Why the emphasis on choice?
If I may respond to this....?
Because God created us as free willed beings. He would have taken no pleasure in those who had no choice....would you want your mate to love you because she chose you of her own free will, or to feel stuck with a marriage mate that was “arranged” for you....for all the wrong reasons?...and whom you did not find the least bit attractive? Even if she performed all the duties of a wife....but because she had no choice, you had no affection for one another....it would be an empty relationship. God does not want empty relationships with his human children.
Free will is the reason why we are enduring this life....to prove that it was a gift from God, and not a mistake because, when it was abused, it turned into a curse.
Every heinous act perpetrated by the sinful human race is a result of the abuse of free will. We were never designed to have power over each other....power corrupts, as we all know....and “absolute power corrupts absolutely”....
When free will was abused and the will of one was enforced on others, nothing but trouble resulted in the human race. In one generation a murderer was produced.....such is the power of sin when free will is misused. We had to learn first hand, the consequences of forcing our will on others, even in an underhanded way, by deception or threat.
Do you believe that man's will supersedes God's will?
Man’s will could never superseded God’s will....but unless we
choose to do God’s will out of our own willing heart, (and put our own will last) we will become like the devil, and the two perfect humans he managed to manipulate into doing his bidding instead of their Creator’s......they all wanted things done to benefit themselves at the expense of the will of God and others who would become ‘collateral damage’ along the way. The repercussions were serious.
What is God's plan for humankind?
We are told exactly what God’s plan was for humankind at the beginning....they were to act as caretakers of all creation, endowed with the moral qualities of God and with his primary attributes, of “love, justice, wisdom and power”, to oversee creation and to care for it as God himself would if he were present.
Spaceship Earth was a self-sustaining orb placed in just the right position in our solar system to be conducive to the comfort and well being of all the lifeforms God created to live here. It would be populated with more and more willing helpers, who would keep expanding the boundaries of paradise so it would would grow and spread till the whole world resembled the garden of Eden. They were told to “fill the earth and subdue it”....imagine the life we would have had if they had just obeyed that one simple command....?
If they had stayed within the boundaries set for them by God, we would never have ended up here....enduring the evil that our first parents unleashed by their disobedience.
Once that ‘genie was out of the bottle’, there was no way to put it back......natural consequences ensued and an object lesson of mammoth proportions was allowed to overtake the human race to show the folly of disobeying their Creator who knew the value of placing limits on the freedom he gifted to his children. He would allow them to experience first hand what self governance results in.....and the ruler they chose to obey was given authority over “all the kingdoms of the world” in order to prove that he was a god worthy of human worship. He even tempted Jesus by offering him all those Kingdoms in exchange for one act of worship....unlike Adam, Jesus put his Father’s will first, and remained steadfast in his obedience....to the death, offering the human race a chance to be redeemed.
The redeemer did his job well and we can thank him for offering himself up for us.....a bright future awaits all who see through the current evil despot who rules this world through his human agencies....who has the power to blind people’s minds to the truth, but only if they reject God and his word. (2 Cor 4:3-4)
