Free Will

   Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? That is probably one of the most common questions that non-believers and many Christians ask. Many of the questions that non-believers and even some believers have about the nature of God can be answered with two words...Free Will.
   The premise behind all of these questions is that some people are better than others. The truth is that in the eyes of God, telling a "white" lie is just as egregious as murder. We put sin on a scale from bad to worse, usually based on the impact that the sin will have on other people with no regard to how the creator and sustainor of the universe sees it. We will cover the nature of sin in another post later, but to fully understand the last statement, you will need a good understanding of what sin truly is.
  Because God loves us, He gives us free will. Imagine a world without free will. A robot is created by a man who develops a set of rules and behaviors in the form of a computer program. The robot cannot deviate from the program in any way. It can only do what it is programmed to do. The robot does not have free will.
  God created mankind because he wanted fellowship with a being who also wanted fellowship with Him. God is love and wants love in return. Love is only love if it is given freely. Therefore God created mankind in the garden, provided everything that they would need because He loved them and then gave them the option to not return that love in like kind. That option was presented in the form of the "Tree of Knowledge of good and evil". Adam and Eve exercised that free will and ate of the forbidden tree ushering in sickness and disease and death for all following generations.
   Every bad thing that we endure is the direct result of sin committed by ourselves or someone else. When we abuse our bodies with substances, we put ourselves at risk of cancer like in the case of smoking cigarettes. That choice not only effects the smoker, but also everyone who loves that person (including God). Drinking alcohol adds the risk accident due to intoxication that may also endanger others.
   We all cherish our free will, but it also the thing that brings us so much pain at times. God designed it for love, but we abuse it for selfish desires that in turn have repercussions that hurt others. So the answer to most of those questions is that God doesn't do things to us, we do them to ourselves and to others by our own choices (free will) that are in opposition to God's plan and design as He spelled out in the Bible.