When did God give man Free Will?

[SoFlaDem]

83. I think we mostly agree

in that I am not a member of any particular religion because religions are human institutions and therefore necessarily reflect to some degree the biases and opinions of the institutional members.

But where we may differ is that I believe that there are devine spiritual principles that I can strive for, and that a spiritual practice helps me act according to them, rather than through my own ego and emotional frailties. Humans often know what is "right", but end up doing the opposite due to their own self-centerdness or self-seeking. I can say only from my personal experience that through a spiritual practice (reading, meditating and praying) I find I am better at living by spiritual (or moral if you want to call them that) principles. Things like honestly, humility, gratitude, acceptance and love are among those principles.

If you think I am saying that I am closer to some truth than anyone else, I am not saying that, because that would fly in the face of the very spiritual principles I try to live by. See for me, the answer itself is in humble seeking. I could be totally off-base, but at least what I do and believe seems to work well for me.