Free will- what is it all about?

Yes! Free will is a beautiful gift from our loving Creator. Used properly it enhances our joy of living but when misused, it can even be deadly as we saw with what happened with Adam and Eve.

@dgobucks226 Yes, there is so much that we can learn if we want to learn. Example: On a cleaning product that says "poison if swallowed." Now, I have free will to swallow some to see if it true. What should I do? What will I do?

@1hopefulman I guess free will can also be a learning experience?

@LadyDuck Yes! So we have to be extra cautious when dealing with people.

Sad that some people actually hurt and even kill other people.

@1hopefulman You are right, there is very little respect for the life of others in our days.

Yes, while we are free to choose, we should not misuse our freedom.

@DeborahDiane

@1hopefulman - I agree. It is not smart or kind to misuse our freedom!

Yes, freedom comes with conditions that ensure the happiness of ourselves and others as well.

I like to have a discussion rather than express my opinions. I would like to learn as well as share. By raising questions, I am hopping to find out what different people think. Does that make sense?

@YrNemo

@1hopefulman So far, I have always walked away from surveys (from what I read from here, quite a few other people do the same).

Yes, we are free to choose what eternal destiny we want.

Thank you! Can you think of something that it might be compared to?

Yes, every action or decision has a reaction or a consequence but we are still free to exercise our free will. If I jump into a lake I might hit a rock or drown if I can't swim but I am still free to jump.

Totally agree! Love would not be love if it was forced or coerced. It has to be given willingly through personal choice. It can only be expressed through having free will.

In your own personal life, do you think that you can exercise free will in the decisions you make?

@innertalks Interesting points!

@1hopefulman We can all exercise free will, even me too, of course, but what I meant by my answer here was that this idea of free will is not as clear-cut as it might seem to be. We can have free will in our minds. for example, making a decision to do something, but then we might still lack the courage, or conviction to action this anyway. What's stopping us here then? Real free will must operate across the board I think. I might think that I myself think that I have no free will then, and yet maybe it's more the courage to action my free willed choices, which I lack. I have free will but think that I do not, because I never seem to be able to action myself to follow any of the free will decisions already made that I would like to come about in my life. We are "given' a body, born in a certain country, with certain people, and certain environmental set-ups around us, but even so, in our life, we can think about things and decide or not to give things a go or not. Free will does not mean that what you want, or what you think about, or what you direct your actions towards even, will all pan out exactly in the way that you want them to do so. The law of cause and effect operates, and our free will operates under a larger umbrella too, so that it is curtailed in a way by this law not to upset the apple cart of God, so to speak, so that free will doesn't do something stupidly ruinitive to all, because there are consequences to every action, and our freedom is restricted to our own localised version of free will. We caanot operate our free will, thinking that it can control the World then. Every other soul, and part of creation has its own free will in its own way too. Our own free will then is governed firstly by our mind, ego, and thoughts, but only later do we realise that when we let love operate solely in us as God's will, we have really then in a way subjugated our free will to his free will in this way, but really we are not really doing this at all. We are more freely aligning our own choice to his choices for us, and the final decision to go God's way instead of our own way, against him, is always our own one too.

Yes, to understand "free will" takes some thinking. May I ask, why would one want to refuse the good path and prefer a bad path? Hitting my hand with a hammer hurts but not hitting it doesn't. Why choose to hit it?

@Namelesss I think it is all about love. God is love and created life. We are born and exist because of love. Our parents made "love" or somebody showed us love and cared for us when we were a baby. A baby cannot live without love. However, human love will only take us so far. We die and we cease to exist. It will take an act of love on God's part to resurrect or give life back to us. But love can only exist if there is an absence of hate, Love builds up but hate kills and destroys. We must love God, ourselves and our neighbor if we want to continue to live. Love is a choice. Love if life. Eating is a choice but if we don't eat we die. If we don't love we die but it is a choice. So it's all about love!

@1hopefulman If the only reason one follows God is to avoid hell, that's not much choice, it is not free will and it is not a very evolved form of thinking.

Exactly!

That is correct! Let's take walking s example. We have legs and so we have the freedom to walk wherever we want. We can walk to a mountain, beach or forest. We have the freedom. However, does that mean that we can walk in the middle of the street when the light is red or in somebody's yard or on somebody's foot?

@Hannihar Yes, it is dangerous to misuse our free will such as happened to Adam and Eve. There are serious consequences and we can lose our everlasting life.

@1hopefulman It is dangerous to walk in the middle of the street where one can get hit.

I totally agree. He gives us commandments for our own good, protection and long life.

Interesting! What do you mean by the big events?

Yes, choosing good works out well for us as well as others while choosing evil hurts others and hurts us even more.

Yes, whether we will live by God's ways or not is a free choice we each have to make. God will not force us to love Him. Since God is love, He cannot force us to love Him as love is only love when it is freely given. Hosea 14:4 (King James Version) 4 I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.

@nangayo True!

@1hopefulman in fact the most important thing is that no one is superior than the other in Gods eyes. What a loving God he is.