Love and freewill

The Bible declares that we were created with certain God-like qualities. We have a dignity, abilities and spiritual qualities that put us on an altogether different level of being from the animal world. Above all, we were created to exist in a loving relationship both with God and with other humans. However, love cannot exist where there is not the freedom to choose. When I wanted to marry the woman who is my wife, I did not take her by the throat and say, "You will love me...or else!" Whether we like it or not, love doesn't work that way. In creating us, God loved us enough to give us the freedom to reject that love. Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy says:

The greatest gift which God in his bounty bestowed in creating humans, and the most conformed to his own goodness, and that which he prizes the most, was the freedom of the will.

The problem is that we messed things up. People turned away from God and we have all misused this gift of freewill. We choose alternatives to God. The Bible declares, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6). We are not only free to turn away from God, we are free to stay away. That is why hell has been called the greatest monument to human freedom and dignity.