The Giver makes ya think

So, I watched the Giver today. And it. Was. Phenomenal. I loved it. A lot. It did the book justice (or what I remember from reading it in the 8th grade) 

I thought it was VERY well done, but I wanted to write this down because it was a cool thing that I noticed near the end of the movie. 

I'll try not to spoil the movie. 

When the elders are gathered in the room at the end of the movie (if you've seen it you'll know what I'm talking about), the Chief Elder is talking to the Giver while he is convincing her to stop what was going on. She says several statements, the sentiments of which were basically "it's not worth it to allow love and choice in the world, because when humans are given choice, they always choose wrong- always." And it reminded me of a thing. 

I was in a class this last semester entitled "Faith and Reason". It was one of my favorite classes, ever. Incredibly interesting. One of the topics we discussed in the class was the Problem of Evil. In other words, how could God exist while evil exists in the world? We went through arguments for and against the claim that God exists, using this topic to derive points for each side. 

(Forgive me, let me see if I can type it out. I very clearly stated it about an hour ago, and I talk better than I write.) 

The scene with the Chief Elder reminded me of a certain talk we had. The Chief Elder was basically prioritizing the absence of evil and murder over the presence of love and choice. And the Elders had chosen that life for the people- they didn't give the option for an alternate way of life. God, however, gives us love- He IS Love. He has given us choice. If free will did not exist, we wouldn't have the choice either way of love or evil. That's one argument for the simultaneous existence of God and evil- if God eradicated evil, he would essentially be removing our free will. We wouldn't have the choice to sin against someone or not. By removing the free will to sin though, He would also be removing the free will to love- the love that we show to Him would not be genuine, it would be a false love that was forced upon us in our lack of choice. Is it not so much more meaningful to willingly follow our God, to show Him that He is what we desire above all else? If we lacked that ability to choose, we would acquire the very trait that Jonas came to hate in his dystopian society: sameness. 

"'Have faith', the Giver told me. He said faith... That was seeing beyond. He compared it to the wind. Something felt, but not seen."