How should an individual explain that believing in God is a command but also free will?

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Spirituality is belief built on top of belief. Your understanding that God commands you to believe in him is itself a belief. It’s built on top of the belief that God exists. Some people believe in God, but not that he commands you to believe in him.

To me the weird logic comes in not in what God’s command does to free will, that’s easily explainable. You command your kids to be good, doesn’t mean they always will. There’s a vast space you can play in while still adhering to the letter and spirit of any command. Commands, even those issued by deities, could never restrict your freedom so thoroughly that it can be said that you no longer have free will. Nothing does that, not even slavery.

You always have a choice. That choice can be made harder or easier by someone with power, such as God. God might not exactly “strike you down where you stand,” but He can pretty much alter anything in your life, driving you fortune or misery. That’s not just a power he has, by the way. You can also make anything you want out of life, people can find deep meaning and purpose in anything, even suffering. If you find deep meaning and purpose in something, then you don’t really care whether God is making things easier on you. Sure, it’d be nice, but it won’t change what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

No, free will is easily reconcilable with the belief that God commands you to believe. What’s weird to me is that people are imagining God, and then imagining his divine command. Sure, you believe in God, God is real, but you also imagine him. Everyone has their own personal interpretation of God, and that interpretation reflects you more than it reflects God. God is real, but he is also imaginary. That’s precisely what allows Him to be all things to all people.

It’s the circular logic of the divine command that weirds me out. You first believe in God. Then you imagine that God commands you to believe in him. That doesn’t seem weird to you? You already believed in God, why would He need to command you to? God’s not stupid, He doesn’t think his command is going to affect anyone who doesn’t already believe in him.

No, this is, dare I say, laziness. He doesn’t just want you to believe, that’s just silly. The thing I imagine God wants people to do for him is glorifying. He doesn’t just want you to believe, He wants you to glorify Him. To life your life out in service to Him. To channel his divine energy into great works. To appropriate the grace and qualities of the example He put on the Earth for people to witness, Jesus.

God’s grace and mercy is infinite. Ours as humans is limited. The command to glorify God is not like your boss’s platitudes about the company mission. No, we glorify God because it fulfills us and gives us purpose. There is no bottom line on Heaven’s balance sheet. All that glory just collects and simmers and grows like stone soup.