Free Will

I recently sat down with a friend who believe neither in Jesus as the Son of God, nor in the God of any sort of non-eastern deity. He posed the following dilemma:

"If God is good, and knows all things, why would he create Satan with the free will that would allow him to Turn against Him. If God knew Satan would do evil, then he must be in some way evil."

I responded with the following:

"What you are suggesting is that God should have made Satan not free, but a slave or servant to God. He should have essentially made some sort of robotic creation that would serve him and be obedient without fail, right?"

He then said "yeh, exactly".

And this was my response, "What you are suggesting is that it is much better to be a slave who has no capacity to act on its own, no ability to love, no ability to do any thing outside of its being directly in line with serving its creator." (sidenote: this is the way I believe Heaven will be, but we will no longer have any desire to rebel, only to serve.)

I then asked him "Have you ever been to a homeless shelter?";

"yes" he replied.

"Well in that homeless shelter have you ever seen an African American man?";

"of course" he then replied.

I then said "What you are suggesting is that the American government is in fact evil for giving freedom to 'African Americans', because it landed some of them in worse circumstances. Previously they had a warm bed, a Job, 3 meals, a day, and a home. Now there freedom has landed them without any of these. The American government should have kept them as slaves for their own good and not only that those who fought for slavery are evil people. We should make all the poor slaves."

He expressed a peculiar sense of Satisfaction at the answer, and quickly we segwayed into the "Pat Robertson dilemma"... Freedom

God forgive us today, we distort you, your world, and your name. Forgive us...