Of all the earth's physical creatures that God has made, man alone can exercise free will. Simpler life-forms, such as microbes and insects, are preprogrammed to react in certain ways to certain stimuli. They behave in accordance with their environment and have virtually no independent decision-making abilities in the sense that man does.
The actions of more-complicated life-forms, such as mammals, are also largely governed by instinct, though they do make rudimentary decisions when reacting to stimuli and adapting to situations.Human beings alone among earthly creatures have an advanced sense of time. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God "has put eternity in [our] hearts." In other words, we can contemplate the future. We make far-reaching decisions and plan our lives months and years in advance.
We also study the past; we have a sense of history. We learn lessons from our experiences and the experiences of others. God gave the capacity for advanced decision-making abilities only to man among His earthly creation.
God designed human beings to make choices. Yet we have never learned how to make consistently wiseproperly informed choices. Nor have we learned how to effectively manage our emotions, motives and desires and their influence on our decisions.
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