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I have often asked myself, "Do we truly have free will?"

and the juxtapose that question with "What is God's will"

if we have free will, is God's will not being done when we choose not to follow God's will? But if God's will is always being done, then do we really have free will?

the problem that we have is that we look at it from a cause and effect, four-dimensional perspective.

We, as humans, are free to do as we please. We make our own decisions, regardless of our environment or circumstances. You always have a choice. Even when you don't think you have a choice, you do. You can choose to do, or not.

it's really that simple.

so how can we have free will while God's will is being done?

I like to think of it as maze (time and space) - from two perspectives. the first perspective (humans) being in the maze, not being able to see what is ahead or behind, in fact, easily losing direction if we close our eyes and spin around. the second perspective (God's) being above the maze, able to see all pathways and dead ends, able to manipulate the maze when we aren't looking.

Each intersection is a choice - and no matter which way it goes, we must choose.

He gives us a map through the maze, and we can either choose to follow the map, or go our own way.

Now God, being omnipotent and omniscient, knows what we are going to do before we are going to do it, so He tells us the path which He would like to put us on... we just have to choose to follow it.

God exists outside of the maze, so - to put it crudely - He sets us up like dominoes. Each human interacting with each other, with God seeing the past, present, and future (to us) all at once.

We all make our choices.

God channels them.

So God's will is done, on Earth as it is in Heaven, while we are free to make our choices.

It might seem like predestiny, because it might seem like we are being manipulated, but that's because it's from our perspective, not from God's...

Nothing is predestined.

what happens to our souls is up to us - because really, we make our decisions based on what we think and feel...

just because God can see what is going to happen, doesn't mean that we didn't get there by our choices. [the double negative is proof positive that we end up where we are because of our choices... and in someways by other peoples choices]

I guess what I mean by moving the maze around is that we are going to end up where we are going to end up, but our actions trigger other actions which other people will choose to react to... in the process, things are going to get done... and those things would be God's will...

... ... ...

if it were God's will that we all believed in Him and followed Him, then that would be so... but it's not... because that would negate free will...

... ... ...

evil happens because without the choice of evil, then there would be no choice.

... ... ...

but that is a subject for another time...