HOW FREE IS THE FREE WILL OF MAN?

We have been told that God gave man free will to decern between good and evil. Therefore man will be held accountable for whatever he has done.The topic of this article shall be treated from several angles, such as: our thinking process, our ability to learn, our character traits, our successes and failures,etc.

Today is devoted to our thinking process.I noticed that throughout my life,my mind is always occupied with one form of thoughts or the other. Some are good, some are bad. Some are crazy,some are beautiful.Infact there is no limit to the description of different thoughts I go through since I was born.

What baffles me most is that most of these thought were not invited or even welcomed, yet they keep re-occurring. In the process, some may cristalize into action. The action may be good by my own judgement, while before others it may not be. This often leads to argument between me and others. Sometimes the argument would be inconclusive.

If the thoughts that come to our minds are most times uninvited, who sends them into our brains(minds)? In my simple Christian belief, we receive all good things from God while Satan would want to upset what God has planned for us. It also means that we receive all "good" thoughts from God while Satan would want to interfer with evil thoughts. Which ever of them gains the upper hand will depend on several factors but I will restrict my opinion to WILLPOWER.

It is known that people vary from each other in their ability to excercise willpower . This ability comes from our God to each person according to the measure he has ordained for each of us. But the bottom line is that nobody may be able to exercise his/her willpower beyond what is given.

In conclusion, I believe that our so called free will is restricted by so many factors. For the purpose of this article I will restrict my view to the fact that as we are not totally in control of our thought processes and our will power is according to the measure given to us from above we must still rely on God's assistance to exercise our will positively. Without Him we can do nothing. We need His grace and favor to direct our thoughts and willpower towards purposeful living and enjoy our lives in peace and prosperity .

By Ikede Alfred.
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Ikede Alfred. alfikede@yahoo.com
 First article on reflections on How free is free will of man.(a religious/ philosophical approach )