Free will: God is unjust?

[josh987654321]

You have brought up some great questions, I have asked myself this alot recently too.

It seems to me that if we had true free will, there would be NO wrong choice, but with our free will, there is a wrong choice, in which you will suffer for eternity, and not because you happen to be a bad person or someone who delights in evil, but simply because you exercise your free will and decide to live your life without God in it…but that does not mean that person is bad, they have made a choice and that is their right, but in Gods eyes, ANY choice that does not involve his worship is somehow wrong and that person suddenly deserves eternal damnation…??? What kind of screwed up logic is that? LOL

Plus, Ive always wondered why God seems to be fixated on being worshiped? The bible says he is humble, just and forgiving, this does not sound like someone who greatly desires and demands his worship…it sounds a bit like a ‘god complex’ but with the real God. However the image I get of the God in the bible is one that does not worry or desire such things, demanding worship sounds more narcissistic to me, but the way the bible describes God, that does not sound like him at all, at least in the NT anyway.

Can faithless, rebellious, atheistic, unbelieving men and women possibly say that Jesus Sacrifice at the hands of His executioners was not true, so that they could unleash their rage against Him?

No one can possibly deny it and prove their denial. And why do you believe that He did so? no one dies for anyone who is not intensely loved.

mikekle, I believe you have forgotten the Cross.

The Passion - [loveandmercy.org/Eng-TP-Reg.pdf]](http://www.loveandmercy.org/Eng-TP-Reg.pdf])

**"Contemplate My wounds and see if there is anyone who has suffered as much as I, to show their love…

"Contemplate for a moment these bloodstained hands and feet… This naked body, covered with wounds, with urine, and blood. Dirty… This head punctured by sharp thorns, soaked in sweat, full of dust, and covered in Blood…

"Contemplate your Jesus, hanging on the Cross, without being able to make the slightest movement… naked, without fame, without honor, without liberty…

"Contemplate Me in the image of the Christ who cries and bleeds. There and in this way the world has Me**

Books on the Passion
The Stations of The Cross - loveandmercy.org/Eng-SOC-Reg.pdf
The Passion - loveandmercy.org/Eng-TP-Reg.pdf
I Have Given My Life for You - loveandmercy.org/Eng-IHG-Reg.pdf
From Sinai to Calvary - loveandmercy.org/Eng-FSC-Reg.pdf

(*These booklets all contain the Roman Catholic Imprimatur, which assures the reader that nothing therein is contrary to Catholic faith, morals or teachings, for more information regarding them, please read this *- youshallbelieve.com/A-plea-to-humanity.pdf *and go here *- youshallbelieve.com/home-2/watch-amazing-video/)

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[josh987654321]

I’ve been pondering it since, and I did check a series of short videos the girl mentioned youtube.com/watch?v=aUtSM2oVy_E . You’d think I’d know better at my level of university study but for such a basic question…I don’t know what to think, I’d hate to think of it in the terms of “love me or suffer”, because that certainly does look like blackmail, and Catholics are told the ends never justify the means.

Does anyone have any thoughts? I’m sure this isn’t the first time a question like this has been asked but it totally threw me today.

The Stations of the Cross - loveandmercy.org/Eng-SOC-Reg.pdf

**Crowned with thorns and covered with a purple mantle, the soldiers presented Me again to Pilate. Not finding a crime that he could punish Me for, Pilate was looking for a way to set Me free. In the pitiable condition that I was in, Pilate showed Me to the mob. He proposed to give Me liberty and condemn Barrabas, a famous thief and murderer. The people shouted back: “Crucify Him and set Barrabas free!”

Souls who love Me, see how they have compared Me to a criminal. How they have lowered Me more than the worst criminal. Meditate for a moment upon the unspeakable martyrdom of My Heart: My Heart degraded beneath the heart of Barrabas. I am the most despised of men, and I am being condemned to death like an infamous criminal. Pilate has pronounced sentence. My little children, consider attentively how My Heart suffered…**

It seems to me the crowd yelling again *“Crucify Him and give us Barrabas.” *and than cursing and scourging Him again for giving them Barrabas.

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[Frankenfurter]

There is more going on in her question ( I mean diatribe) than just a free will issue.

She is explaining her logical reasons for not believing in God at all.

Basically her diatribe is:

• The characteristics of God are seen to be illogical and not self consistent
• There is no proof

Her choice of focusing in on the free will issue is really just a way to point out a logical inconsistency (it only takes one) in order to finish with the conclusion: therefore he does not exist at all.

Be careful she may be smarter than you. She probably does not want an answer, rather she wants to show that she is smarter than you in a public forum.

Be careful, she can take down a lot of folks around her too.

I wonder if my son used to think I was inconsistent when I would make him go for shots (that hurt) at the doctor. You see, he was bitten by a rabid fox and had to have painful shots - that saved his life. The problem is that I WAS inconsistent from his point of view. I am glad that he had faith in me as his Father. I guess because he knew I loved him.

God asks for our faith only (not belief or understanding, because he is beyond us).

Please let her know that she is simply stating that she is at the beginning of her faith journey. The first step is the first prayer - to ask God for faith. God always answers that prayer with love.

 

[Paul_Edwards]

You have free will to kill people, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get arrested for it.

 

[mikekle]

Can faithless, rebellious, atheistic, unbelieving men and women possibly say that Jesus Sacrifice at the hands of His executioners was not true, so that they could unleash their rage against Him?

No one can possibly deny it and prove their denial. And why do you believe that He did so? no one dies for anyone who is not intensely loved.

mikekle, I believe you have forgotten the Cross.

Books on the Passion
The Stations of The Cross - loveandmercy.org/Eng-SOC-Reg.pdf
The Passion - loveandmercy.org/Eng-TP-Reg.pdf
I Have Given My Life for You - loveandmercy.org/Eng-IHG-Reg.pdf
From Sinai to Calvary - loveandmercy.org/Eng-FSC-Reg.pdf

(*These booklets all contain the Roman Catholic Imprimatur, which assures the reader that nothing therein is contrary to Catholic faith, morals or teachings, for more information regarding them, please read this *- youshallbelieve.com/A-plea-to-humanity.pdf *and go here *- youshallbelieve.com/home-2/watch-amazing-video/)

Thank you for reading
Josh

I understand, but if God has such intensive love for humans, why would he DEMAND worship from this group?

 

[Frankenfurter]

I understand, but if God has such intensive love for humans, why would he DEMAND worship from this group?

Same reason your Mother demands that you call her regularly after you move out of the house.

Love is always a two way street - a relationship.

Husbands and wives have a need for each other’s love - even demand it. Love is a power that creates. The universe can not survive without it. If one person in the relationship fails the other, then the relationship - love itself dies.

Grown ups understand this through experience.

Young folks have yet to experience an inter-dependent relationship where Love and demands must coexist.

 

[josh987654321]

I understand, but if God has such intensive love for humans, why would he DEMAND worship from this group?

For our own good, He is our perfect role model.

For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything. - G. K. Chesterton

Hence we fall into Idolatry, we worship self, money etc etc.

As Jesus says, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbours, if you forsake one, the other will also be forsaken, the two are intertwined.

If you hate God, you will end up hating your fellow man, if you love God, you will end up loving your fellow man and if you love God, you will not be able to help but to love your fellow man and if you love your fellow man, you will not be able to help but to love God, in the true sense.

Hope I have helped

God Bless

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[Vico]

There are so many things that cloud a person’s conscience and decision making that it would appear very hard to nearly impossible to choose hell. Also taking into consideration that nobody knows first hand what the horrors of hell are really like, so it would seem that a person’s full knowledge in committing an act and full knowledge of the following consequences are incomplete.

I know this isn’t an excuse by any means, but this is one possibility of a person who “gets sent to hell accidentally.” A person who otherwise loves God, the Church, the teachings, but finds it very difficult to live up to all of the teachings and their intricacies due to profound human weakness, didn’t directly choose to worship Satan or intend to spend eternity in hell, but ended up there anyway.

It is difficult to understand what you mean by “choose hell”. It is normal when a person “finds it very difficult to live up to all of the teachings”. Not having final repentance is what make a dreadful end state. What the Catholic Church teaches is that, at the end of this life, if a person persists in the choice for the things of this world (mammon) it has the consequence of a final state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God called “hell.”

Maybe you intend to say an informed choice? Even so, it is only necessary to oppose the conscience. But not opposing the conscience can bring salvation even for “Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved”.

CCC 1260 "Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery."63 Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.

 

[mikekle]

For our own good, He is our perfect role model.

For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything. - G. K. Chesterton

Hence we fall into Idolatry, we worship self, money etc etc.

As Jesus says, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbours, if you forsake one, the other will also be forsaken, the two are intertwined.

If you hate God, you will end up hating your fellow man, if you love God, you will end up loving your fellow man and if you love God, you will not be able to help but to love your fellow man and if you love your fellow man, you will not be able to help but to love God, in the true sense.

Hope I have helped

God Bless

Thank you for reading
Josh

These are not necessarily true, people are different, some may end up worshiping other things if they dont have a relationship with God, but not everyone does.

 

[rinnie]

Hey guys

Right…I’m a bit ashamed to be asking this question, I mean it sounds like such a basic point but I found myself absolutely stumped.

Earlier today I was giving a lecture at a high school about Christianity in general (not just Catholicism) and just brushing the surface about basic beliefs and differences between denominations. Well when it came time to take questions this girl asked a very simple question about free will and choice.

Obviously I can’t repeat it word for word since it wasn’t written down or in english but it went something like this…

---

"We’re told that the Abrahamic God is both good and just, and he gave us free will to reject or accept his message. If we accept and obey, and indeed forsake our free will we are rewarded in the next life.

If we decide to exercise our free will, we are punished eternally. If I give a boy a bar of chocolate but tell him he can either give it back to me or I’m going to punch his teeth out that’s not a choice, that’s blackmail. A choice can have consequences, but all of the consequences for sin are made up by God. If I trip and fall onto a sword by accident that us one thing, it’s something else entirely if someone forges a blade specifically to slide under the trajectory of my fall juwt because they can.

If God is omnipotent, he can remove sin any time he likes and free souls from it…He doesn’t. God cannot be just because he blackmails us into submission by fear, to burn or obey is not a choice, that is barbarism. A God that resorts to blackmail for obedience is not good. “Love me or I’ll hurt you” is crazy, and the crazy is only doubled when we’re told “Belive in this obscure event with thin to no verifiable evidence outside of sycophantic scripture written two generations after it took place out of all the other myriad of religions in the world older than it or I’ll burn you forever”.***

The second point wasn’t so hard to speak against, I explained the Catholic perspective on that matter but I ended up stalling so I didn’t have to respond to the first one.

I’ve been pondering it since, and I did check a series of short videos the girl mentioned youtube.com/watch?v=aUtSM2oVy_E . You’d think I’d know better at my level of university study but for such a basic question…I don’t know what to think, I’d hate to think of it in the terms of “love me or suffer”, because that certainly does look like blackmail, and Catholics are told the ends never justify the means.

Does anyone have any thoughts? I’m sure this isn’t the first time a question like this has been asked but it totally threw me today.

You need to truly look at it in the true way that God created free will.

We have the power to choose what is right and that means follow God, or choose what we want and if its not what God teaches, then choose sin.

The outcome is really simple. If you want God you choose him, and follow him.

As Jesus told us if you Love the Father you choose his will not ours.

Now if you don’t want Jesus you do your own will and reject him.

bottom line you choose.

You are trying to make the choice lukewarm. Christ told you, you can’ be lukewarm. You are hot or cold.

To bring it into perspective as you stated Choose God and have eternal life in him. or don’t choose God have no eternal life in him.

How can you lose your free will if you choose God over sin?

 

[fred_conty]

NekoNecro, you mentioned,

… that certainly does look like blackmail…

Appearances can be real deceiving.

When Jesus told us about hell, which he cited more often then he did heaven, he wasn’t threatening us, or at least I didn’t see it that way. He was merely warning us about it like anyone who really cared for us would warn us about the dangers that may happen to us.

My parents did this and told me to stay away from …, and not do this …, and what may happen if I … It wasn’t because they hated me or blackmailed me or didn’t like me. They simply wanted me to be happy and safe because they knew what might happen to me.

God is love…so says St. John.

May God bless and keep you. May God’s face shine on you. May God be kind to you and give you peace.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Neco seems to have lost interest. Since this was a lecture, the young lady in question may have been a plant and she came convicted and loaded for bear. And she may indeed been smarter than Neco. Any way she obviously obsesses with anti-Christian information sources. And if she is filling her mind with this tripe, naturally she will think that way. Looks to me like she is either an unabashed critic or she is looking for some rationalization to justify an irrational life style. This is going on more and more these days, it has become epidemic.

Linus2nd