If that is the case, why not choose Cocaine and Hookers over Modesty and Helping other people?
Let me spitball here for a moment.
Imagine you had 70 years to judge someone, on what to do with them for eternity.
Everyones like "death bed conversions arent real conversions!"
Because all of them have done this clever political logic in their tiny heads "if we allow people to ask forgiveness on their death beds, then everyone would snort cocaine and fuck hookers until the day they die!"
The truth is far less convenient. We don't choose outcomes. We only get to decide what side of things we're on. We might choose bad, and it turns out good for us, because we eventually come around. We might choose good one time, and it turns out bad for us, and we end up going rotten, but we're forgiven anyway because of the single good. Sixty to seven years is a twinkling of the eye compared to eternity. It's a really short god damned test.
It's a test if we're capable of good at all. If we're capable of overcoming our own will to live by our own rules, or if we're willing to simply trust someone whose figured out the best system possible, the golden rule, and the silver rule.
And the truth is, you might spend your entire life doing good, and be condemned for a single action in your life. Or you might spend your entire life doing evil, and be forgiven for one right action. Whatever the case, when you die, that part of you is what becomes the whole of you. You are made whole.
And thats the test, and why sin is so deadly, and mercy so powerful. Because you never know what will decide your fate. It's a system designed to know your heart, and let you choose your destiny within the broader plan. A system designed to not be gamed.
When you look at the paradox, between an all-powerful being thats all-knowing, also creating people who have free will, the only conclusion is either that it is inconsistent, or that it's possible, on the contingency that the all-knowing component ceases to be true. It doesn't mean free-will doesn't become deterministic past a point (an irredeemable person who has died, can no longer alter their decisions for example), nor does it mean this free will can't be revoked, otherwise that all-powerful creator would cease to be omnipotent.
Theres precedent in the old testament for this as well, wherein God "hardened the heart of pharaoh".
Again, free will would have to be a bound system where all decisions lead to the same outcome. Why?
The only explanations are
it's all bullshit (the atheist route)
it's slavery disguised as freedom. (kabbalah, and gnoticism and the 'false/malevolent god' stance, i.e. sophia and the demiurge)
it's a test, wheat vs. chaff. (the default position)
Take your pick.
I think I want to choose door number 4!
I think I want to choose door number 4!
Congratulations. You won a toaster oven.
Fuck.
We wouldn't need abortion centers if women would stop having abortions.
We wouldn't need abortion centers if women would stop having abortions.
The availability of evil has, in its own respect, its own sort of gravity, which by its very availability, pulls people into it. This is the nature of vice, that so many must be prevented, by the strong arm of the law, and the threat thereof, from falling into its grip. And it is why it is called vice to begin with. Convenience is its own manner of sin, which like a magnifying glass under a summer day starting fires, amplifies all temptation. The first pretension of man. Chief among them, "convenience!", even perhaps, in our modern day, before pride.
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