Son (age 7): "Mom, if God made the Devil and He gave the Devil free will but the Devil chose to be bad, why didn’t God just take away his free will?"
My answer: "Well, would you like for me to love you if the only reason I loved you was because someone was forcing me to by holding a gun to my head?"
Daughter (age 9): "Mommy, I would give up having your love if only that person would put the gun down!"
Lesson learned.
I understand that you are attempting to teach your kids--fine, their minds are not yet capable of serious abstract thought. But this argument comes nowhere close to refuting, or even touching on the problem of free will as discussed by western theologians.
Uhhh . . . my point was not that they had tackled and solved the problem of free will but that they had seen through it an on to the larger, more important point of self-sacrifice for the sake of love.
Julie: Great story. Your children are in fine hands.
Sounds like a very sublime edition of "Family Circus."