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This is one of the things that never made much sense to me. So, assuming all this is true, god gave people free will so they could choose, and not be forced, to accept god. That sounds good to me. I can relate to that on a personal level. I wouldn't want friends who didn't want to be friends with me. The thing I can't relate to is punishing someone for not choosing god. Why would god do that? Punish someone for making a choice he let them have in the first place?I got a bit confused, probably because I'm still drowsy. So apologies if I get anything wrong. God made people in the beginning to be with him. He also gave them the gift of free will. When man chose to sin, he effectively severed his contact to God. Jesus was then sent to save the world from sin; but we have to accept it. It's as simple as accepting Jesus as your savior, and your saved. As to why God gave man free will in the first place, don't ask; I asked a friend that, and he explained it all, but I completely forgot. And really, I think we won't really convince each other with our arguments. I believe in the afterlife, so it makes perfect sense to me. You don't, so you think we're wasting our time. And sorry if I didn't really answer your argument, I think I did though.
I suppose I could be more sympathetic to this punishment idea if there were bad forces at work, like the devil and so on, that had power over you, but god is supposedly all-powerful. So even if he's being all hands-off and saying "It's your choice. You can choose me or the devil" he's doing it all while knowing he could save you from the devil/evil/damnation/etc. whenever he wants and he's not doing it. He's letting you suffer a fate that he himself created. I just can't relate to that. The way modern, mainstream Christians describe how their god works in relation to freewill just doesn't make sense.
Now, the people who say "it doesn't matter, god will still accept you even if you don't believe" are people I can get behind. That seems much more in keeping with the idea of an "all-powerful, all-loving" god.