Christianity; the World's Most Violently Persecuted Religion

[Tonus]

In this context, what is the value of being able to choose? What good is it to have been capable of sin? Wouldn't we be better off with just the one choice?

That's a question I cant really answer for you, to be honest.

That choice is what makes us different from any other creature on the planet; that feature the one that has lead to our dominion over the world and at times over primal forces of nature itself. 

What value God gets out of that, I can't answer with any authority - but I find plenty of value out of that, esp. when when use that power in a just way or in a way that brings new beauty into the world.

I cannot help but wonder what it says about the deity who designed us that way. Not only are we capable of hurting one another (and ourselves), apparently this happens even if we wish it would not, due to our sinful nature. This latter feature is particularly problematic.

Imagine that a person is rewarded with heaven after they die. There are two possible outcomes:

1- This person is no longer capable of sin, or able to resist sin effortlessly. This person would have to be changed on some fundamental level in order to achieve this. Which leads us to wonder why this wasn't done from the start, as it would have dramatically reduced human suffering both in his earthly life and his eternal afterlife, while also achieving god's wish that everyone be saved.

2- This person retains his personality and mind, which means he is still capable of sin. This means that he will always be at risk of earning eternal punishment from god. On a long enough timeline, I doubt that anyone could remain in heaven. Otherwise, heaven would not seem all that different from earth, with the possible exception that punishment would be immediate since we would no longer have to wait for someone to die.

I think that a being of supreme power and intellect --who personifies love and wishes for all of his creation to be saved-- would have come up with a world where everyone is saved. I don't insist that there is no god, but I find this description of god to be contradictory; it doesn't make sense on a very important level.