The tension between man’s free will and God’s sovereignty— you can’t resolved one way or the other—and still have Christianity. Why not? Because that that tension is embodied in the person of Jesus Christ who is both fully man and fully God.
I have argued in recent years that the basis for the dynamism of western civilization is the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will as embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. (However, I say that without being able to map God’s sovereignty and man’s freewill over on to competing institutions in the USA for example.)
Anyhow, do you guys buy that argument?
Our Lord Jesus did not follow His will. He followed the will of the Father (”Thine will be done.”, “Not my will by thine”, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
etc.)
There are only two wills, following what is the will of the Lord and following our own corrupt wills. “Free will” implies that we can freely choose to live a life like Christ on our own volition. This is heresy. If one has the power to freely choose to follow Christ, 100% of the time, why don’t they? The answer to that question alone should tell one that free will does not exist.
I do buy that argument. It is a tension as old as the Fall, when Adam and Eve, having chosen to assert their own sovereignty over God's through disobedience. God allowed that for his own purposes and placed them, outside the garden, in a world where they (and we) could discover the ultimate results of asserting man's sovereignty over God's.
I suggest that all of human history, all our technologies, all our accomplishments, all our politics, cities, nations and institutions—as well-intended and relativistically good as they are—are the result of our efforts to establish our own kingdom on the earth.
But we are not without hope as Christ entered into history, took all of our sin and fallenness on himself, and gave us the hope of a future in which he will once again reign, both in the human heart and in all of the universe.
You might want to also take a look at Stanley L. Jaki's seminal book: Creation and Science. Jaki considers belief in the Creator God of the Bible as the unique factor which made modern science possible - and which in fact flourished only in the West. He substantiates this thesis with meticulous historical research. One can see manifold evidence of this historically in the East - the societal decay of India, for example, has been partially ameliorated by the reforms brought about by the British.
Islam is a special case: it affirms a Creator God but makes Him so remote and unknowable that true progress is almost impossible. In addition, the notion of fate relieves Muslims of genuine responsibility for their actions, without which personal and societal development cannot take place. I have lived in the Middle East and can attest to the abject inability to effect real progress - for many reasons that have unfortunately become nearly hereditary after centuries of living under Islam.