[ivape]

If God was so perfect, why would he create beings that have free will to destroy the life of another?

That is the ultimate intellectual question. But pay attention to the key word, intellectual. You cannot get spiritual answers from an intellectual question. That's what makes faith rather hard at times and often requires meditation.

It actually gives me reason to reject religion as a whole.

Christ, allegedly, died due to the pride of religion. He was very much on a mission to call out the pride, power and arrogance of organized religion. Again, the answers are simply not available in the intellectual domain and must be sought in the spiritual domain.

I'm not even a member of a Church as I mostly do my reading on my own and do my own reflection. I think one of the main things God tries to hammer home is that we are to all have an eternal life in the after-life (which is mercy, because he could just erase us). If eternity is what is at stake, it is probably in our interest to cleanse our soul of whatever makes us shitty humans, lest we enter eternity tainted and unreformed, for a soul like that will be shitty for all eternity.

[NickC25]

>That's what makes faith rather hard at times and often requires meditation.

Faith. Key word, faith. There is no reason for faith, because you're placing faith and (fleeting) hope that some dude in a desert a few thousand years ago found the ultimate way to interact with (his understanding of) humanity's creator, if we even have one. What makes you so 1000000% sure that this guy's understanding of the supernatural is correct? You're assuming that there actually is some omnipresent being that manifested existence, and that same being actually divinely created humanity on purpose, and not only that, gave humanity free will, and not only that, also simultaneously loves and hates you, and will condemn you to eternal hellfire if you don't worship him enough. Oh yeah, according to some, he's got a son too, born of humanity but with magical powers.

Faith. Come on.