[P8riot]

Too much has been made of "free will". In it's extreme it is a deistic philosophy that is at odds with the sovereignty of God. Free will is governed by the state of the soul. If that soul is non-regenerate the will of that soul is primarily evil. Sure the un-regenerate may do good things from time to time, but their nature is still evil. When a soul is being regenerated, even before conversion, the will is attuned to God and seeks to genuinely please him.

As for being unfair, well I for one am not going to arrogantly try to rationalize God's fairness, seeing that He is infinitely perfect and I am a finite created being.

[ari-freedom]

well the way I understand it, we have free will to make choices but G-d knows our choices in advance because He is above time. But that doesn’t mean He controls our choices just as someone with a time machine who went back in time a few minutes can’t change what I just said (he could put a gun to my head but I could choose to be a martyr and type it anyway if I was that passionate about my FR posts...)