Did God Create A Smooth Road Only To Include Invisible Potholes?

Pets are enjoyable and helpful to have around.
There is a level of responsibility regarding the caring of pets.
When raised properly, the joys far outweigh the dirty responsibilities.
When left to themselves, a pet can become a ravenous and dangerous animal.
So it is when considering mankind, his role on earth, and his navigation of responsibilities.

Did God (who is Love) create enemies on purpose?

Did God desire to purposely torment those He claims to love?

Similar to how we choose our words and thoughts, and some say even our own destiny, we have the power of choice.

Free will.

God created angels and mankind in His image and likeness, and with that came a free will.

With great freedoms comes great responsibilities.

Consequences arise from choice, both good and bad.

The issue, cognitively, and perhaps what these questions desire to explore, is to consider how God, knowing the future, had possibly also created beings knowing they would eventually become His enemies.

Did God create a state of existence free from choice or responsible choices?

Is the universe(s) and perhaps the places outside and beyond the universe(s), ‘free from choice’?

Did God create (or always reside) in a state vacant choice?

Is heaven - a place not understood or perceivable by man’s mind - a place also created by God or did it also always exist alongside / within Him, and thus no choices were needed therein?

What of the material world as man knows it, did God He create a universe - material world only to included what is called ‘darkness’ or ‘sin’ or ‘wrong’?

Did God create a smooth surface road only to also include unseen potholes?

Or did God create a smooth surface road and it was others who, in their free choice, chose to damage it with potholes?

I know, questions attempting to answer questions.

Can someone learn what is ‘wrong’ without being able to identify wrong from right?

It can be argued that God allowed room for error in creation so, in some way, creation can learn what is right from wrong.

Learning what is in fact sacred from what claims to be sacred, but is profane.

How else can blinding eternal light be clearly seen from un-illuminated temporary darkness?

Or was darkness initiated when disobedience was found where only the sacred can reside?

How can it be established in the heavens and all elsewhere that He is Holy and anything outside or without Him is detrimental?

As the testimony goes: a certain angel, and those who followed him, made a choice to consider they can be (or beat) God.

Like a man deciding to take, by force, a seat he knows not the requirements of occupying it.

Or a man attempting to sit where he was created to sit, because God is not created but is Creator.

Much how a spark can start a great fire, someone decided to make sparks where it was forbidden to play with fire (or cause sparks and start fires).

Thus, God granted full freedom and will to His creations.

The troubles man knows of and sees in the world is the outcome of many fires and the ashes from those with great freedoms being pursued irresponsibly outside of God’s will.

Knowledge of good and evil was obviously not something that was beneficial to man, yet man was fooled into thinking they could be ‘like God’ by choosing to have the only thing God restricted them.

God didn't want man to know what rebelliousness sparked.

Molten lava serves its purpose, but man was not made to make his residence there.

But perhaps a man, in his freedom (and foolishness), may try to build his residence among the glowing stones floating over lava.

Can such a man, when burned, then blame God for creating lava?

We can perhaps give a simpler and more understandable answer to the question:

For any parent, they understand that their child will eventually make mistakes.

They also understand that although they (the parent) do their best in loving that child and disciplining them, the child is likely to make bad decisions out of ignorance or in imitating the bad in existence.

Consider how without choice one is a slave, or a robot, or a clone.

Thus God granted choice in the garden and 100% freedom.

If there were only 100 fruit-bearing trees in that garden, then there was only 1% restraint asked by God regarding one particular fruit that would render 100% trouble for man.

Thus why the believer in Messiah makes themselves a slave for the sake of the fruits that obedience renders.

The believer chooses to follow His will, and realizes true eternal freedom (spiritually speaking) despite temporary physical restraints.

As any adult understands, people sometimes choose the wrong although pursuing the right.

We also know about choosing wrong on purpose.

Is the parent to blame if they’ve done a great job raising a child who, on their own, decides to do wrong instead of what is right?

Consider how some parents still love their kids despite the waywardness of a child.

It is the onus of the child to make better decisions.

It is the responsibility of that child that becomes an adult when all things are said and done.

As we each can likely attest, we each have had times of rebelliousness or disobedience to parents or other authority.

The ignorant blames others, while the wise knows it is their responsibility to do what is right.

The wise takes and accepts full responsibility for the times of their waywardness, and doesn't sidestep that responsibility in blaming God for their own choices.

This is why the weight of responsibility includes freedom, and making the right choice is often times more difficult than the easy choice of waywardness.

The greater issue is man’s inability to fully experience a state void of temptation and sin.

It is likely the aim of this question to ask: did God also create temptation, or sin?

We have no idea how exactly was the state of heart and mind and soul when Adam was created in a pristine garden.

Adam did not know sin, but only that making a disobedient choice was going to hurt him.

We only feel the aftermath of Adam’s bad decision.

We only go through a dissonance still echoing from the eviction from that garden.

We can only guess at such a state.

A state of being able to see and walk with the Lord without fear or reservation of any kind (pure heart).

If only we can learn from children (and if only children had words enough to express) how it is to live with little or no temptation.

How to go abut one’s day not worried about what may go ‘wrong’, but rather in discovery of all that is beautiful in the world.

It is when learning of sin that one recognizes sin as ‘bad’.

Since we cannot ignore sin (as some may teach, and thus lose themselves into darkness as did Satan), we instead take up the cross of great responsibility… or what God intends to teach creation.

If only a child were able to express their thoughts so we may also be of single-heartedness and a simpler mind (honest with ourselves and honest about who God is).

If only, as a child, we can know how to be fully dependent on and fully trusting someone… as we (hopefully) did towards our parents as infants, and now as we are called to, as adults, to trust the Lord Yeshua our God.

He took on the greatest of responsibilities because He was revealed to be God (what Satan desired for himself, and what some men over the ages have also foolishly pondered and desired for themselves according to both their words and actions).

Only God can correct and heal that which creation (angels and mankind) has twisted.

Considering the angel of light who was initially made perfect.

That angel had free reign of their thoughts and capacity.

Yet, they somehow failed to recognize the moment their thoughts and desires were found to be well outside what God willed for him.

That angel chose to play with fire (or darkness)… and thus was burned (forever deceived).

Yet God did not ‘create’ evil.

Instead, evil was manifested from irresponsibility (knowing the right to do, but choosing to go beyond the bounds).

It seems that ‘to be like God’ takes the greatest of responsibilities that God alone can accomplish.

The perceived ‘glory’, when such was offered to creation as creation desired to have it, was assumed or sought after without also assuming great responsibility.

Notice how the following speaks to both angel and man, since both have afflicted themselves with the same.

A reality set in motion out of free will pursued irresponsibly.

Our thoughts, words, and actions carry the weight of divinity, since we were created by a Creator in His image and likeness:

The Word of the Lord came to me: 

“Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him: 

‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: 

“ ‘You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 

You were in Eden, the garden of God; 

every precious stone adorned you: 

carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. 

Your settings and mountings were made of gold; 

on the day you were created they were prepared. 

You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. 

You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. 

You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. 

Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. 

So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. 

Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. 

So I threw you to the earth; 

I made a spectacle of you before kings. 

By your many sins and dishonest trade you have desecrated your sanctuaries. 

So I made a fire come out from you, and it consumed you, and I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching. 

All the nations who knew you are appalled at you; 

you have come to a horrible end and will be no more.’ ” 

- Ezekiel 28: 11-19