Tag Archives: Time

Predestination vs Free Will

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One of the most damaging philosophical perspectives I’ve ever encountered is that of predestination. I say that because of predestination’s affect on people when they try to internalize it and it begins to change how they live.

What is free will?

I’ve heard free will defined in various ways. Some people believe that unless a choice is made without the outcome of that choice being known beforehand, that choice is predetermined and thus there is no free will involved.

To me, that seems simplistic, because God must necessarily be outside of time. (or no creator may exist, which I reject as an article of faith–note, that ideology also has negative consequences in the lives and societies of anyone who accepts it).

If God creates time and is not subject to it, then trying to understand how a choice could exist whose outcome is not known to God, who created the time in which it exists is not conducive to sanity.

Maybe a perspective shift is in order?

From our perspective, if God is creating each moment of time as we experience it, and we are able to make choices, then we have to think about this a different way, more in line with ourselves than an attempt at a big-picture perspective.

God gives us free will by enabling us to choose as we make each choice. From our perspective, free will is composed of making choices that have consequences (and frankly, common sense should be applied here).

Try asking a mentally handicapped person whether free will is real. Go ahead and do it in the simplest terms you can think of. Without getting lost in the intellectual weeds, you can’t do it, and they won’t understand it because it’s a stupid question, and to be clear, the point isn’t that it requires great intellect to understand lofty ideas.

The point is that the question of free will from the perspective of someone with a simple, direct connection with reality becomes a tautology. “Of course I am making choices right now that have consequences. What are you? Daft? If I smack you in the face, will that illustrate the point?”

Get your head around it if you can.

I can somewhat successfully complete the mental gyrations necessary to understand that a God who is not subject to time creating people who are able to make choices is a miracle in and of itself (possibly the second-most astounding thing God did).

I can also understand why some physicists and theologians believe that everything that happens is scripted. (From outside of time, how do you understand choice? Choice requires time. Otherwise all you have is being.)

The upshot is that to exist in this world, created by a God not subject to time, choice must be enabled by God in the act of creation.

If you can’t get your head around it, it doesn’t matter anyway.

If you take one thing away from this, let it be the following:

From a human perspective, we must always look at life as if every choice we make MATTERS.

The perspective is the key. If something tempts you to believe that your actions don’t matter, reject it instantly. If you can sort out the intellectual idea of predestination and why it doesn’t matter subjectively to you, that’s great, but don’t let it bother you, because it’s really not material to how you act.

The only possible human reaction to predestination is a bad one.

Because people are designed to take responsibility for their actions and hopefully to make positive choices that have positive consequences, any intellectual gymnastics that distract from that must have negative consequences.

The great danger of predestination is that it tempts us to forfeit responsibility for our actions (and eventually to despair, because something very basic in each of us hungers for responsibility.)

Your beliefs and the actions you take as a result of them matter.

Reality Is in the Eye of the Beholder

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English has past tense (he did, he was), present tense (he does, he is) and future tense (he will do, he will be). I’ve often thought that in order to describe God and his creation, we need an “always” tense. Something like “He do, He exist” would be more appropriate than anything we use, and along with that comes a way of seeing the world that we’re not capable of experiencing and barely able to think about.

God exists outside of time.

A great illustration of this is the way most people think of God, which I think may be an extension of the way deists see God. It might be stated as follows: “He set the world with all its laws in motion and now leaves it to its own devices.”

This unintentionally makes God subject to time. God *did create* something in the past is not the same thing as an act of creation that spans the entirety of time and encompasses the whole act. It also creates too distinct a separation between God and His creation. It might be more correct to say (using, of course, “always” tense) “God create the world.” If you can really wrap your head around that and imagine experiencing it, you’re doing better than I am.

The point I’m making is that God didn’t simply create the world and leave it to go its own way. He is involved in every aspect of His creation. Every atom in every instant of being is under His inspection and is being created, just as every other atom of every instant of being. In God’s experience, there is no difference between beginning and end. They are part of the same act of creation that “exist” (“always” tense).

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” – Colossians 1:16

As I said, we can’t really describe or understand it, but we do have to think about it in some way. I like to see it as a song that God is singing, and every now, every instant of everything every person does is enabled by the fact that God is currently “singing” him doing it.

This is not and CANNOT be thought of as an act of predestination.

That concept is vile and incompatible with reality. Properly used, predestination is simply another attempt at trying to understand God’s perspective, which is dangerous, if it affects our perspective and how we act.

In essence, God’s creation of everything is not something set in motion and abandoned, but of a piece, created and being created, and God is an intimate part of every moment.

Thus, it is in God and through God that everything exists. He is the reference through which it all holds together. In a sense, He is the nexus that pulls everything into perspective.

Reality is not what you perceive it to be. Nor is it what you want it to be. Reality is what it is because that is what it was created to be. It is what He said it is.