When God is omniscient doesn’t he know that some people will misuse their free will?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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so if God is omniscient then doesn’t he know that some people are going to misuse their free will yes he knows but some people have to learn by that way only ultimately it is Krishna has not made us into robots who are to be controlled so we have to choose the right choice sometimes some people have to learn in the school of hard knocks they do bad karma, they get terrible consequences and they learn through that Krishna is there, the Paramatma trying to guide them towards the right choices but if they don’t learn then they have to learn alternative so Krishna’s the reconciliation between Krishna’s omniscience and our free will is primarily in that Krishna always gives us choices see that means God’s knowledge of the future is like our knowledge of the past what does that mean? our knowledge of the past is knowledge without control I know what I did in the past but I can’t change it right now so similarly when we say God knows the future also not exactly not control, it means that he chooses not to control so what Krishna knows is that this choice will lead to this consequence this choice will lead to this consequence he knows this but it is up to us to choose so in that sense although he knows the future it’s not controlled in the sense that he is not simply manipulating us like puppets we do have free will and we do have the capacity to choose no the choices are up to us so it is Srila Prabhupada asked this Srila Prabhupada basically said that the choices are up to us and Krishna’s omniscience, see we sometimes have this whole notion that we talk about God’s omniscience or his omnipotence like static attributes like somebody has a height like 5 feet 7 or weight 72 whatever, so these are physical attributes which are associated with a particular body but when we talk about God’s omniscience, God’s omnipotence God’s omnipresence Raj Pariksha so so actually rather than seeing these as static attributes we can see them all as parts of God’s purpose Krishna’s purpose is to help all living beings and whatever is required for helping all living beings he uses that sometimes he brings his omniscience into play so that he can help someone sometimes he brings the omnipotence in play so that he can help someone but broadly speaking Krishna doesn’t interfere with our free will and we always have the free will to make the right choices to the extent we make the right choices, we will grow in our life Thank you