How Love, Free Will & Hell Relate to One Another
The following question was posed on an online forum recently: What's the point of God giving us free will while hell exists? Oddly enough it is love that ties them together, and I hope demonstrating how these seemingly very different concepts relate to one another helped the poster understand why one necessitates the other two.
Free will is the reason hell exists in the first place. Hell would not exist if free will did not exist, so it is meaningless to discuss one existing without the other.
God’s desire is that we love Him as He loves us. That has to be a free choice. As paradoxical as it sounds, no one can come to truly love God without the absolute freedom to reject Him. And hell honors that choice.
Many then ask why God didn’t create only those He knew would follow Him? Certainly God could have created a world of automatons who follow Him perfectly, but true, real love can’t have a place in it.
And love - again, true, real love - can’t be compelled either. Anyone who has been stalked or in other ways coerced by someone obsessed with him or her can testify to this. Many lives have been lost due to unrequited love when the one trying to coerce the other into returning his “love” finally reaches the end of his tether.
So free will exists because it is necessary for authentic love. And hell exists because free will exists. And landing back where we started, hell would be completely unnecessary and would not exist if free will did not exist.