How far reaching are God's powers?

[MilesAbbott81]

I've been asking you how we can be good or evil outside of the possession of a meaningfully free will.  

I'm afraid I don't get you, then. Just because you don't have a choice doesn't mean your actions are suddenly devoid of all moral consequence. It's God Who places the value on your actions, not yourself. Objective truth determines the value of your actions, and God IS objective truth.

Keep telling you I'm not worried about the teacher.  I'm wondering about the student.  You suggested that I could exonerate a god if I took it's intentions into account.  If that would be the good thing to do, and I can't do the good thing - then I couldn't do that.

That's true. You can't exonerate Him except by His grace, because you're incapable of doing the good thing, neither will you until He allows it.

Let us not suffer under the delusion that God is going to save everyone or shed His grace upon everyone in this life. If you're unable to exonerate God, it can only be because you were chosen as a vessel of destruction, meant to be saved in the next life.

You can call that unfair, but that's how the plan works. Some have been chosen to be children of the devil; others are children of God. It has nothing to do with intrinsic value or worthiness, but with how God has decided to accomplish His purposes.

That wouldn't be my problem, that would be a problem with the concepts as described.   I can't choose good, I cant learn from evil, I do or don't get grace.  How can I learn a lesson, even if I was taught the lesson a billion times - if learning the lesson were the good thing to do...and I'm incapable of good?

I never said you can't learn from evil. Evil wouldn't exist if not intended for learning. Just because you don't get saved in this life doesn't mean the lessons you've learned won't stick with you into the next life and beyond. I also never said that God doesn't give grace even to impenitent sinners. He does. You will learn as much as you were meant to learn.

If one should always be concerned for the greater good - then I would be incapable of being concerned for the greater good - as I'm incapable of good.  

Again, true, except by the grace of God. I will also say that it's easy to believe that one is concerned for the greater good when one is actually only concerned with expressing his own righteousness, as we observe to be a rampant problem in the political climate/issues of the day.

Would it have mattered whether you did or didn't say it?  You tell me that a god wipes away every tear like it has a moral debt.  

Things that can do good or evil may be able to accrue moral debt, and they may be able to satisfy that moral debt - this is rather unlike a thing with no free will, don't you think?  If we are a thing with no free will, in what way do we possess a moral agency, and how can we employ it?

Well, I do believe God has an obligation to wipe away every tear, because it would've been better to never have created us at all if that weren't His ultimate intention.

However, that doesn't mean He has any moral debt, because He'd already made the decision to fix everything in the end from the very beginning. It might be easier to think of it in those terms, but that doesn't mean it's correct.

We can't accrue anything but debt, being sinful in nature and unable to change that in our own power. We may have somewhat of an excuse, but it's not enough of an excuse to remove all consequence. And really, the important thing to remember is that it's all a lesson. Cosmic chips did not fall randomly and we are suddenly found in some unexpected situation of debt. It was all planned...not sure that that makes much sense as I've expressed it.