Since Heaven is without evil, entropy, or death, no force or motivation that could choose or produce evil, entropy, or death could enter Heaven. In other words, those desiring to Heaven would have to check their God-given, God-created free will at the gates because it will no longer be necessary. Without that free will, resurrected man would have no choice but to be good, which takes us back to square one.
If God is good, why does he permit evil in mortal life but not resurrected life? Why bother with the whole free will journey in mortal life if that gift of God’s love and goodness must be checked at the door before entering Heaven? Why didn’t just God place us in Heaven to begin with? Because he wanted us to choose goodness and eternal life over evil and death. Okay, but in the end, we will have to surrender free will because that, apparently, is where the source of all evil lies. Something else must take the place of free will. God will have to grant us another kind of freedom in Heaven.
Now, I suppose we could argue that free will in mortal life builds up to some greater, eternal freedom we will gain access to in Heaven, but if this is indeed the case, it seems like a roundabout way of going about things. Unless of course, freedom in mortal life extends far beyond a lifetime’s worth of free will choices.
Freedom is not and cannot be necessity. Necessity is imposed externally. If freedom is externally imposed, it is not truly freedom. If God imposed free will upon us, that free will is not freedom but necessity. Under free will, we have no choice but to choose! Moreover, we are held completely accountable for the “products” of these necessary choices. That doesn’t sound very free. It sounds positively burdensome.
Free will cannot be true spiritual freedom. If it were, it would have a place in Heaven, but it cannot because it is cited as the source of all evil.
No...freedom, true spiritual freedom, must be something other than free will. It cannot reside in the realm of necessity. It cannot be something God gifts us when we begin mortal life. For freedom to be free, it must be outside of God, not something God creates. It must be something inherent in our being; something we bring into Creation; something God has little or no control over.
It must also be capable of good and evil choices, but its ultimate purpose must exist far beyond the good-evil choice paradigm. Unlike free will, true spiritual freedom is not something we will have to surrender in Heaven. On the contrary, true spiritual freedom is one of the overarching reasons for Heaven.
Having said all of that, I sense that it is extremely difficult to achieve true spiritual freedom in mortal life, at least on a consistent and permanent basis, and I sometimes wonder if we are even meant to attain such freedom in mortal life, again on a consistent, permanent basis.
I sometimes think of freedom in the same way I think about sin. The flesh may be weak — we may not be able to rise above the free will choice level of freedom — but the spirit must be willing to aspire to a kind of freedom that transcends free will choosing.
What I mean is that we must at least become aware of what true spiritual freedom is and work toward that in some manner, however intermittent and temporary our success may be.
I think this is a better way of expressing freedom than using our "free will" to choose among predetermined, externally imposed choices.
Also, as with sin, I think we should acknowledge whenever we fall short of using our innate freedom and fall back on "mere free will" instead of lauding our successful use of free will as some sort of major spiritual accomplishment that is guaranteed to reap eternal rewards.
I sense that true spiritual freedom -- willing and creative alignment with God's purposes where we also add something to Creation, something God could not have added on his own -- is our state in Heaven. I say this because I can't imagine free will having any place in Heaven.
Note: This post was sparked by a comment exchange with Laeth on yesterday's post.