I think one of the greatest obstacles to folk’s belief in a God who’s in charge of the world in the way He claims to be is the sense everyone has that they choose freely. How can God rightly be said to know and ordain all that comes to pass if we’re free to choose? If we’re not free to choose, how can He justly condemn? And how can it be that we’re not free to choose? We’re aware of the choices we make, countless ones each day.
I think this whole line of thought is based on a misunderstanding. Certainly we are free to choose whatever we want, but that is just the issue. Our wants. We’re free to choose just what we want and we do chose it without any compulsion. We want it. The issue is that we don’t want God’s glory. We want ours, or that of our nation, business, family or whatever. We freeely choose other glory over that of God unless He changes our wanter and shows us His glory that we might know its worth and prefer it to all other glories ever after.
We’re aware of free chioces because we freely choose. God is able to know and ordain all that comes to pass in light of our free choices because He knows what is in the heart of man, what man wants. He can justly condemn because we freely choose what we want and we want not His glory. Wanting not His glory is what evil is because His glory is the single thing in the world most worthy of our hearts and their desires. It’s that for which we and all things are made.
We are free to choose and do. The prblem is, quite naturally, what we want to choose.
