I've thought of this for a while, and was wondering why God would make someone if he knew that they were going to hell. Is this becuase He gives them the choice to do what they want?

yea, we are still free to choose Him.. he's pretty nice to give us our whole life time to decide.. but i know i feel alot better knowing where i'm going instead of walking through life completly dead.

I have no biblical backing for this theory, but it's one that helped me with the same question.

We know that God is all knowing. We also know that God can choose to forget certain things. For instance, when we ask for forgiveness, our sins are forgotten by God.
With that said, I believe that while God knows us when he creates us, I also believe he chooses to not know whether we'll accept him or not when he creates us.

My final thought would be that God creates us. He doesn't create our decisions. If he did, we'd be robots. So, while we're created by him, and he has a will and plan for our life, it's our decision whether or not to follow it.

DJ Def Con wrote:

QUOTE:
We know that God is all knowing. We also know that God can choose to forget certain things. For instance, when we ask for forgiveness, our sins are forgotten by God.With that said, I believe that while God knows us when he creates us, I also believe he chooses to not know whether we'll accept him or not when he creates us.

The problem with that, though, is that then God is not all-knowing. He forgives our sins and no longer holds it against us, but He doesn't forget. Otherwise, when I pray and bring up something that He's already forgiven, I can just see Him smacking his forehead and saying, "Woah, what are you talking about?... You did WHAT?!... I had no idea!" He doesn't forget, but He does forgive.

It's a really good question, Jenna, and there's probably no completely satisfactory answer since it gets into the whole free will/sovereignty issue. God is just and He gives everyone that chance to accept or reject Him. If He only created people who He knew would accept Him, that wouldn't be very fair or just for the others either, would it? I mean, they never even had a chance to choose either way!

We all have a free will and unfortunately that free will is tainted with a sin nature that naturally rejects God and His will. But He loves us and gives us a chance anyway, even though that means some people will reject Him.

rockinyp wrote:
The problem with that, though, is that then God is not all-knowing.[/quote]

And if he can't choose to forget something, than he's not all knowing either...

Ok, so you're right. I think we should debate whether God is all powerful based on his ability to create a rock so big... Nevermind...

yeah, we talked about that a lot in confirmation last year.