Not sure whether to post this here or under "Recapping" so I'll put it both places. I like Weekend Fisher's thoughts, too.

Kierkegaard scholar (and then-Calvin professor) C. Stephen Evans wrote a piece that appeared in Books & Culture magazine entitled "Robots With Choice?" in which Evans reviewed a book of Sproul's and took Sproul to task for not taking the concerns of "free-willists" seriously enough. It's the closest thing I've yet found to articulating my thoughts and frustrations on this issue. The last half of the article is what I really resonate with, although the first half is necessary as setup and (from Evans' perspective as a philosopher) to lay the theological/philosophical groundwordk):

https://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/1998/julaug/8b4034.html

"I share Sproul's concerns about these issues and others that could be mentioned. But it seems there are other legitimate concerns in this area as well, ones that may be motivating his opponents. I shall call these opponents "free-willists," since I am not convinced that all of them are properly labeled Arminians. What are some of them?

"I suppose one such concern is the problem of evil. Many Christians (and non-Christians) wonder how an all-powerful, all-loving God could permit evil. A traditional answer is that evil, at least the evil due to bad choices, is the price God had to pay, and thought worth paying, in order to give humans free will. If God wanted to create free creatures who would love and serve him freely, then we might be able to understand, at least in part, why God allows evil.

"For we humans understand what it is like to give our children freedom; we want our children to love us freely, and few of us would want to substitute robots programmed to "love" us for actual children (though some of us with teenagers might sometimes be tempted by the thought!). So we think God might have a good reason for creating free creatures.

"However, it seems pretty clear that if this argument is to work, freedom must be taken in the incompatibilist sense, not the compatibilist sense. For in the compatibilist version of things, God could have his cake and eat it too. That is, God could create "free" beings and also determine them always to love him. He could have determined them invariably to choose what is right without denying them free will. One might even wonder whether, on the compatibilist model of freedom, if people choose evil, then God is not responsible for those choices. Even if humans are the ones sinning, if God determines the desires and beliefs that produce the sin, then God appears to be the ultimate cause of sin. Such a perspective clearly makes the problem of evil intractable.

"Another concern that the free-willist may have in this neighborhood is the specter of fatalism. If human beings are determined to will what they will, because the will always is shaped by the strongest desires we have and ultimately our desires are causally determined, then it would appear that many of our human activities are irrational, justified only by our ignorance. We often deliberate about which action to take, assuming that more than one alternative is really possible. Evangelists urge people to choose to follow Christ, seemingly assuming that they really have a choice in the matter. We often regret actions we have done, assuming we could have done otherwise. The free-willist is worried that such activities as deliberating, exhorting, and regretting will be pointless if we do not have freedom in a strong sense. And that worry also strikes me as a reasonable concern."