#5 Free Will

 Big deal #3: God made us in his own image, but he also gave each of us a free will.  God didn’t want a bunch of robots; he wanted us to love him back by our own free choice.  That shouldn’t be too hard; God has given us life, families, food, the ability to think and much more.  But free will also includes the option to choose badly: focusing too much on ourselves, being

hurtful to others, prioritizing accumulation over sharing, treating other people as “things” to be manipulated rather than as beings with God’s image to be valued, and even the freedom to ignore God (or even to curse him).  These many ways of using our free will to choose badly can all be combined in one big basket; the label on that basket is “Sin”.  It’s an ugly label, but we all do it. And there are two big consequences of this. https://biblehub.com/genesis/3-1-19.htm (read the whole chapter) https://biblehub.com/1 john/1-8.htm