Free will as choosing or rejecting meaning

 
Religion sells itself on the basis of meaning for life. Religion says that God gives us free will to choose meaning for our existence. We have to choose whatever it is that makes it worthwhile. And needless to say each religion claims that its doctrines and morals and ideas about God do the trick!
 
The doctrine that God gives us free will so that we may love or not love means that if God is the source of all love then ultimately all love should be directed to him. Free will supposedly gives us the dignity and potential to love God alone.
 
If you do good for others without thinking of God then it is an abuse of free will. It's a sin.
 
If free will is about the meaning of life, then it is limited. For some people, their lives are so awful right now that they cannot see or feel that it has any meaning. They cannot choose at least right now. Free will that is limited is not free will at all. A semi-choice is not a choice. It means you never know if anything you do says anything about you as a good or bad person.
 
A loving God would not do that to a person if their existence is about loving him.
 
How is the notion that life has meaning supposed to help anybody? There are no guarantees that you will always sense the value of life. If it helps that is down to luck.
 
To say that free will is just about religion implies that all the suffering in the universe is permitted by God because people won't do the right thing by religion and join the right religion. It says that the true religion should see the others as the forbidden fruit that brings about all evil. It will lead to a bloodbath.

Free will is impossible and impossible to explain if we are merely material beings. So religion says the faculty of free will comes from the soul.  Free will is one of the powers of the soul.  This is incomprehensible and sounds like gibberish for the soul cannot have free will as it has no components.  If is not material then it has no parts.  Some define free will only in spiritual or unspiritual terms - it is just about pleasing or displeasing God. That is not the kind of free will we want and it will bear no importance to most people. And often it is held to come from your soul or spirit meaning that as far as your body and brain are concerned anything resembling a will is programmed. That appalling idea infers that even if it is proven you are programmed to murder somebody it still blames you for your soul somehow was still freely choosing to murder!
 
The doctrine that free will is about rejecting or accepting a religion is reprehensible.