Our God is a sovreign God. He is all-powerful, and is capable of total control. The question, however, arises.... does He utilize that total control? Or does He, in His infinite wisdom, allow us to make a choice in response to His leading, His prompting, and His calling? Does He pre-ordain his "elect", or allow His children free-will in choosing Him?
The problem starts with the idea of the Total Depravity of Man... utter and complete. Man is a creation of the Father, and made in His image. Man is a recipient of His love. "And God saw that it was good". From the beginning, however, we chose to move away from that perfect love, through our disobedience. The Great Fall separated us from intimate union with God. Did Adam and Eve's decision rid all future generations of any worth? I look at an unwanted child, whom our society has deemed "worthless". We intrinsically base that child's worth on whether or not it is loved and wanted by it's parents - we base that child's right to LIFE on whether or not it is loved and wanted by it's parents. So we inherently and subconciously base WORTH on love. What we, in our short-sightedness, fail to remember, is that even that unwanted child is loved by the Father of creation, and therefore has worth. Our worth stems not from ourselves, but from God. A canvas and paint is of no value in and of itself. Only through the mastery of the Artist does it become priceless.
Evil is the opposite of Good. Sin moves us away from God, as Love draws us toward Him. Can God love what is the opposite of Himself? That which propels away from Him? Yet he loves us repeatedly and completely. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16) God IS love. And our worth as recipients of that love comes not of our inherent selves, but only as a consequence of Him, and being His created being.
This idea of Utter Depravity leads to the concept that we are not CAPABLE of doing anything in our relationship to God, and not WORTHY of being an active participant. Thus the idea of pre-destination... that God chooses only those whom He wants beforehand, controls them to His purposes, and elects them for salvation. But is the opposite also true, then? Would an all-loving God predestine His own child to Hell? Would God purposely give up a SINGLE one of His children? Would a loving father or mother condemn one of their children from its first breath out of the womb? Would an Artist create a masterpiece for the sole purpose of burning it? Could we believe even for one moment that Jesus died for the atonement of only a few, and not for the many? What parent would give up his life for one of his children, and not the others?
Without worth, there can be no free will. And without free will there is no merit (nothing we do can be deemed "good", because it is God controlling us for His purposes). On the same token, though, without free-will there is no GUILT. If I am merely a pawn, then those choices I make that are disobedient are also not of my doing. Without guilt there is no REPENTENCE, and without repentence there is no SALVATION. The inherent worth of a man given to us by God our Father makes us capable of responding to His touch, makes us able to make a choice to obey Him, have faith in Him. We are worthy of taking responsibility for the wrong choices we make, and that responsibility grants us our NEED for God and salavation. Read Genesis 1:31. "God looked at everything He had made, and found it very good." Now read Genesis 6:5-7. "When the Lord saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, He regretted that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was grieved." How do you get from "very good" to "ever anything but evil"? Free will. How do you explain the fall of man? Free will. God's heart was grieved, because it was not HIS plan for us to fail as miserably as we did. Not that He couldn't have made things differently. But He chose not to.
God is infintiley wise, and knows us better than we know ourselves. Predestination is not the same as preknowledge. God is omnipotent and outside of time, and knows which decisions we will make before we make them. But they are still OUR decisions to make, right or wrong - towards God or away from Him. He chooses NOT to control us. We humans, as pitiful as we are, constantly put God on the judgement seat, to see if He is worthy of our faith in Him. We creatures put the God of All Creation on the "dock", when, in reality, it is we who are being judged on how we live our life for HIM. He prompts us through the Spirit, and then allows us the choice to obey that call, because the fufillment of the law is LOVE, and love cannot be compelled. Love is a choice, not a feeling. God wants us to love Him, but He would never compel us to do so. Would God deny anyone who comes to the foot of the cross with a sincere desire and true repentence? As John 3:16 states so succinctly, God LOVES US. It is WE who choose to reject HIM through our unbelief- never the other way around. And our choice is our Free Will. For good or bad. Not that God CAN'T control us, but that He chooses not to. For Love's sake.
C.S. Lewis states it far more eloquently than I ever could....
"(God) could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaires. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will. 'God', said Pascal, 'instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.' But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God's mind - that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.... He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly in the twinkling of an eye. We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either priveleged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work, to weild our little tridents."
