Why can’t everyone know Jesus/God to begin with and then walk away from Him if they want, instead of learning about God and drawing near to Him? Why are our hearts wicked? Why not just give us the knowledge of right and wrong and let us choose?

Why can’t everyone know Jesus/God to begin with and then walk away from Him if they want, instead of learning about God and drawing near to Him?
Why are our hearts wicked? Why not just give us the knowledge of right and wrong and let us choose? I understand that we would need to know of sin—right and wrong—to choose to be in relationship with God, but why “stack the deck” so against us?
We did. When Adam and Eve arrived on the scene in the Garden of Eden, they did know God to begin with and then walked away from Him when they disobeyed Him regarding the forbidden fruit. The Bible also teaches that, even as they were the first humans, they also represented the humanity that was to follow. Paul says it this way: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—Paul, Romans 5:12. He reiterated this in his first letter to the church at Corinth: For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive—Paul, I Corinthians 15:21-22. In other words, sin is now our “default” position; in fact, that nature (what the New Testament calls our “sinful nature”), even once we surrender to Christ, will continue to have influence on us. It is only after we move from our mortal bodies to our immortal ones that that original existence of sinless perfection will once again be restored in us as our “default position.” As God promised through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No long will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more”—Jeremiah 31:33b-34. And we can never lose sight of the fact that what God desires is relationship—people choosing Him out of a love created in response to His love for them. The fact is, God has done everything necessary for our salvation. Even the fact that we are offered salvation in the first place is testimony to God’s passion for us. And yet, as is so brilliantly pointed out in the last book of the Bible, God waits on us: Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me—Jesus Christ, Revelation 3:20. Think about that: The God of the entire universe, the power of the entire universe, the cause of the entire universe, waits at our heart’s door and knocks. He could knock the door down, but He doesn’t force Himself on us. That’s not relationship, and relationship is what His Son died for.