One of the most common justifications believers use for the suffering in the world is the concept of “free will.” They claim that God had to allow evil because free will is essential—without it, we’d all be mindless robots. This argument is used to explain everything from natural disasters to the worst human atrocities. According to this logic, God “could not” have created a world where people had free will but didn’t choose evil or suffer the consequences.

But there’s a glaring contradiction in this reasoning: Heaven.

Within Christian theology, heaven is described as a place without suffering, pain, or sin—yet believers also claim that free will still exists there. This raises a serious question: If free will can exist in heaven without leading to suffering, then why couldn’t God have created earth the same way? If he is truly all-powerful, then he could have designed a world where free will and goodness coexist from the very beginning.

So, which is it?

If free will exists in heaven, then clearly it CAN exist without suffering. This means God chose to create a world where suffering was inevitable, rather than one where free will and goodness were perfectly compatible.

If free will does not exist in heaven, then believers who use the “robot” argument have a problem—because that would mean they are destined to become the very thing they claim God didn’t want: mindless beings incapable of choosing anything outside of God’s will.


Either way, the “free will defense” falls apart. It is not a logical necessity that suffering must exist for free will to exist. It is simply an excuse believers use to rationalize a world that, by their own theology, was intentionally designed to include pain, suffering, and evil.

So, if you’re a believer who holds onto the free will argument, it’s worth asking yourself: Do you truly believe God had no other choice, or are you just trying to justify a world that an all-powerful, all-loving being could have created differently?