The reason I ask is because if God created our souls then is he not responsible for the ultimate state of our souls? If I am going to Hell, then God knew that before he created me right? That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for my actions, but it does beg the question of why he created me in the first place. What’s the point of allowing my existence if my ultimate ending would be an eternity of suffering? What does God get out of this? And how does that not make him a cruel being?
Is God responsible for the "ultimate state" of my soul? Hmmm...I don't think so. Having given me free agency, God has made me responsible for my choices. He holds out salvation and fellowship with Himself to all but, as love requires, He won't compel anyone to accept these things from Him. If we reject His offer, there are consequences, though.
Yes, God knows the final destiny of all those whom He creates. Does His knowledge of a person's refusal of salvation and fellowship with Himself oblige Him not to create them? Well, if God did this, if He used His omniscience to create
only those who would freely choose Him, would this not be to construct the world such that choosing Him would be inevitable? In other words, in a world where
all choose God and any who would not are prevented even from existing, is there genuine freedom? It doesn't seem so to me. But if there is no genuine freedom, there is no genuine love, which is a big problem since love is what God wants as the bedrock of our communion with Him. (
Matthew 22:36-38)
This question is, I think, answered by God in Eden. Why did He place the Forbidden Fruit where Adam and Eve could get at it? He knew its presence in the Garden would ultimately produce the Fall of Man, so why create it at all? Well, because the existence of an actual choice is necessary to genuine free agency. If in Eden there had been no real choice between God's will and the will of Adam and Eve, between obeying God and not, would Adam and Eve have had any real free agency? And if not, could they claim to truly love God? If there was no other option in Eden but to do as God wanted, no avenue to disobedience, their obedience to God wouldn't be a freely-made choice, would it? By virtue of the circumstance, Adam and Eve would have been operating under a sort of passive coercion - like prisoners (though, in a
very nice prison). Without the Forbidden Fruit present in Eden, Adam and Eve would have had no other option but to act as God directed them to and so could not be said to be really freely choosing obedience to Him; and without the opportunity to genuinely, freely choose between God's way and their own, they could not truly love Him.
This is the case, too, of course, for the world at large. For love to exist and be genuinely expressed, there must be a real choice, freely made, to walk with God (or not). As the world that God made illustrates, this necessitates, not just the presence of a genuine choice between God's will and way and our own, but the experience of the consequences of choosing for, and against, Him. If we make a free choice but the results of that choice are instantly eradicated by God when they don't suit Him, does our choice have any meaning? Not as far as I can see. And so, love requires not only a capacity for free agency, and the existence of a real choice between God's way and our own, but the opportunity to pursue the results of our choices, to experience the fruit of our choices, for good or ill.
To boil all this down: God has made our world as it is because love requires such a world. And in such a world it is unavoidable that many will choose against God and bear the consequences of their choice. If another, better world, a world in which more people would have chosen God freely was possible, God, being good, would have made that world. We live in this world, though, which means that our world was the world, out of all possible worlds, in which the maximum number of people possible would freely choose God. Such a world entails a great many people who reject Him but this isn't a testament to the cruelty of God, only to the risks and limits of a world in which people can freely choose for and against their Maker.
newbie here. 