As you read Exodus, see if you can determine if man has free will. Is he able to make choices of his own? What about Pharoah, who's heart is hardened. Does he have free will? If not why? Please fell free to comment on your thoughts here. We'd love to here from you!
1 comment:
Anna writes:
Do We Have Free Will?
This is kind of confusing; it is almost like we have free will to a certain point. We have options; we can make choices, yet God already knows which ones we will make. It’s not that he is forcing us to make a certain decision or choice, but because he is all knowing he knows which one we will make.
One example of free will was people when Noah was building the ark. They chose to turn away from God, they didn’t HAVE to, but they did, and God knew they would continue to turn away from Him. Therefore, Noah using free will decided to build the ark like God had told him, even though everyone basically thought he had a mental disease. He may have had a mental disease, but it wasn’t a bad one if he did. So even though God knew which choices the people would make and Noah would make, they were still free to choose. God just knew which ones we would make.
Another example of a person, or people, who had free will, is Adam and Eve. God specifically told them to NOT eat from the tree of life, but they made the decision to anyways. Because they were tempted, they gave in (I am speaking with “they” because Adam didn’t have to eat the apple just because Eve did). And once again, God knew they would. He could have stopped it, but he didn’t, because he chose to let them have free will and leave the consequences for the rest of human kind forever and ever. Thanks Adam and Eve.
Yet ANOTHER example of a person using free will is Joseph deciding to forgive his brothers for all they had done wrong against him (Sell him as a slave, try to kill him, yada yada) when they had come to get more food from Egypt during the drought. Because Joseph knew God would not want him to hold this against his brothers and he knew that him being sold as a slave and thrown in jail and interpreting dreams and the list goes on was part of God’s plan for him to be the assistant to Pharaoh. Joseph could have killed his brothers right there, I mean he had a reason to, but because he trusted God and knew that it was a part of his plan he used his FREE will and decided to give them a big feast. God wasn’t forcing Joseph to welcome his brothers, but he gave him the choice, rather then Joseph being so consumed by evil that he really had only one choice and that would be to kill them because he would hate them so much that he wouldn’t even want to think about the other option.
Basically the big point is that as a Christian you have more free will then a person who rejects God. The reason for this is that as a Christian you have options… you can make the right choice that you KNOW is the right one or choose to make the wrong one. People who do not know God basically will probably, and I am saying probably here, as in most likely, will choose the wrong one. And after a while that gets old, having basically, or not seeing, any other options. They are there, (the choices I mean) but the person will just reject them because they don’t feel any reason to choose to do anything else. Kind of like a numbness. Or a “comatose.”
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