by Bethany Vanderzand

Created on: April 28, 2008

To me, the best gift God has ever given Man is not the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, "His Word", life, or forgiveness - for none of those things can compare to the awesome, unconditional gift of free-will. Without free-will, we would all be robots, zombies, hollow shells programmed to carry out the will of God, unable to think or decide anything for ourselves, unable to create anything out of our own consciousness, unable to fulfill our own desires, unable to journey and discover our purpose, unable to question and explore, unable to change. We would be simple machines - able to process and complete tasks, but unable to feel. Our spirits would be enslaved, and whatever "life" we had in us would be eternally yearning and aching for more (assuming we could yearn or ache at all).

From what I understand of God, He wants us to develop and express our individuality and personality, to create ourselves, and to find our own happiness - not blindly follow his commands like feeble minions with hands and without a head. God made me so I could make myself. Spiritually, God gave me a canvas and all of the things I needed to paint with, and said "Create something. No matter the image you fashion, it will be beautiful and I will love it".

God wants us to seek Him out for ourselves and interpret Him according to our own understandings, not according to what He has told us about Himself, or what others have told us about Him. He wants us to live according to our own convictions, not what we imagine His would be, and not what other people's are. God doesn't want us to conform to a set of doctrines that are not our own, to submit to laws we neither agreed to nor understand, to believe in a prescribed ideology and live an ordained lifestyle.

Free-will is what makes us free men, women, and children; slaves to nothing and to no one, save the limits of our own minds, which can be ever expanded through thinking, questioning, learning, revealing, and recreating. Free-will allows us to grow and to change, to be challenged, to make mistakes and to learn from them, to struggle and to overcome. It gives us the power to strengthen our spirits, and to explore the endless knowledge and possibilities life offers. Free-will allows us to have a real relationship with God free of control or oppression - to communicate with Him and to worship Him through our own means, or choose not to acknowledge Him at all. Free-will lets us love whatever we choose to love, scorn whatever we choose to scorn, ignore whatever we choose to ignore, accept whatever we choose to accept.

God gave us a free will without stipulation or requesting anything of us in return. He said "Take this. It is yours, and you may do with it whatever you please, and I will love you regardless of what you do". That is the gift that casts all others into shadow.

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