Where is free will when God puts his grace, visions and miracles in some people but not in others?

[JamesATyler]

I don’t think that’s correct. It sounds like you are limiting God, though I doubt intentionally. God can choose to not create someone. How could His ability to create (or not create) someone be limited by anything?
I won’t pretend to fully understand why God creates people who will choose hell, but your reasoning seems off to me.

If God looks forward in time to next week and sees you reading a book. Is that future real? The answer is yes. You are real at any point in your life. Say he doesn’t like it and decides he won’t create you. What was it that he saw then? If he never created you in the first place, then how did he see a real person reading a book?

It’s like saying God can see a real person that he didn’t make.

 

[LoveGod102]

There is no such person as “a pre-condemned human”. We condemn ourselves when we choose to live solely for ourselves. Self-love which leads to lack of love for others is the root of all the evil and unnecessary suffering by which we are surrounded.

Justice is not an illusion or human convention. It is a fact of life. Ultimately we all get what we deserve: we become either mature and wholesome or rotten and poisonous.

We don’t all get what we deserve. Nobody but God and Mary deserve heaven.

 

[LoveGod102]

If God looks forward in time to next week and sees you reading a book. Is that future real? The answer is yes. You are real at any point in your life. Say he doesn’t like it and decides he won’t create you. What was it that he saw then? If he never created you in the first place, then how did he see a real person reading a book?

It’s like saying God can see a real person that he didn’t make.

But what you seem to be saying is that God has no choice in whether He creates people at all.

 

[JamesATyler]

But what you seem to be saying is that God has no choice in whether He creates people at all.

I don’t know what you mean.

I do know this though. If God saw you reading a book and you were real. If he somehow decided you were never created then it is impossible for him to have seen you reading a book in the first place because you never were created. If he could decide to not create you then he also changes his experience as well.

 

[PseuTonym]

Some people are chosen by God by some obvious miracles, visions and grace, others not, where is the free will when mostly all of those who had visions, miracles turned into saints? but others who never had these chances or don’t have an ability to see god’s will turned into sinners?

In addition, even Jesus said: “may your will be done not mine”, where is free will when we have to live in God’s ways or we will be doomed? No other options.

Saints are sinners. Paraphrasing JC: “Why do you call me good? There is only one who is good.”

Maybe an analogy will help. Courts take into consideration that some people who have been arrested for crimes don’t have the mental capacity to comprehend that their actions are wrong. When such people commit serious crimes, they aren’t punished as hardened criminals are punished. However, it’s necessary to protect the general public from such people, so they generally lose a lot of freedom that they previously had.

Do you want to witness an undeniable miracle? You cannot get a little bit pregnant. The World Health Organization says that, in some parts of Africa, 4.9% (nearly 1 in every 20) of the adults are living with HIV. It’s called the real world. Would you make an irreversible decision to know, for the rest of your life, that there are miracles? In all future discussion like this one, you would have nothing but your own personal eyewitness testimony to support your position. Would you want to be in that position?

Please, if you disagree with anything that I wrote above, then let me know. I would rather be corrected and learn something than continue walking along a dangerously erroneous path. Also, if there is anything that is unclear, then please identify at least one part that is unclear, and I will attempt to revise it to clarify the idea that I had in mind when I wrote whatever question or comment is unclear to you.

 

[oldcelt]

I understand your confusion on this issue. It’s a mystery that we cannot fully understand as to why God creates people He knows will choose hell. However, it comes down to whether we trust Him or not. I do trust Him, and I pray that you will come to trust Him too.
Can I ask why it is that you view the creation of people who will ultimately choose hell, more darkly than the belief that a god created people and then either just walked away leaving them on their own, or was simply not powerful enough to help them, despite being powerful enough to create them?
The later seems much darker to me.
If my assumption that that is your view is incorrect, then I apologize.

Your analysis is pretty accurate. I see god as the force that started the universe. It, he, she, had nothing to do with individual creation. We are all the result of our parent’s love, or people’s lust, or criminal activity and nothing more. My view is of a creation starter who has no more idea how it will all end than you and I.
I am also a fairly strong believer that most life we see today evolved from lesser lifeforms. No god needed, no plan, no fore-ordained outcome for anyone or anything, Throughout my time as a Catholic I was deeply troubled by the “It’s a mystery,” answer when other solutions were apparent…mainly that the Catholic/Christian view of God was wrong. As a deist I can see a possibility for some type of higher power based on the evidence around me, but not the all-knowing eye in the sky.

I find the belief that we are on our own much more comforting than the notion that what I see in this world is in any way the result of a higher power. To associate the Catholic God with what I saw simply became too painful, and it strangely occurred as I was actively studying my faith.

Such is life.

 

[tonyrey]

We don’t all get what we deserve. Nobody but God and Mary deserve heaven.

You are taking my statement out of its context:

Justice is not an illusion or human convention. It is a fact of life. Ultimately we all get what we deserve:** we become either mature and wholesome or rotten and poisonous.**

It should be obvious that we get what we deserve at the psychological level.

Heaven is at the** spiritual **level.

 

[tonyrey]

Your analysis is pretty accurate. I see god as the force that started the universe. It, he, she, had nothing to do with individual creation. We are all the result of our parent’s love, or people’s lust, or criminal activity and nothing more. My view is of a creation starter who has no more idea how it will all end than you and I.
I am also a fairly strong believer that most life we see today evolved from lesser lifeforms. No god needed, no plan, no fore-ordained outcome for anyone or anything, Throughout my time as a Catholic I was deeply troubled by the “It’s a mystery,” answer when other solutions were apparent…mainly that the Catholic/Christian view of God was wrong. As a deist I can see a possibility for some type of higher power based on the evidence around me, but not the all-knowing eye in the sky…

In that case we have more power than the “higher power”! We have insight, a conscience and free will. I wonder where they originated…

 

[PseuTonym]

Such is life.

Ordinarily, people say that when acknowledging some unpleasant fact. You are using it to support a decision that you made in the past, a decision to believe what comforts you and to reject what is disturbing. The things that you feel strongly committed to as truths, the things that are supposed to be true, might include comforting falsehoods. Isn’t that disturbing?

 

[fhansen]

Some people are chosen by God by some obvious miracles, visions and grace, others not, where is the free will when mostly all of those who had visions, miracles turned into saints? but others who never had these chances or don’t have an ability to see god’s will turned into sinners?

In addition, even Jesus said: “may your will be done not mine”, where is free will when we have to live in God’s ways or we will be doomed? No other options.

Saints, generally speaking, are those who started the same as the rest of us but pursued God first of all, and then received more grace, which turned into more yet, as God responded to their seeking and they increasingly responded to Him.

 

[oldcelt]

Ordinarily, people say that when acknowledging some unpleasant fact. You are using it to support a decision that you made in the past, a decision to believe what comforts you and to reject what is disturbing. The things that you feel strongly committed to as truths, the things that are supposed to be true, might include comforting falsehoods. Isn’t that disturbing?

Don’t read too much into it. I was just using it as an ending point.

 

[tonyrey]

Saints, generally speaking, are those who started the same as the rest of us but pursued God first of all, and then received more grace, which turned into more yet, as God responded to their seeking and they increasingly responded to Him.

And also God is not a slot machine!