So evil as you see it is a requirement for free will? So a person wouldn't be able to help another one without also having the option to not help them or maybe even harm them?
No, evil is not a requirement at all...it shouldn't have even touched our lives, but when it did, through no fault on God's part, we became acquainted with it against our will. Free will is a gift, but like all good things, it can be abused, with dire consequences.
It merely exists as an equal opposite....the basis of all creation. God was going to protect us from it...all we had to do was obey him as the rightful Sovereign that he is.
But weren't evil already there? Meaning Satans action at the time when he deceived Eve was not actually one of evil then. But as Eve failed to resist him and ate the fruit then everything fell apart. So Satan became evil and then all humans could see him as being evil, is that what you mean? My impression or understanding is that Satan already was evil at that point.
Evil has existed as long as good has.....it was the "knowledge" of it that God withheld. If you step back and observe, humans sometimes cannot discern the line between good and evil. God was the one who would have exposed his children only to the good, whilst keeping a knowledge of evil out of their lives. By allowing God to decide what was good and what was evil, they would thereby have eliminated the need for the line.
Why would God bother with free will then, that seems a bit confusing to me, can you explain that?
If you understand the reason why humans alone have free will, all you have to do is see what assignment God gave to them originally. They were to be caretakers of this planet as his representatives. In order to carry out that assignment and exercise dominion over all other living creatures as God would, they had to reflect his qualities, his moral attributes, and his ability to make decisions with a view to the future by observing the past. We are the only creatures on earth who can do that. We are not programmed by instinct.....but by education. God was to be our primary educator in an ongoing way. The earth was to be filled with perfect humans living in ideal conditions, obedient to their Creator and enjoying all that this earth had to offer...forever....no heaven or hell.....just everlasting life the way we are programmed to live it....in peace and security because of living in harmony with the Creator's requirements.
Only Adam and Eve were directly created by God, the rest through procreation, so why would God make it possible for a person to be homosexual, if that is as you say it is, not "natural" and weren't what God intended by making us capable of procreation in the first place?
God did not create the humans with defects in their DNA.....if you know anything about inherited medical disorders, the genetics of the parents become a gene pool for their children. We have no say over what genes are passed down. When the first humans had children, the genetic damage (created by sin) was passed down to all their offspring with no way to prevent death. Humans are not programmed for death or sickness or suffering, because it was never supposed to happen.
So you also see the use of condoms, pills etc. as being against the will of God and that people should or ought to be punished just as hard as homosexuals, as they are basically preventing what God intended?
The choice to be parents is ours. But the sex that produces them had to be confined to scriptural marriage. That way if a pregnancy occurred unintentionally, then a family was waiting to accept and love the child, produced by two loving and committed people. Gender roles shape children and role modeling is as old as time itself.....these days are so different.....and not "good" different. Planting ideas in the minds of vulnerable children about gender identity is abhorrent IMV. Adults must make those choices, not young children. Let them be kids for goodness sake. They are robbed of their innocence way too early.
There is no law of God that says you must have children or that you must not prevent pregnancy.....especially is this the case if you cannot provide for them, as we see in many poverty stricken nations where small children starve to death every day. The poor have trouble managing their lives even in affluent nations as the homeless levels increase, along with the crime generated by poverty and a lack of basic decency.
If our moral is given by God and is none negotiable and as most Christians claims Jesus removed the law, then how should we decide moral issues or which should we follow, if these are none negotiable, to me it seems to conflict with free will? Can you elaborate on that?
Jesus said that the whole of the Law was summed up in just two......
“‘You must love Jehovah your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 The second, like it, is this: ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments the whole Law hangs, and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40)
If you think about moral issues, or any kind of breach of God's laws, it is impossible to break any law without breaching one or both of those commandments. The Jews had a written code which they corrupted in their interpretation, sidestepping and justifying their errors....but Christians were to be guided by conscience. The law was now written on hearts dictating to the conscience when moral decisions were to be made.
A Christian is identified, not by what they say...but by what they do in obedience to Christ's commands. Talk is cheap.
But the Bible doesn't condemn slavery and as a follow up from the question above, if these morals are none negotiable, why should slavery then be considered morally wrong?
The slavery mentioned in the Bible among the Israelites was way different to that practiced by the Gentile nations.
The way slaves were treated in those nations was morally wrong because it involved kidnapping people from their own country and taking them to another nation to a life of hard labor and misery.
The slavery practiced in Israel had rules against harsh cruelty and was in some cases more like employment. A person who was in debt for example, could offer his services to the one to whom he owed the debt, until it was paid. If he had a family to support, then he could offer a son or daughter to their service to help pay the debt. No social security back then. No credit cards.
We also need to keep in mind that physical punishment was the norm in those times. Even a child could be beaten as a punishment. If we remember just a few decades ago, the schools and parents had the right to inflict corporal punishment on children quite legally. It was acceptable to discipline children that way....a good whooping down behind the woodshed was seen as good parenting. Today's snowflakes would melt.
So even if we were through free will to decide our own morals and not use politics, how would we do it, can you explain that, because that seems a bit weird to me, how we would do it then?
We do it personally. We are the only ones who control our own behavior. The laws of the land stand as a deterrent to lawbreakers (though not in any real way among the lawless). If we live according to God's standards, then we don't have to worry about breaking the law or suffering its consequences. We do not engage in politics, so we leave the law making to those who have authority to prevent anarchy. No one would want to live in a world with no laws.
[Im sorry its really difficult to figure this out I think. Does this only apply to gender issues and the practice of spiritism? or does it also apply to murder, rape etc. or how do you choose which part of God's law is no longer in effect and which are, can you elaborate on that? because that seems very confusing to me, especially with all the other things you have mentions above. Where do we start, what is allowed and what is not allowed and who and how do we decide it, if we can't decide our morals and we shouldn't involve our self with actual methods of doing it?[/QUOTE]
You asked specifically about those two issues and so my response was about them.....God's laws still apply in principle......adultery, murder, theft, lying, etc were all dealt with in God's law to Israel. The laws of the land in many nations still apply some of those laws. Some still have capital punishment.
We know what the Bible says about the things that God approves and what he doesn't. All we have to do is follow what Jesus Christ taught....do what he says to do...and refrain from what he says not to do....its not that hard.
We just need to educate ourselves and put in the time to appreciate why God gave his laws in the first place.