God’s choice

The choice before God in creating the world lay between creating a purely mechanical universe, peopled by mere automatons, or creating a spiritual universe in which there would be a choice of good and evil. What was the condition then of such a universe? He had to endow us with the power to say yes and no and to be captains of our own fate and destiny. Morality implies responsibility and duty, but these can exist only on the condition of freedom. Stones have no morals because they are not free. We do not condemn ice because it is melted by heat. Praise and blame can be bestowed only on those who are masters of their own will. It is only because you have the possibility of saying no, that there’s so much charm in your character when you say “yes.”  Take the quality of freedom away from anyone, and it is no more possible for him to be virtuous than it is for the blade of grass which he treads beneath his feet to be virtuous.  Take freedom away from life, and there would be no more reason to honor the fortitude of martyrs than there would be to honor the flames which kindle their stakes. Is it therefore any impeachment of God that he chose not to reign over an empire of chemicals? If God has deliberately chosen a kind of empire to be ruled by freedom rather than by force, and if we find that his subjects are able to act against his will, as stars and atoms cannot, does this not prove that he has given to those human beings the chance of breaking allegiance so that there might be meaning and purpose in that allegiance when they freely chose it? Here we have a mere suggestion about the possibility of evil.