Welcome to answers from an apostolic faith.
In the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
If God, in His foreknowledge, knows that such a person will reject Him and go to hell, then why does He create him or her in the first place? This is today's question. For the viewer to properly understand today's answer, I encourage you first to watch two videos. The first is called If I Am Predestined to a Bad or Good Work, Why Does God Judge Me?, and the second, Why Does a Loving God Send People to Hell?
Now, coming back to today's question, I must say that it is built on a wrong assumption and I will explain why shortly, but let us, for a minute, entertain the possibility of God not creating people that will go to hell. What would the consequences be? Let us imagine a person called A. Person A will go to heaven, so he was created. Person A would have begotten Person B, who, out of his own free will, would have rejected God and therefore, would have went to hell. So, God intervenes and chooses not to create Person B. Instead of Person B being alive, he's is now non-existent.
Now, let us take this scenario and expand it to all families on earth, because, evidently, in all families, there are people that choose to reject God. So, what is the consequence? Ultimately, it is the end of life itself. This intervention that we seek would destroy humanity. God, the Life- Giver, is not giving life, but ending it. It does not fit into God's plan at all.
Now, let us go back to Person B for a minute and think. If Person B would have existed, he would have begotten Person C. Person C was going to choose God and therefore enjoy God for eternity in heaven. But unfortunately, she doesn’t exist because Person B, her father, was never created in the first place. She suffers the unfair consequences of her father’s actions. Not only that, but she suffers the consequences of actions that never actually took place, because her father never existed. Is this fair in any way? Again, we find ourselves messing up with life itself.
I will give you another example. Imagine a teacher that taught certain students the past year and now he's teaching them once more this year. Since he knows his students well and knows also the content of this new year, so he decides at the beginning of the year who will pass and who will fail. What do you think of that? Unfair, right? This is exactly the wrong assumption I mentioned earlier. This entire idea is founded on God being unfair, because it implies that God judges that I will be evil even if we did nothing wrong. And He never actually gives me the chance to live life.
But God is fair. When He judges someone, He judges him on what he did and didn’t do. When we stand on Judgement Day in front of God, God’s judgement for each one of us will be fair; it will be perfect. I will not be able to argue with Him. Therefore, because God is fair, He gives everyone his or her opportunity and, for those who are struggling, He comes and tutors them and gives them all the help that He can offer for them to pass.
This love of God is expressed in Revelations 3 where He was speaking to the lukewarm Laodicean church. After rebuking them, He says the following:
'' 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” (Revelation 3:20-21)
God knocks at the door of the heart till repentance is realized. And then He grants me the immense blessing to sit on His throne. This is our loving and just God. As explained many times before, God gives us the free will and the freedom to love Him. I ought to choose to love Him back.
I will make my last point by going back to the example of Person A begetting Person B, the one that supposedly chose to go to hell. We have to understand that the relationships that we have here on earth are meant to mirror the relationship within the Holy Trinity. Through certain of these earthly relationships, we learn to love. But by love, I mean the sacrificial type of love, the one where we learn to sacrifice ourselves, like God said:
'' 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.'' (John 15:13)
Based on this, we need now to understand the sacrificial love within the family; how a father or a mother learns to love through begetting children. We are transformed into God’s image when we learn love and patience by serving our children, by cooking for them, by washing them, by healing their wounds and by being anxious for them when they are youth. We learn to love when we sacrifice our own pleasure for theirs, when we sacrifice our own energy for their comfort. This is what love is all about. This is why St. Clement of Alexandria says the following; he says:
''They surpass most, who without pleasure or pain, have disciplined themselves by marriage, by the begetting of children, and by care for the household...'' (St. Clement of Alexandria)
We also have beautiful examples in the Bible. For instance, in 2 Samuel, chapters 15 to18, we see an amazing example of love when we see Absalom, the son of King David, who
betrays King David and declares himself king. How does King David react? He's patient and he wants to win his son back. So, when Absalom dies, King David weeps and says the following:
'' 33 ''(...) O my son Absalom–my son, my son Absalom–if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son!'' (2 Samuel 18:33)
How great love is this!
We find the same attitude in Luke 15 when the father is waiting for his prodigal son to come back. Although in this parable, the father is God the Father, as earthly fathers and mothers, we need to imitate that love. This is the entire point I'm trying to make here. This love it not overlooked by God, but He rewards every father and mother that love or is learning to love in this way. Therefore, if Person B's not created because he's going to hell, his father or mother, Person A, doesn’t receive the just reward that would be awaiting him or her. And again we find ourselves spoiling the entire concept of life.
Remember: Know your faith, live your faith, and teach your faith. And glory be to God forever. Amen.