Do you wish God was real?

[Tonus]

The Catholic idea is that you don't enter heaven until you are already "perfect", for lack of a better word. We believe the vast majority of us will go to Purgatory where we will really learn to love God (love goodness and love, which is what we believe God is) with a perfect love.

Once we reach that stage, we go to Heaven. Yes, we will still have free will but at that point we will already have so much love for God and for all that is good, that we won't sin anymore. I hope that helps. Thanks for the respectful dialogue. Let me know if you have any more questions. :-)

Happy to oblige; thank you for the answers.

I think that this means that it is possible to reach a condition where we have free will, minus that part of it that would lead us to do things that would displease god.  I think that the best of all possible worlds is one where we are born/created that way; we get to enjoy god's world and one another, we get to develop as people with unique personalities and skills, and we don't hurt ourselves or one another.  A system that filters out most of us --by allowing us to hurt ourselves and those around us, and to offend god, and to wind up in an eternity of suffering-- can't be the best possible outcome.  Billions of people who were just one or two mental tweaks away from being part of a perfect society will instead spend eternity in misery and torment.  Those who make it to heaven will either bear the burden of knowing that so many were lost, or will not care, or will not be allowed to care.  It's just a poor situation all around, IMO.

I think it's possible to make a world where I can decide to be a painter or a plumber, where I can decide that yogurt-dipped raisins are better than chocolate-dipped cherries (point of fact: they're not) or that I'll pursue a relationship with Veronica instead of Betty, where I can make lots of choices that aren't sinful or harmful.  I think if that world also included a mental block that didn't allow me to pour scalding water on the arm of a three-year-old to "teach him a lesson" that would not be a bad thing at all.  I'd like to live in a world where Eve's poor judgment didn't bring thousands of years of misery and brutal mistreatment of one another, even if it means that her freedom to make catastrophically-bad choices was suppressed just enough.

Even for people who live a good and clean life --who help when they can and seek to help and never hurt-- such a world must be a better option.  There are true stories of mistreatment of people that would make nearly all of us weep helplessly.  I'm willing to trade a world where Ted Bundy never tortures young women to death for one where his freedom to choose to be a monster is curtailed.  If this is the best arrangement that god could dream up, I am sorely disappointed in him.  He created everything, including us.  I think he owes us much better than he has delivered.