If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata - of creatures that worked like machines - would hardly be worth creating. 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 ecstasy 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 they must be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can flow uphill. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.
p 48 Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can flow uphill. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.
p 48 Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
- no newbie or vendor here, just happy trader.