How do you bring the downward spiral of age to a halt? It is
as though every man's life follows an inevitable path. Choice, it seems, must
be an illusion. Movie fanatics of Donnie Darko understand this puzzle.
Religious scholars are roused when they hear the word predestination. String
theorists develop theories of what they think is reality is merely a projection
from a different dimension. Philosophers argue whether we even exist and some
go as far as to say that we are mere dreams of God. One thing is for sure, we
have all questioned whether our actions are truly ours.
By now, you my reader, know that I often write from a
Christian perspective. This makes perfect sense since I am a Christian. For
those who do not follow my faith, stick around and see whether this post will
not make you curious.
The question of this post is; do we have free will and how?
There are many theological texts that deal with it. A nice summary on
predestination in Christianity can be found here: http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/what-does-the-bible-teach-about-free-will-and-predestination/.
For now let us put aside our preconceived notions of predestination and just
focus on what the Bible tells us. For one, the Bible is full of passages that
support the predestination hypothesis and the complete free-will hypothesis.
This information alone does not, at first sight, seem to be able to lend more
insight into this question. What else do we know? We know that God says that
man has free will, but at the same time we know that God is omniscient. This in
itself seems even more confusing as seemingly two opposing views now stand next
to each other.
Now that we have set out the problem; God's omniscience vs.
man's free will, we can start to decompose it and see whether we can't find an
answer. I propose a simple theory, I am sure other people have thought of this
too, that attempts to consolidate the apparent contradiction.
1.) People are subject to time, at least what
we naturally observe, that seems to move in a linear direction. God is
unconstrained by time and views the history, the present and the past in the
present (for a lack of better word). Figure 1 attempts to illustrate this view:
We begin our lives at t0 (birth) and we die at time t+T. We make forecasts of
the future. The further into the future our forecasts the worse they become.
I.e. anything in the far future is possible. Thus, the way we experience this
life seems completely random. What we do experience is a sense of free will.
I.e. it is I who make the decisions. This does not subtract the possibility
that certain things in life happen for a reason. The choice that you make,
irrespective of whether a rock was purposefully placed on your path, seems to
be completely yours. Since God is outside the boundaries of time, He observes
everything. The point of birth and the time of death. This does not mean that
God interferes with your decisions. He might direct your path, but your
decision still is only yours. But now you shout at me from behind your glasses
and ask what about Pharaoh? Didn't God say He will harden Pharaoh's heart? Yes
He did. But Pharaoh was not used as a puppet. He still made his own decision,
God only knew what that decision will be.
Figure 1: Simplistic schematic of our perception of time
and possibly God's perception of time
But what about Judas and Christ and the end of time? God
now, it seems, directs and makes man's decision for him. What about the
countless number of people who will never come to God? Did God ordain that?
What does that tell us about God?
Perhaps the starting point to answer such questions would be
to look at the world just before it got created: From nothing God made
something. He knew what His creation would do, He defined the rules of
nature, the spins of planets and everything else. But since He knew what His
creation would do, He knew that His creation would turn their back on Him. Despite
this knowledge God still created us. He knew that man will exit His divine and
holy presence. He knew evil will come forth because of man's decision (here
evil means disobeying God). Yet, He still created us. And knowing that man is
lost without God, God in His goodness made a plan for us so that we can find
redemption and be reconciled with Him as it was the original idea of
creation. Yet in all of this He does not
take away our freedom of choice. Your life might be shortened due to His
intervention, but every present moment you are in control of your decisions. Thus,
God did not create evil and God certainly does not tempt man. What He does,
miraculously, is direct our footsteps so that hopefully we can make right
decisions. Thus, God surely knew how things would play out before He even
created this universe. My every decision today was in God's mind before
anything took form or shape. His plans to rectify my faulty decisions was
ordained before anything started. What we see here is something completely
amazing: God is the centre of everything and nothing can come to being without
God knowing it. Once we understand that God is at the centre, our understanding
of our purpose begins to be realigned with God's will. Everything is full
circle for God and completely deterministic while we experience life as merely
random.
To understand this assume we are parts of a model. We have
an inherent data generating process and are subject to shocks that are
completely random (independently and identically distributed). Thus some days
our behaviour seems completely predictable while on other days our behaviour is
completely random. But for someone who knows what shocks will occur in the
future, that person might have perfect foresight and be able to predict, very
accurately, how events will unfold. God observes all these shocks since He has
that information. God, in other words, has perfect foresight. We are just
unable to predict these shocks with any degree of accuracy, because our
information span is limited to time and space.
Once again, the
crucial question of our existence boils down to whether we believe in God or
not. Since we know that God can direct our paths, does God direct every one's
path to Him? If we are not directed to Him, and have never had any knowledge of
God, how can we then believe in Him? It is the same as living in the absence of
light and never knowing what light is, how can one ever know that such a thing
as light exists? Logically it might be difficult. The Bible is pretty clear
about this. For God loved the world so much that He sent His only begotten Son.
His love for the world is so great that Christ's final commandment to the
disciples were to minister to all the people of the world and to make disciples
of them. The point is that God wants everyone to believe in Him. How He directs
You is His choice, you still decide whether to believe in Him or not. For some
God will reveal Himself in such a way that you cannot deny His existence, for
other the approach is more subtle.
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