Love and FreeWill

Love

I am talking here about love for our neighbour, love for our community and love for our fellow human beings throughout the world. It is not sentimental love or romantic love but simply treating other people as we would treat ourselves. It is the sort of love that Jesus talked about when he said:

“love your neighbour as yourself”

Mathew 22: 39

What if all human actions were based on love. :

• Wars would be impossible 
• Poverty would be non existent 
• Science would be used to minimise and eventually abolish disease, natural disasters, accidents. 
• Eventually there  would be no prisons, no hospitals

But you can’t legislate for love – it is a free choice. 

FreeWill

God created everything. Could he have created us without free will. We would be animals born to follow instincts. We would not be human. He created us with the potential to be truly great. The way to true greatness is love – putting the needs and welfare of others equal to our own needs. 

Actions have consequences. 

This is true in the natural world.

• If you drop an item it will fall to the ground. 
• If you heat water it will boil and change to a gas. 
• If you set light to paper it will change into ashes and smoke.

It is true of human interactions:

• If you drink and drive you might kill someone. 
• If you cross the road without looking you might get run over. 
• If you sneeze someone might be infected by a virus. 

These are only possible consequences but you can’t statistically measure their likely effect. Even the slightest action could have enormous consequences. Imagine if a car driver had decided to speed up a little and as a result ran over Winston Churchill. The 2nd world war may have had a very different ending! We can’t measure the consequences of even the tiniest decision we make.

Conclusion

We have the freedom to make decisions every day of our lives. If we count our fellow human beings as equally important to ourselves then those decisions would be based on love not on selfishness.