It is Your Destiny
Posted in Nick's Posts, Predestination 4 comments
In 2005, I really struggled with the concept of Predestination. We were discussing it at the Baptist Student Union and one student in particular was making a very compelling argument in favor of it. I don’t remember all that was said, but God gave me an analogy to make sense of it all.
Consider the movie Paycheck. In this movie, Ben Affleck’s character creates a machine that can see into the future. Because of this, he knows that his employers are going to have him murdered. However, he signed a contract that the company will wipe his memory soon, which means he will forget that he is going to be murdered. In order to remind himself and keep himself from being murdered, he mails himself an envelope with an assortment of everyday items. Any normal person looking at these items would never imagine they held any significance. However, because Ben can see into the future, he knows that these items will lead him down a path that prevents him from being murdered.
Let me give one example of how an item helped. At one point, Ben is sitting on a bus. He is looking at a diamond ring from the envelope and wondering why he sent it to himself when suddenly a kid grabs the ring and runs off the bus. Ben, thinking he needs the ring, runs after the kid. In the end, he doesn’t get the ring back. However, the really significant thing is that at the end of the chase, he is exactly where he needs to be in order for something else to happen that will keep him on the path of not being murdered.
When the kid took the ring, Ben had free will to decide how to respond. However, since he had looked into the future, he already knew that he would respond by running after the kid and ending up where he needed to be. Thus, he influenced his own free will to achieve an end he desired.
Now, with some careful thought, we can see how this analogy can give us insight into how God works. God is sovereign, which means He is in control at all times. What is it that God controls? He controls the items that are in the envelopes given to each one of us. As humans, we are very, very limited in how far we can see the consequences of an action, but God sees all of time, so He knows how even something small might affect things far into the future.
For example, let’s create a fictional woman named Jill. In the “envelope of items” that God has for Jill, there is a flat tire. Jill is driving down the highway one day when she gets a flat and has to pull over. As she is sitting there, worrying about what to do next, a nice guy named Jack comes along and helps her put on a spare tire. That is how Jack and Jill meet. From there, romance blossoms, they get married, and they have several children. Since God had a clear view of all of time, He knew that the flat tire would have this result.
The same kind of logic can be applied toward salvation and the concept of Predestination. Since God is in control of what items are in our envelope, He uses that control to lead us toward salvation.
But now we arrive at the point at which I struggled so much and the point that makes Predestination such a hot topic. If God is in complete control, if He determines the items that are in each person’s envelope that will lead them to the consequences He desires, why isn’t everyone saved?
Many people have attempted to answer this question and have come to the conclusion that if God can, but God doesn’t, God must not want to. In other words, God must choose certain people to be saved and certain people not to be saved.
For the longest time, I really struggled with this. I had always thought that God was all-loving and wanted everyone to be saved, but that didn’t seem to match up with the evidence that: 1) God can control our choices by controlling the items in our envelope, and 2) not everyone is saved. The argument could be made that we all have free will, which God cannot control. However, that is only partially true. Even though we have free will, God can control our actions by a combination of 1)controlling the items in our envelope, and 2) knowing how the items in our envelope will cause us to act.
Let’s say a fictional character named Joe is in a room. God wants Joe to leave the room, but Joe, who has free will, decides to stay. So God decides to put a fire in Joe’s envelope. A gas leak in the room is ignited by an appliance and the room bursts into flame. Now, Joe still has free will. He could still stay in the room if he wanted to, but God, who can see the future, knows that the fire will cause Joe to want to leave the room.
Even though we have free will, God can still influence every choice we make.
So, I hope now you can see the dilemma. I struggled with this to the point where I finally pleaded with God to either give me answers or give me peace of mind. He delivered. He led me to a verse for encouragement, then He gave me peace of mind for several years, and about a year ago, He gave me answers.
The verse that He led me to was 1 Timothy 2:4, “[God] wants all mean to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” This verse was particularly encouraging because it counter-acted the logic that if God can, and God doesn’t, God must not want to. Now I had an absolute statement that said in no uncertain terms that God does want everyone to be saved.
That being said, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it all. I kept running into the same roadblock – the contradiction that 1) God can (through controlling the items in our envelope), and yet 2) God doesn’t (because not everyone is saved). Luckily, God gave me peace of mind for several years, as I mentioned, and I was able to be content knowing that God loves all of us and wants us all to be saved.
But about a year ago, God delivered again, this time by giving me answers. Consider again the logic: if God can, and God doesn’t, God must not want to. We have already proven through 1 Timothy 2:4 that God does want everyone to be saved. Logically, then, one of the other two statements must be false.
Prepare yourself, because you’re about to think that I’m either crazy or committing blasphemy. The false statement is that God can. Yes, you read that right. I’m saying that God can’t. Keep reading, though, because I am by no means questioning the power of God.
Even God has limits. In this instance, God is limited by the method He has chosen to reveal Himself to the world. He has chosen us, sinful human beings who are made acceptable to God only by the blood of His Son, to be His Body in this world. Just as Jesus was God on Earth in flesh and blood, Christians with the Holy Spirit are God on Earth. However, unlike Jesus, we Christians sin. And what is the definition of sin if not “doing what God doesn’t want us to or not doing what God does want us to”? How can God carry out His wishes if His Body on Earth will not respond to His commands? God can’t because we won’t.
If God tells you to talk with someone else about Jesus and you don’t, then that is one item that should have been in that person’s envelope that isn’t. From there, the situation snowballs. Since you didn’t talk with that man about Jesus (a.k.a. God’s Body wouldn’t respond to His desires), that man may never accept Christ, which means the items he was supposed to put in other people’s envelopes will never arrive. Now God’s Body has been denied growth.
Once again, God can’t because we won’t. Following this train of logic, I have concluded that God gets each person as close to salvation as God’s Body will permit Him to. It has never been so clear to me how powerful sin is or how vitally important it is that we respond to all of God’s desires. It breaks my heart to know that I am basically a broken limb on God’s earthly Body. However, I am encouraged that God continues to work and that, armed with this new wisdom, I will move forward with new determination to make at least my part of God’s Body completely responsive to all of His desires.
Consider the movie Paycheck. In this movie, Ben Affleck’s character creates a machine that can see into the future. Because of this, he knows that his employers are going to have him murdered. However, he signed a contract that the company will wipe his memory soon, which means he will forget that he is going to be murdered. In order to remind himself and keep himself from being murdered, he mails himself an envelope with an assortment of everyday items. Any normal person looking at these items would never imagine they held any significance. However, because Ben can see into the future, he knows that these items will lead him down a path that prevents him from being murdered.Let me give one example of how an item helped. At one point, Ben is sitting on a bus. He is looking at a diamond ring from the envelope and wondering why he sent it to himself when suddenly a kid grabs the ring and runs off the bus. Ben, thinking he needs the ring, runs after the kid. In the end, he doesn’t get the ring back. However, the really significant thing is that at the end of the chase, he is exactly where he needs to be in order for something else to happen that will keep him on the path of not being murdered.
When the kid took the ring, Ben had free will to decide how to respond. However, since he had looked into the future, he already knew that he would respond by running after the kid and ending up where he needed to be. Thus, he influenced his own free will to achieve an end he desired.
Now, with some careful thought, we can see how this analogy can give us insight into how God works. God is sovereign, which means He is in control at all times. What is it that God controls? He controls the items that are in the envelopes given to each one of us. As humans, we are very, very limited in how far we can see the consequences of an action, but God sees all of time, so He knows how even something small might affect things far into the future.
For example, let’s create a fictional woman named Jill. In the “envelope of items” that God has for Jill, there is a flat tire. Jill is driving down the highway one day when she gets a flat and has to pull over. As she is sitting there, worrying about what to do next, a nice guy named Jack comes along and helps her put on a spare tire. That is how Jack and Jill meet. From there, romance blossoms, they get married, and they have several children. Since God had a clear view of all of time, He knew that the flat tire would have this result.
The same kind of logic can be applied toward salvation and the concept of Predestination. Since God is in control of what items are in our envelope, He uses that control to lead us toward salvation.
But now we arrive at the point at which I struggled so much and the point that makes Predestination such a hot topic. If God is in complete control, if He determines the items that are in each person’s envelope that will lead them to the consequences He desires, why isn’t everyone saved?
Many people have attempted to answer this question and have come to the conclusion that if God can, but God doesn’t, God must not want to. In other words, God must choose certain people to be saved and certain people not to be saved.
For the longest time, I really struggled with this. I had always thought that God was all-loving and wanted everyone to be saved, but that didn’t seem to match up with the evidence that: 1) God can control our choices by controlling the items in our envelope, and 2) not everyone is saved. The argument could be made that we all have free will, which God cannot control. However, that is only partially true. Even though we have free will, God can control our actions by a combination of 1)controlling the items in our envelope, and 2) knowing how the items in our envelope will cause us to act.
Let’s say a fictional character named Joe is in a room. God wants Joe to leave the room, but Joe, who has free will, decides to stay. So God decides to put a fire in Joe’s envelope. A gas leak in the room is ignited by an appliance and the room bursts into flame. Now, Joe still has free will. He could still stay in the room if he wanted to, but God, who can see the future, knows that the fire will cause Joe to want to leave the room.
Even though we have free will, God can still influence every choice we make.
So, I hope now you can see the dilemma. I struggled with this to the point where I finally pleaded with God to either give me answers or give me peace of mind. He delivered. He led me to a verse for encouragement, then He gave me peace of mind for several years, and about a year ago, He gave me answers.
The verse that He led me to was 1 Timothy 2:4, “[God] wants all mean to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” This verse was particularly encouraging because it counter-acted the logic that if God can, and God doesn’t, God must not want to. Now I had an absolute statement that said in no uncertain terms that God does want everyone to be saved.
That being said, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it all. I kept running into the same roadblock – the contradiction that 1) God can (through controlling the items in our envelope), and yet 2) God doesn’t (because not everyone is saved). Luckily, God gave me peace of mind for several years, as I mentioned, and I was able to be content knowing that God loves all of us and wants us all to be saved.
But about a year ago, God delivered again, this time by giving me answers. Consider again the logic: if God can, and God doesn’t, God must not want to. We have already proven through 1 Timothy 2:4 that God does want everyone to be saved. Logically, then, one of the other two statements must be false.
Prepare yourself, because you’re about to think that I’m either crazy or committing blasphemy. The false statement is that God can. Yes, you read that right. I’m saying that God can’t. Keep reading, though, because I am by no means questioning the power of God.
Even God has limits. In this instance, God is limited by the method He has chosen to reveal Himself to the world. He has chosen us, sinful human beings who are made acceptable to God only by the blood of His Son, to be His Body in this world. Just as Jesus was God on Earth in flesh and blood, Christians with the Holy Spirit are God on Earth. However, unlike Jesus, we Christians sin. And what is the definition of sin if not “doing what God doesn’t want us to or not doing what God does want us to”? How can God carry out His wishes if His Body on Earth will not respond to His commands? God can’t because we won’t.
If God tells you to talk with someone else about Jesus and you don’t, then that is one item that should have been in that person’s envelope that isn’t. From there, the situation snowballs. Since you didn’t talk with that man about Jesus (a.k.a. God’s Body wouldn’t respond to His desires), that man may never accept Christ, which means the items he was supposed to put in other people’s envelopes will never arrive. Now God’s Body has been denied growth.
Once again, God can’t because we won’t. Following this train of logic, I have concluded that God gets each person as close to salvation as God’s Body will permit Him to. It has never been so clear to me how powerful sin is or how vitally important it is that we respond to all of God’s desires. It breaks my heart to know that I am basically a broken limb on God’s earthly Body. However, I am encouraged that God continues to work and that, armed with this new wisdom, I will move forward with new determination to make at least my part of God’s Body completely responsive to all of His desires.
Will you?
4 comments:
Nick,
I find your analogy and argument to be very interesting. I have also struggled with the topic of predestination; however, I cannot say I have come to same conclusion.
The difference in our conclusions stems from a difference in assumptions. You assume “God controls everything.” I don’t. Please don’t take this the wrong way; I understand fully that God is capable of controlling everything. That is, in fact, the key point. God can control everything; He chooses not to. (You allude to this in your statement “Even God has limits.” I agree, but He is limited only because He chooses to be limited.)
This of course, brings up the question, why does God choose not to control everything? The answer is simple: God is love and because He is love, He gave us free will.
In the Paycheck example you give, God is the one who puts everything into the envelope. But there are many things that affect our decisions (the “items in our envelopes”) that cause us to do things that are not God pleasing. These are temptations. But in James 1:13 it says “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (emphasis mine). God will never give us anything that will cause us to sin, and yet we face the decision to sin everyday. Where, then, do these “items” come from?
Enter your missing pieces: Satan and our sinful human nature. Satan is the father of lies and master of coercion (take a look at Job for an example). It is he who puts things like lust, anger, gluttony, and other things that cause us to act in ways contrary to God’s will into our envelopes. And he makes them look attractive; he does everything he can to make us act against God. And when we act on those things against God (which we all do), then we are damned to hell. This is where predestination is. Because of our sinful nature, we are all predestined for hell.
But God doesn’t want us to go to hell. That is why He put one thing, and only one thing, in our envelope: the grace that comes from faith in Christ Jesus our Savior. When we accept and act on that, we are saved. God wants us to come to Him of our own accord and not because He forced us. That’s why He gave us free will, the freedom to choose to between sin and grace. And though He may know the outcome of our struggle, He does not make the choice for us nor coerce us to do what He wants.
It’s our decision.
Hanna,
Thanks for your well-thought-out comments.
I think we're on the same page to an extent, although your comments have made me aware that I probably under-emphasized Satan's role.
I agree with your comment, "why does God choose not to control everything? The answer is simple: God is love and because He is love, He gave us free will." Free will is what I was referring to when I said, "God can't because we won't."
Now enter Satan, the originator of why we won't. Where the misunderstanding occurred is when you said, "In the Paycheck example you give, God is the one who puts everything into the envelope." I can understand where you got that impression and that's why I'm saying that I probably under-emphasized Satan's role. While it's true that God does not tempt us as mentioned in James 1:13, Satan has no power except that which God allows him to have. Therefore, nothing enters our envelope except that which God has allowed. God doesn’t put temptation into our envelope, but it cannot be there unless he allows it. Job is a great example of this. God chooses EVERYTHING that goes into our envelope.
With that in mind, it should be easy to imagine the implications. God can see all of time and can see every possible outcome of every possible thing that could be in our envelopes, including temptation, which makes the choice of following God or not a truly free will choice.
In a perfect world in which temptation was present, but nobody gave in to it (therefore still allowing the free will choice of God), everything God intended for everyone’s envelopes would arrive. However, the power of sin is that it prevents everything God intends for each person’s envelope from arriving (see the examples I give in the second-to-last paragraph).
So that is how I came to the conclusion that “God gets each person as close to salvation as God’s Body will permit Him to.” Another way of putting my revelation might be, “this is how free will and predestination co-exist.”
I disagree with you that predestination means we are destined for Hell (although I agree with the sentiment that sin leads to Hell and we are all sinners). If you look at predestination in the Bible, it refers to Heaven, not Hell. Consider Ephesians 1:4-5, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” And a verse that emphasizes even more the choice that God makes in regards to our envelope, Ephesians 1:11, “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.”
I hope this better explains the point I was trying to make as well as how I reached those conclusions. :)
Nick,
Looking back at what I wrote I did misuse the term predestination. It is the term itself I have a problem with so I shouldn’t have used it.
Here’s the problem I have with the term. If something is predestined, it is pre-determined for us. We do not have control over the outcome. This means God chooses for us where we will go when we die. But God does not choose for people to go to hell. Yes, He knows what the outcome will be because He is outside of time, but He does not make the decision for us. Knowing and choosing/deciding/determining are not the same thing.
It’s the same with the envelope. Yes, God allows Satan to put temptations in our path, but He does not choose for those temptations to be there. Satan has the choice to put temptations in our envelope or not. Allowing and choosing aren’t the same thing.
I just wanted to clarify a few points I don’t think I explained quite the way I wanted to last time.
(By the way, I do like the post, even though I don’t agree. It made me think :))
A comment towards the envelope items and who puts them in. Though this could be interpreted as more of reaction to than an action of putting in, my point however is towards the latter.
James 1:14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
Often times these temptations or sins don't have to be instigated or brought about by old red belly, but come from a closer source...ourselves. We can put into our own envelopes things that shouldn't be in there.
Another comment or question towards the "predestined for hell" comment. Do you mean the human condition of being predisposed to sin which leads to death? The intention or purpose of God upon creation of man being for close relationship with him, which is slightly different than being predestined or pre-determined for either close relationship with him or towards a destination of hell. It is the sinful nature that has produced the result which could be seen as a predetermination for hell since we are all born sinful.
One last comment addressing God being limited to bringing forth salvation in him or knowledge of him to strictly what his followers are willing to participate in or be obedient to does not quite line up. For indeed all creation is an indication of his handiwork and the mark of a creator for those willing to examine and listen to it.
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
or further
Numbers 22:28 And the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam...
Also we can't forget that God's glory was displayed even through the unyielding pharoah and how he dealth with Moses and the Isrealites.
Post a Comment