Could someone help me understand (preferably from a Christian point of view)?

Knowledge about something does not determine its path if the thing is free to act for itself. The thing determines its path.

You already know the child will steal the candy, so you are seeing into the future with weak logic, God is pure and His logic way more powerful, He created your conscience and already knows how it moves and thinks. Spiritual evolution is His specialty, to see ahead of time is quite easy for Him. God created the earthly process of rolling out information, evolution, whether it be small scale or large, He knows when it's time for you to go to the bathroom for Him counting power is unmatched, hold it as long as you wish, then go at your leisure, it's up to you and your free will... You live not without the Father, you are His product, His creation, His child and you are Him, He's seeing what He would do through you.

Your logic is slightly flawed..

God is the Creator of all, God is the law giver, the rule maker, the author and inventor plus referee and umpire..

In your logic a game of football is not fair because there's no freedom for the players to play beyond the rules which are predetermined..

How can you live your life with that view of life, do you feel restricted in your human condition? or do you feel ok?..

The thing is all humans have been given the same freewill to choose right or wrong, just like all the football players have been given the freedom to play within the rules of football..

I'm not sure what your reference to slaughterhouse-five has to do with the question, but I will do my best to answer your question in spite of this, and the fact that I am not a stereotypical Christian.

We still have free will because we cannot see the future ourselves. We still must address every choice based on our limited human understanding. Just because God knows what we will choose does not detract from our freedom to make that decision. From my experience, I believe that God is in fact outside of the fourth dimension as you put it, and He can see the choices and their outcomes that we will make throughout all time. Just because God knows what we will choose before we will make the decision does not take away from our ability to choose out of our ignorance. Being that We are assuming (by your assertions that I happen to agree with) that God is outside of the fourth dimension and time, there would be no need for Him to change anything because everything would be as He created it to be. This is as apples to oranges to your assertion that "prayer serves merely as self reflection". Prayer is how we humans connect and relate to the Divine. Prayer has power to influence the world just as any physical human action does. The fact that it has no materialistic cause and effect kind of influence does not make it any different from anything else that we do to change the world. The only confusion on this topic comes from the assumption that God is bound to answer our prayers in the way we expect. If our prayers are in line with God's plan, then they will be answered... if it is in God's plan that I make a left at the next intersection, then I will. Prayers are basically no different from any other way that we effect reality, even though the means may differ. Free will in and out of the fourth dimension can be hard to grasp, and even my time in my NDE does not protect me from getting confused on the subject.

You say that "If you feel you have adequately answered the first question, there is no need to answer the second", but I won't take the easy way out. I believe that we do have free will, but that suffering is still a part of life. The thing about suffering however is that it is subjective. There are children in the world who suffer because their stomachs are empty and it causes them pain, and there are millionaires who suffer because they have difficulty in docking their yacht or paying the stable fees for their thoroughbreds. The suffering that we endure is all in our minds. The hungry children have fewer resources to change their fate, but the millionaire has more options. The millionaire has the power to see the yacht or the thoroughbreds as impediments to his happiness, and sell them to relieve his suffering. Once relieved, he also has more resources to fill the loss that a boat or horses has left in his self worth and spend that money to feed the children who are hungry. Once we stop focusing on things and start worrying about people, we would greatly reduce the suffering in our world. I will refrain from quoting "Bad Religion" at this point, but due to your reference to slaughterhouse-five, I'm guessing that you are already hearing the lyrics that I am thinking of.

The power and miracle of God is so great that he does allow for the free will of the human to be functional, amongst the forces which are more or less natural, as long as he retains his faith and trust in God.Its when you take more than necessary control of yourself,that is when you do not leave the problems beyond you to God but take charge of them;you become less and less innocent and detect at the other end that the things you used to control are not actually in your power and you loose the peace and humanity you had at the start.

For a start I do not believe any idea of God being all powerful and infinite. For what we currently understand of the universe and of God, I think it impossible.

We are meant to have free will and whether God gave it to us or it developed it is there.

As to why people get hurt etc,

I can walk right beside my child and that child can still fall and get hurt, it does not mean

i want it to happen or did not love the child. Sometimes stuff happens.

Since God is not bound by space or time, he knows the present, past and future. He is absolute. If you somehow had divide revelation and knew exactly what will happen to someone, does that mean you took away their free will? Of course not.

and according to Islam, God can change the future for you. If something bad was going to happen to you, and you pray, give money to charity, etc., God might protect you from whatever harm was going to happen to you.

..well..i do not know exactely what it means free will..i guess free will is a freedome offered to us evrybody can do smth what he wants (but what is legal only should be done ok?)but as we sometimes do not have enough knowledge ,(and we need faith but also knowledge know what God wants , what God gives what is right to do to others what is best for orselves also)-so sometimes we do nt know exactely , we do not know what to do or say..and sometimes we are forced and we do not like and we suffer or force the other (for example a man who is not acceptected by a woman but he grabs on her waist in the street seeing her)--or a woman wanted to be liked by a man she likes but he just looks at her and make her believe he likes her but unfortnately he is not serious..so on..well we have the freedome to escape from smth that forces us in a wrong way..or other time is good but we do not realise and because we are not in good terms we think is wrong//so on..so but we also must offer the other the free will..not force the other..etc...that is free will..i guess so God doesn't force us to listen to HIm etc..but we should do this because this is good we owe Him..and He loves us..so there was no reason for Eve to sin..but she was tempetd by devil ..and she should have thought better before..should have talked to adam to know his opinion..etc..

well we could think that those times are out of fashion...but actuallly..as God is working and help people and give them good ideas and people ask from help from God..actually when we improve smth in a good way in our times i guess is due to God..and it doesn't mean in the past was a wrong idea all the ideas...it means one idea was suitable for that time..because some reasons..but as we grow in inteligence etc..we have better idea..which is acceptable this time..e.g how could we go to a job as a woman who needs some earnings in such a dress like in the past which didn't afford you move in the bus or so..now that we like to go there and there and have relatives there , cars a good for us..but horses in the past were probably enough and very fine..e.g today hardly you would see a horse into a town and actually you would be afraid to use a horse so on..but if you live at a farm you can use the horse as you are close to animals..when i was little..i was afraid of goose and cows as i lived in town..ha ha..but now i would like to live at a farm..it would be very nice.

we do not have a concept about God..is the way God show up in bible and talk to prophets for eg..in old testament and He looks like a God..and talks like God as He is

we are here to learn the best way of learning is by doing it. if you have not felt happiness then how can you tell if you are happy i belive we visit this planet many times to learnhow to feel different things you cant do it in one life time when there is no more to learn we are one with god we have free will to a certain extent but i believe certain things in our life we chose to have its how we handle those choices that defines the outcome

Dear Sir, I can explain with an example which clears the same question in my mind.

Please stand up and do as I say, lift one leg from floor. I think you can do this easily. Now lift the other one..........

difficult or impossible. I think it is impossible.

Now God has given us the power to decide, wheather to lie or tell truth.

Do good deeds so you can be rewarded in after world.