Free Will and the Eradication of Sin at the Second Coming

A million years post-Second Coming will it be impossible to break God’s law and sin in an otherwise perfect, sinless universe ? Since we have God-given free will won’t it be theoretically possible to break Gods law thus rebooting the power struggle between Good and evil again?

Let’s hope goodness and loyalty to God’s Laws of Life endure ad infinitum but if Evil and rebellion against God’s control of his beautiful creation reappear would Jesus Christ or another member of the Triune Godhead sacrifice himself on a future—newly created—Garden of Eden inhabited by an artless ‘Adam and Eve’ couple to once again restore order to our universe?

Why is evil more appealing than goodness?

 How peculiar that in the Bible and in day-to-day life evil is more attractive, more appealing and occurring more often than goodness in the Bible. You read about brothers killing each other, and brothers raping their sisters, and I’ve always wondered why if good manners and right living is ethically and philosophically more beneficial to those around you and to one self, why—especially in the Bible—but also in real life, you encounter evil more frequently. This is very perplexing. It’s always amazing that—as they are called—our first parents, Adam and Eve—that their firstborn son named Cain, who was able to communicate with God at the entrance to the garden of Eden yet killed his brother for a paltry reason like being jealous of his brother’s sacrifice of a lamb to God just because  God was pleased with his brother Abel, but not with Cain’s  sacrifice, a burnt offering, of just vegetables that he had harvested himself. It’s always been very perplexing.

Another thing that always disturbs me is that, again, if goodness is so superior and producing better results and contributing to a peaceful and more desirable society, why most of humanity—except Noah and his family—were destroyed by the Flood along with all the innocent animals, because more people had elected evil and wrongdoing and selfishness instead of an altruistic, mutually beneficial method of living? That is very perplexing

Perhaps I am missing some very basic, and not so obvious explanation for the preponderance of evil, as opposed to goodness and virtue and good living in the  Bible stories, and in world history. It would’ve been more understandable if only half of humanity would  have been destroyed by drowning in the account of the Flood destruction of most of humanity—a kind of genocide, really. If you think about it, why is it that most of the world’s population at the time of the biblical Flood didn’t tend towards a good, honest and productive living as opposed to evil? The destruction of 50 percent of an evil population compared to 50 percent of a good and virtuous population would have made more sense, but the story in the book of Genesis says that only eight people were saved from all of the millions that were alive at the time of the flood story.

Evolution's impact on Good and Evil

Science insists that evolution has happened and may, very well, continue to happen. If evolution is good science, how can you fit the conflict between good and evil into the big picture? Do you suspend belief in science and it's proofs for evolution, i.e., natural selection, the fossil record, etc., and affirm your faith in the Bible's creation account and its concurrent 6,000 year age for the Earth? If you accept that Adam and Eve existed, and the Bible makes their creation very important to the future history of the human race, how do you account for evolution's suggestion that death existed before Adam and Eve sinned? These are not easy questions, but they should be addressed lest they continue to hound us for years.

Recently a possible solution started to take shape. Evil and it's close cousin, sin, existed from the very beginning of cosmic time. I'm not suggesting that there was never a time that evil did not exist, although theoretically it has always existed as an essential opposite of good and its close cousin, righteousness. If evil and sin existed before the fall, then how could Adam and Eve be punished, as well as their once-perfect world, if evil already existed before they sinned? Was the Adam and Eve experiment, if you will, another opportunity to see if free will would choose good instead of evil? How many other Adam and Eve experiments have there been? The universe is pretty old; its age numbers in billions of years. Has this tug of war between good and evil been going on for as many years?

In a related line of thinking, if evil theoretically could always exist as an alternative to good, would it make sense to prevent the possibility of evil rising again, if at some golden future event, evil is vanquished by divine agencies? Wouldn't that be as unjust as never allowing evil to exist the first time around?

The best our universe can ever hope for--realistically speaking--is to keep evil at bay. There will always be evil--albeit in its quiescent state--in the same way that all of the complimentary opposites must always exist. Left is incomplete without its direct opposite, right. Up and down must ever exist. Dark and light, as well. Good and evil, by their very nature, must always exist in some form or another. To think otherwise is impractical and incomplete.

Intelligent beings have at their disposal the option to bring about a universe where good and righteousness by the grace of God, triumph time and time again, over evil and sin, ad infinitum.

The Evolution of God?

My God is not a God of death; he is a God of life. However, since the creators of sophisticated robotic medical equipment are responsible for faulty product if something disastrous should occur, can our God be held liable for the death we see all around us since time began?

Yes, it is true that our God created all things perfect, but since he allows--for a variety of complicated reasons--for things to go on as they do, then, in a way, he has to take responsibility for the imperfections of our otherwise perfect world.

Let's face it, if God wanted to stop all pain and death right now, he could. God's hands are not tied. There must be valid reasons why so many negative realities continue to exist. Let's try to analyze what some of them might be.

Some conservative Christians believe that God allows the controversy between good and evil to continue to protect man's free will. Conservatively speaking, you have to admit that 6,000 years is ample time to show that God offers humankind his way or the other fellow's way.

Progressively speaking, however, we are not talking about 6,000 but millions of years for this cosmic struggle between good and evil to have been resolved.

This brings us to the subject that the title hints at. Does God bring about life, humankind's life specifically, through the death that is essential for natural selection and the survival of the species? It is, after all, only the strong that survive to procreate and pass on their genes to the next generation. How can a God of love possibly be responsible for a system that uses death in order to bring about life and complex organisms?

The Bible account is very simple: God creates all of our reality in six days and rests on the seventh day. For those who have a problem with such simplicity, then the only other option is that God used evolution, and before that--the Big Bang--to create our world and the cosmos. Because this would make God the author of death--and life--such a paradigm is not consistent with a God of love.

The third possibility we will not focus on very much other than to state, for the occasional agnostic who may wander in by chance, that evolution, life, death, etc., have nothing whatsoever to do with God, only with humankind.

So where does that leave us? Perplexed? Frustrated? Despairing? Not at all; there is a fourth explanation. We all think this is all happening to us. This dream called life, death, rebirth. The incredible reality is that we are dreamers twisting and turning--sometimes smiling and laughing--through a long dreamlike state called life and death. One day we will awaken and learn who God really is and why all this death and life and rebirth were necessary.

Until then, look to God and worship him for the hour of his judgment has come.

Delayed Second Coming

Rich Hannon: "I am presuming God will eventually explain why this train-wreck of a world should go on so long. "

I think God is a loving being. I didn't always feel that way. I'm glad I'm beginning to feel so more and more. However, I've always suspected that there is so much more that has happened and is happening behind the scenes that would explain why all of this imperfection and pain has been with planet Earth for either 6,000 years (conservative estimate) or millions of years (progressive estimate.)

I've sometimes thought that perhaps revelation is imperfect and we've assumed too much from what sacred writings he has bequeathed to humankind. Could it be that God lets this often tragic world continue because it's up to those he created in his own image to finally get it right by themselves? Did he not give us the basic tools to accomplish this, e.g., our minds? If you believe that it's taken millions of years for humanity to arrive at this point in history, might it not take a million more to make it to God's realm instead of us waiting for him to return to our realm. But wasn't this what the builders of the tower of Babel were set on doing, "making it to God's realm" They failed, the bible tells us. Perhaps all attempts at reaching God physically are meant to fail. The best we can do is try to reach him in spiritual ways.

When Jesus said "I come quickly" or that he's coming soon, he must have meant just that. Even the disciples believed such. Something must have happened that we don't know about to delay Jesus' return so much.

If Jesus doesn't come in the next thousand years, then we really should go out in search of him. I mean this in the most serious way. It is not an expression of doubt, just of mild bewilderment.

God and free will, part 2

Since God is truly a free being is it possible that in the same way that he was free to give the moral law, the 10 commandments and other laws associated with them, he could also take them away, or at least some of them? Yes the bible says that God does not change. The bible also says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

But if it is impossible for God to undo a law that he gave on Mt. Sinai, i.e., the 10 commandments or any part of them, is he then not free? Is he forever bound by his own inherent goodness and resoluteness of purpose in having given those 10 commandments?

Of course, most if not all, of those commandments are an expression of himself. It is said that God is love. I, personally, wouldn't want "thou shalt not kill" or honor thy father and thy mother . . ." to ever be done away with. But could not God, if he wasn't feeling so "jealous" as the bible says he was in giving the commandment about not having "other gods before [him]", decide well, he would prefer that the creatures he created only worshipped him, but if they wanted to worship other gods, for whatever reason, then they have been given free will, and could possibly worship other gods as long as they did not harm each other or themselves? Of course, this is only hypothetical. In ancient Israel, and in modern applications of the command against idolatry, there is more to worshipping idols than bowing down and focusing your fondest thoughts on graven images, etc. There were the orgies and such that probably was the main, though not the only, alluring aspect of idolatry, then and now.

The commandment about the day of rest is another one that, theoretically, he could decide, well, six thousand years ago that one day was set aside to commemorate either creation or freedom from slavery, but if those he had created wanted to worship him on another day, or--not worship him on any given day, then what would be so universe-shattering about that? Does not a mother have at some point to let go of her child, and the child let go of his/her mother as they both get on with the essence of living their lives?

I've always thought that to be required to obey God in order to not be destroyed doesn't sound like freedom of choice. If there were a third option, as long as it did not harm either God or others he created, then one could say that one truly had freedom of choice. If one could truly choose or not choose to obey God, but would still be free to live out your life as freely as one chose to do so, wouldn't that be true freedom of choice?

Or imagine the ultimate freedom of choice of being able to decide to follow God or not follow God and still live forever? Such an option would have to have some fail safe mechanism in place to provide free beings who live outside of God's system the impossibility of interfering with those who did choose to live within God's way. But then, that wouldn't be true free will, would it?

Of course, since God is God, he could very well state that in order to live forever you had to do it his way. God has to be in control somehow. After all, he created the cosmos to begin with. He could also choose at any moment to uncreate it. But if he did that, he wouldn't be a loving God, would he?

Is God free to change his mind regarding some things? Or is he forever bound to go along with statutes or commands or decisions that he outlined thousands or millions of years ago?

Does God have Free Will?

God gave us humans free will. For that we are grateful. We'd never have known that we didn't have it had we been created to do only what he wanted us to do.



As I sat in Sabbath School this past Sabbath the thought just popped into my mind. Does God have free will like we have free will? The thought startled me. I was even more concerned when the following text came to mind: "And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. . . Genesis 3:22. Now this probably means that God learned about evil, not from first hand experience, like Adam and Eve learned about it, but by being acquainted with Lucifer and his originating of the concept of evil.



Now, of course, I wouldn't want to suggest that God is capable of evil if he wanted to, being a free moral being that he is. But then I thought that since he is good because he is God and can only be good and never evil, then we are more free than he is by being able to choose good or evil. Of course, having chosen the latter, as it turns out, is not so pleasant, after all.



If you don't use the bible as your yardstick for matters of good and evil--bear with me for a bit---then an objective observer might think that God in wanting to destroy all he had made because humanity had turned to evil--except for Noah and his family--was less than good. Also, a very clinical observer might think these humans, although evil, were the work of God's hand. How could he be good if he wanted to destroy them all because he had regrets for having created them in the first place?



Now a subjective reaction to this might be that since God created humanity in the first place, he had every right to destroy it just as a potter has a right to reshape a pound of clay into something more perfect. Of course, the potter could also decide after he had finished the jar or glass vase, or whatever other work of non-living art, that it was imperfect and though he loved it a bit, it was better to destroy it and start again. After all does not the artist or the potter have every right to do what he wants with something he creates?



I read a while ago, that the Jews at one time attributed all of the vicissitudes of life to God. The good with the bad. The verse from Job, "the lord giveth and the lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" addresses this issue somewhat. Later on, Jewish thought attributed the bad things in life to Satan (the accuser) and the good things in life to God only.



Do we attribute only good qualities to God because that's what we would prefer him to have? Of course, there's the matter of violation of his law and the need to punish the guilty which most religious people feel that God is justified in doing.



These issues suggest, to me at least, that matters involving free choice and good and evil are more complex than many people facilely state they are.

Foreknowledge of God

The Open View of God might partially explain the mystery of sin and Satan. God is an optimist by nature, otherwise why create something to begin with if he didn't think it would turn out perfect and stay perfect. A perfect being, by definition, is only capable of optimism.

Can you imagine a being who knows everything that will ever occur? There are no surprises. He knows everything he will ever do and create and what will happen to his creation. God created the universe with the best of optimistic intentions. God had no idea when he created Lucifer that a ghastly creature like Satan would eventually emerge from Lucifer's free will and cause so much anti-perfection for millions (or thousands) of years. Otherwise why be partially responsible for such horror and evil?

If father or mother Hitler had received convincing proof from a time traveler that their little Adolf would murder so many innocent people, would they go ahead and play a role in allowing him to be born? They went ahead because they had no idea, of course. They hoped for the best and waited to see what would become of their little boy.

God, likewise, created Lucifer and his confederates, as well as humanity, with the best of intentions, hoping against hope that we'd all turn out as perfect as he would have liked for us all to have turned out.

Perhaps that's why he sent himself in the form of Christ, because in being partially responsible for allowing us to get into this mess as he was, he got himself into this mess as well, as one of us, to bare the brunt for having created us in the first place and to help us get out of it and return us to that hoped-for perfection he wished we all had chosen for ourselves all along. Think of the pain he's in to see how we all have suffered and continue to suffer. God wants this all to end as much as we do, otherwise he'd already have ended it for all concerned.

That, my friends, sounds like a responsible and sacrificing God and parent.