Adam and Eve had the entire garden to do with as they pleased, except for one tree. Why would God give them the whole world and exclude one tree? He did it to give Adam and Eve free will. If God removed that tree from the garden, they wouldn’t have any means of disobeying Him. Only by having the option to choose do we have free will.
Why is free will so important? It’s at the very heart of who and what God is: love.
Without free will, there is no love. A backhoe doesn’t dig a ditch because it loves its driver, it simply does what the driver tells it to because it has no choice, it has no free will. If God removed free will, if He didn’t restrict Adam and Eve from that one tree, we’d be nothing more than biological machines, doing whatever God told us to, just like the backhoe. While it’s true that hate and greed wouldn’t exist in a world without free will, neither would love. And that’s the precise reason we were created in the first place, so God could share His love with us.
Was giving us free will a mistake? Not at all. Without it, we could not love, and the purpose of God’s creation would be defeated. How we use our free will is up to each one of us, but whenever we choose to use it to love God, the purpose for His creation is fulfilled and God smiles. Personally, I like it when God smiles on me. J
