How would you reconcile your understanding about God, and evil and free will, with how they were presented in the story 'The Displaced Person' by Eric Frank Russell?

 

How would you reconcile your understanding about God, and evil and free will, with how they were presented in the story 'The Displaced Person' by Eric Frank Russell?

To bring together our understanding about God, and evil, and free will, is actually not a complicated thing to do. However, in this question, it seems complicated to settle these three entities since our answer should revolve around how are these three were being presented in the story 'The Displaced Person' by Eric Frank Russell?

So let us begin the discussion by citing which specific part of the story does each entity was being presented.

GOD - in the story, God is not directly mentioned. God is indirectly presented during the conversation between the author (as the character of the story at the park) and the mystery man when he said "I am a displaced person". Such part of the story implicitly talks about the event on a holy Bible where accordingly, God was deceived by His trusted archangels and one of those was Lucifer. When God discovered the rebellion, He summoned the rebellious archangel to be fallen into ground and he will become His greatest enemy forever. Hence, the rebellious archangel became a displaced person on earth. In Christianity, such displaced person (a fallen angel as others called it) is called Lucifer personified as satan. This is the explanation why I say that God is not directly mentioned in the story but is implicitly presented.

Evil - sometimes, evil can be anything that we consider not conforming to the things we believe are right. But in the story, evil is clearly presented when the mystery person revealed who he is - his name - Lucifer. Of course, this name has always been associated as evil; basing on the story of the Bible explained above.

Free will - in the story, free will (the ability to independently make choices as free and autonomous being and not as a result of compulsion) is implicitly observable from the time the conversation happened until finished. Why? Someone should have been afraid of such instance and would have leave right away, but he did not. He chose to stay and had the conversation with that mystery man. It was his personal decision to do at that moment. It was his choice, with no coercion or compulsion.

Step-by-step explanation

Now, let us go back to the original question:

How would you reconcile your understanding about God, and evil and free will, with how they were presented in the story 'The Displaced Person' by Eric Frank Russell?

Take notice that at one point of their conversation, the mystery man (Displaced Person - Lucifer) said that he is not truly free, he can only be truly free if he is no longer within the reach of his enemy. Who was his enemy? God, right? Meaning, he is within God's reach. He is under the power of God, he can never surpass God even he would claim that he is as powerful as God. Hence therefore, God is the only ultimate supernatural being that cannot be measured. He is above to every one on earth, even to the displaced person who used to be His right hand in heavens before he was summoned to be fallen on earth after rebellion.

This means that, at all time, God prevails over evil. And each one of us, as human beings, is given by God a free will to decide for ourselves. I hope that we use such gift of free will from God to do good and not evil. Remember, our free will is from God, and not from anyone else, so we should always use that free will according to the will of God.