we do and simply pray HIM, when we dont find the route to recover.

Hi bird, As usual you make a very good point, I just wish more people could understand that. I'm convinced however that more and more young people are getting away from the influence of those who teach such things - and that is certainly a good thing. Churches have used fear to control their congregations for far too long, and it's good to see those congregations getting smaller all the time. Of course children need to be taught love, compassion, honesty and the golden rule, but they also need to be taught to think for themselves. Some churches do a much better job of this than others. Blessings.

Why do you think it does not make sense? all the best, urban

Hi my friend bird123. how are you? Free will doesn't mean doing whatever you want. It means having the freedom to do what is right.

You’ve heard the expression: A man convince against his will is of the same opinion still. God knows our heart. He knows if we have put our faith in Him and accepted His mercy and grace and forgiveness of our sins through the shed blood of His Son Jesus Christ, or if we are only saying we do in order to escape a possible Hell. The Bible speaks of God’s love for us and how He gave His only begotten Son Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for us that we might have eternal life with Him. If there is intimidation in the pages of scripture, there are also blessings. Either way, God knows that a man convinced against his will…. God is wise enough to know that neither intimidation nor blessings will change the heart of one who refuses to believe. He is also wise enough to know that an excuse of ignorance of the truth could be used against Him on the Day of Judgment. Therefore, he gave us His Holy Word the Bible so we would know the truth without the excuse of ignorance. As it says in scripture, God proved His love for us with the gift of His Son Jesus Christ. We may choose to accept His gift or reject it. We may choose to love God or to hate Him. He is using neither intimidation nor blessings to get His way. He is telling us the truth and allowing us to choose for ourselves.

Of course,it makes sense.God has blessed all of us with a conscience that can differentiate between good and bad,desirable and undesirable.It's our choice which of them we adopt.God does not intimidate us with the threat of hell.If we choose evil or bad,we would have to face consequences.It's just an example of cause and effect.We cause bad to happen to us.We may as well choose good to get good resuts.What we sow,so will we reap.That's it.There is no intimidation.You can't expect to have mangos if you sow cactus.

Yes, I believe we have freewill, but is it freewill to do anything we choose? What choices do we actually have? Would your Higher-self allow you to end your life by your own hand? Of course not! So much for free will. As for the threat of hell? What a Joke! Perhaps the devil needs help with the fiery furnaces. Would be a warm place to spend the winter of eternity.

Hi bird: As I say before to you, the "fear and intimidation" you mention is not a God's thing. Unfortunately, a lot of religious leaders from different denominations have used fear and intimidation to make people do exactly what they want them to do which is not good. I don't think we have to make this confusion between what wants says or wants with the things religions impose to their followers. ALVARO

We both live on the only oasis in the middle of a huge desert. And i tell you : Bird, please stay here with me, otherwise you will die. Is this a threat ? It makes me a bad person ?

This is why I am wiccan. It doesn't make sense at all that God would give you freewill and then say if you don't follow my rules, you are going to some place of eternal suffering and pain. Why would an all powerful being create his creations with freewill then essentially threaten them with hell? He could have just created beings with no freewill and no one would have been any wiser. Why would he create "evil" in his own world as there never had to be a need for it? I mean it is also strange that he put a tree of knowledge (depending on interpretation) in the Garden of Eden when there was absolutely no need to ever put something that could essentially destroyed the paradise he made for his creations. I have my own theory about these things however. As you stated in your original post Mankind uses fear and intimidation to control others. One of the first stories in the Christian bible (Adam and Eve) explains how knowledge is bad as they got 'kicked' out of paradise for supposedly eating from the tree of knowledge. Then there is talk of demons, burning cities, plagues and much more to anyone who doesn't just go along with the teachings and a promise of hell when these people die. -If you learn too much, then you can't be fooled by it. If you can't be fooled by it, you are told you are going to hell.- God has no reason to intimidate others or hate his creations for their differences as he created them all even those that go against a "religion". People dislike those who are different and those same people assume that they are able to talk for god and thus you have hell.

Hell is just a consequence of our life. We can't be in heaven, near God, if we reject him all the time. I doubt hell is a place of physical torture, but a place where people feel bad because they didn't achieve their mission. And the mission for what we were created is achieving similarity to God. I don't know if it is the best example, but it's like we were born with a gift for mathematics, but because we didn't take time to make exercizes and improve our gift, we would never have a job in research and neither teaching. So we end up selling groceries at the market. It's not the punishment of out parents, but our own choice (we prefer to party, not go to school). It wouldn't make us feel good, because we would prefer to have all the benefits that a great mathematician have (more money, more free time, his own schedule, prestige, living without the fear of tommorow, having a purpose in life). We could wonder, why all this struggle, God could've made us perfect, and all will have the right to go to heaven. But we would've been like animals than. No free will means no chance to be similar to God. That's why we are the best of his creations.

I think it is man to uses the threat of Hell, fear and intimidation to control other. John 3:16 says that "God so loved the world" not that God so hated the world. If God had not given us free choice than Lucifer could accuse him of making people worship him for fear. I just saw an enlarged picture of your avatar. Was I ever surprised to see it was a bird and not a man with a blue hat, neckerchief around his neck looking like he had some reins in his hand holding what looked like a horse behind him. Guess I need new glasses.