What do you think?
As I was looking for something else in the paper today, I read this letter to the editor: I'd like some insights from my friends! It is one of those things that bothers me and I need help reconciling it in my mind! Thanks in advance for your input!!!
Predetermination or choice?
Reporter Editor:
TheReporter.Com
In a recent letter ("Making it easy to choose faith," The Reporter, Sept. 9), the writer explained his reasons for choosing Christianity over Islam. I find this interesting, as I've always been told by Christian leaders that God knows everything that was, is and will be.
Now, if God knows the future, then the future is predetermined and the writer had no choice in whether he would become Christian, Muslim, Jewish or even a worshiper of purple shag carpet. Every breath he takes, every supposedly random thought he thinks, every time he gets up in the morning and "decides" to wear those heinous green polyester slacks - these were not his decisions at all, but were predetermined actions.
I suppose this also means that by Christian rules, Osama bin Laden did not choose to perpetrate atrocities, he was predestined to commit them. And again by Christian rules, God knew in advance the evil that bin Laden would perpetrate in his lifetime, even before he was born.
I would ask that those who are Christian not talk to me about how one chooses to be murderous or virtuous, or how one chooses a particular religion over another. Anyone who believes the Christian tenet of God knowing the future can't believe in the concept of free will.
Paul Domeier, Coarsegold
posted by Michelle | 11:02 AM
7 Comments:
Well here goes...The way that I have tried to reconcile this for myself, Michelle, is this.
God DOES know everything that will happen, but he doesn't CHOOSE for us. There is a difference between directing us like puppets and just knowing HOW we will choose. That is why we have free choice. People define that differently. Think of a clairvoyant for a minute (and no I don't believe necessarily in them, but we do know what the definition of clairvoyant is. I am also not calling God a clairvoyant, just using this as a concrete example) A clairvoyant sees the future (or claims to) but they don't direct the future. That is basically the best understanding I have of free choice. Hopefully others will kick in their comments here, and together, we can sort this out for ourselves. A great conversation for Sunday!
I agree with Susie. I have understood "predestination" to mean that God knows all, but does not MAKE us do anything. We make our choices, He knows we will make those choices, but we are not manipulated. If we were God's puppets why would he choose to have the world look like it does? It doesn't make sense. God is just so much bigger than that.
The one thing that is hard for me to understand about this whole concept of "predestination" is if someone has TRULY NEVER heard the gospel and they die, do they really go to hell? Are they given ANY opportunity to accept Christ? This question is what really confuses me.
Great post Michelle!
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Started reading Velvet Elvis, and here is what Rob Bell has to say about trying to figure out the mystery that is God...
"This is something people have struggled with since the beginning: how to talk about God when God is bigger than our words, our brains, our worldviews, and our imaginations." pg 23
"Or as the question goes in the book of Job: 'Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?' " pg 24
"The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more." pg 25
"The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimatley can't be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not." pg 32
"One of the great 'theologians' of our time, Sean Penn, put it this way: 'When everything gets answered, it's fake. The mystery IS the truth." pg 33
"It's not so much that the Christian faith HAS a lot of paradoxes. It's that it IS a lot of paradoxes. And we cannot resolve a paradox. We have to let it be what it is.
Being a Christian then is more about celebrating mystery than conquering it." pg 34
"Questions, no matter how shocking or blasphemous or arrogant or ignorant or raw, are rooted in humility. A humility that understands that I am not God. And there is more to know.
Questions bring freedom. Freedom that I don't have to be God and I don't have to pretend that I have it all figured out. I can let God be God." pg 30
I understand where this writer is coming from. It was a stumbling block for me as a new Christian, and I imagine that it is for most non-believers when they are weighing their options.
Really, it boils down to this question:
If God is almighty, and He can and does direct my steps, and He can make all the bad things in the world disappear, then doesn't that make him a bad person if He decides not to do so? I mean, if I have the ability to help a drowning person and I don't, doesn't that make me a bad person? How does that not apply to God?
(First off, he does NOT direct our steps unless we ask Him to do so. Sufficient to stand, yet free to fall.)
I read a point of view that may answer this question in The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.
He gives the analogy of a bear, a trap, and a hunter.
(This is in response to the idea that pain in the world means that God doesn't love us.)
Let's imagine that a hunter comes across a bear in a trap in the woods. The bear is in horrible pain. The hunter knows how to work traps. The bear doesn't. It just knows that it is in pain.
The hunter knows that, in order to release the trap, the bear's paw actually has to be pushed FARTHER into the trap to release the mechanism that holds the jaws together.
In order to do so, the hunter must INCREASE the pain to the bear in order to totally ELIMINATE the pain.
Now, if the hunter tried to do so, the bear would think the hunter was mean and evil. The bear might even try to attack the hunter.
If the bear knew that the hunter was only doing what was good for it, it would not try to harm the hunter.
But a bear is only a bear. A bear can only know what it can know.
Same thing with us. We can't see the benefit of our pain. We can't see the good in the evil. Romans 8:28 says that all things work for good for those in Jesus Christ.
Even though God doesn't direct our steps, he could remove our pain. But that wouldn't be good for us.
We would still be caught in the bear trap.
That may be slightly off target to the original question, but it addresses the underlying idea of the editor's perspective.
Dale
You're all making a mountain of a mole hill:
It is a simple paradox, no matter what you want to call it. No one can know the future if the future is shaped by choice. If God knows I'm going to choose to paint my car blue today, then I cannot do anything other than paint my car blue today. If I paint it red, God's vision of the future would have been incorrect.
There's no way around it, and you can't just say "God allows you to choose, but he knows in advance what you'll choose." Think about that - it's just another way of saying the future is predetermined.
Anyhow, none of it really matters if you're Christian, since the whole idea is based on believing in God without proof, and without rules. Faith is all you need.
Rock on.
Paul Domeier
Coarsegold, CA
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