God tells us that we have free will to choose between good and evil.  But he also tells us that he has predestined us from before the creation of the world, and that he has known our every thought from eternity.  How does that work?  Hw can we have true freedom but at the same time be carried along- willingly or unwillingly- on the tide of God's plan?  And why would God want us to have free will in the first place?  Jut look where our free will has gotten us.  And while we're on the subject, what exactly is free will?  How far does free will extend?

I don't claim to have all the answers.  I don't even clam to be 100% right.  But I think you'll find this page helpful.  Since this a pretty deep doctrinal issue, if you have ANY comments or questions at all, PLEASE leave me a message in the guestbook.

Analogies always help us understand complicated subjects.  I found this particular one in C.S. Lewis's "The case For Christianity", and I thought it was so brilliant that i just had to put it in here.  I have inserted brackets when in feel there is a need to clarify.

"How can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power? [reffering to free will and the intellectual problem it creates]

"But anyone who has been in a position of authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another.  it may be quite sensible for a mother to say to her children,"I'm not going to go and make you tidy the school room every night.  You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own."  Then she goes up one night and finds the teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate.  That's against her will.  She would prefer the children be tidy.  But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy.  The same thing happens in any regiment or school.  You make a thing voluntary and then half the people don't do it.  That isn't what you willed, but your will has made it possible."

Obviously, this analogy can't fully contain divinely-appointed free will.  But hopefully it gives you a pretty good idea of what we're dealing with.

The question posed no, however, is, why?  Why would a supreme, all-powerful God allow people to disobey Him?  It's out of love.  God doesn't want to rule over a bunch of mindless automotons, like playing a cmputer game.  He wants to love real people, and He wants real people to love Him.  Even though free will makes evil possible, it is also the thing that makes possible any love or joy worth happening.  This is illustrated in another excerpt from "The case For Christianity" (which, by the way, i highly recommend) 

"The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstacy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.  And for that, we've got to be free."