Why do you choose to repeat this as you demonstrate otherwise?
If you have free will, then why don’t you do God’s will every single moment of your Christian life?
Because I'm not perfect.
Part of it is knowledge and experience; I make much better choices now than before. But I'm still not perfect, I still have weaknesses, we all do. I have limitations and illnesses; we all do. But our imperfection does not negate free will. Free will does not necessarily require perfection. This is clearly a non sequitur argument you have constructed.
You've glommed onto a simplistic, un-realistic answer to the human condition and built a whole theology around it. Rather, adopted Calvin's.
To you it makes sense, unless you see the reality of your own free will choices. It requires a kind of blindness to the true human condition, the struggle and responsibilities, challenges, successes and failures. And those of others. It most closely resembles attributing everything to Fate. IMHO, it is a philosophical escape.
One last question before I'm off for a few days. It's one I asked twice earlier; if you'd give it your best shot, I'd appreciate it.
If it were demonstrated to you that you have free will, would you believe it is true?
Please take this as a hypothetical: assume that it were demonstrated to your satisfaction, whatever requirements that entails. Then, would you believe it?
Thank you again, Harley. It truly is wonderful to have intelligent, thoughtful and courteous folks with whom to debate these issues on here.
God bless...
Because I'm not perfect.
Why do you choose to repeat this as you demonstrate otherwise?...One last question before I'm off for a few days. It's one I asked twice earlier; if you'd give it your best shot, I'd appreciate it. If it were demonstrated to you that you have free will, would you believe it is true?
Perhaps you misunderstood my response. There is God's will and man's will. We can't "will" ourselves to do God's will simply because we are imperfect creatures as you point out. You can't demonstrate to me that I have "free" will because what you would be demonstrating is that I am totally capable of carrying out God's will all the time.
But our imperfection does not negate free will. Free will does not necessarily require perfection.
It's simple logic that since we cannot free choose to do God's will 100% of the time, then our wills are not truly free.
To you it makes sense..
I would submit to you that every Christian deep down understands exactly what I'm saying to be correct. You yourself realized that you are incapable of "freely" doing God's will simply because you're "not perfect". BINGO! So then what percentage of time does one spend on exercising their "free will" to follow God? 90%? 50%? 25%?
God tells us that the real answer to this is we do not follow His advise 100% of the time.
There are many, many more of these verses throughout scripture where God constantly uses the term that we are "wicked", "stubborn", "rebellious", etc. God doesn't use these terms because He's frustrated with us. God uses these terms because they describe us. It's like Christ saying:
I can just here how people must have bristle at that but it's completely true. Our Lord wasn't judging us but simply stating the obvious about our nature.
I would hope that every Christian would agree that if they had free will, then they would exercise that will to do God's will 100% of the time. And we should not expect any kudos from God because that is precisely what He requires from us. For us to say we are imperfect creatures is really an excuse for our wicked and rebellious nature just as Adam tried to make excuses.
And deep down that is what "free will" theology is all about; failure to acknowledge our behavior and repent for our slothfulness and to take the credit when God gives us victory in spite of ourselves.