Earlier today I began to think about choice. I went out to the refrigerator in my garage looking for a soda. Not just any soda mind you, but a cherry coke. I was jonesing for one. When i got there I found we actually dint have any Cherry Coke, so i started to settle for a regular coke. But I stopped and thought about it for a second. Then put it back deciding I really didnt need to drink a soda in the first place.
But why is that odd? Well it got me thinking about choices we make. Every day we make hundreds of choices big choices like where to go to school, who to date, etc. etc. And we also make smaller ones like banana slurpee or coke slurpee. (Pick banana every time or we will have a problem). But what is choice? Two options are placed in front of us, and we choose the one we see as the best fit for the particular situation.
But is that all or does it go deeper than that? What if all of our choices are already made, and we are simply living them out? God knew if I was going to have a soda today, before i ever woke up this morning. How is that my choice then? But what if this is different? What if humans ultimately don't have choice? I think we do have something to help us with this through. We have reason and understanding.
I think that our choices are already made. We cannot ultimately change the courses of our lives, but we don't know how they are going to turn out. The choices we make today will effect the outcome of tomorrow. But I think there is a more pressing issue with choice, and that is the need to truly understand out choices. In the end the future is not up to us, there is a plan set in motion. We just have to try and understand that plan. If I am sitting at a table eating and I decide I may want some salt on my food, God already knows if I use the salt shaker. It is not my job to try and make that choice. It IS my job however to understand why I am committing this action, not to just blindly step into it. I think that if we as humans can begin to understand choices as opposed to just blindly making them, then we would really be in for a jump in human reason.
3 comments:
heres a question to think about: Is it God's divine will if you mess up and end up living a horribly sinful life, possibly even murdering someone, but in the end repent and come back to the Lord? If all of that sin and evil was part of God's will, wouldn't that make God the author of sin and evil in His own will? I think the Bible teaches that God has predestined us through his foreknowledge, meaning we are predestined because He is omniscient and knows what we will do. But remember, Satan has dominion over this world, and is allowed by God to tempt us and draw us astray from the path that God wants us to travel. Our choices are dependent on whether we are allowing the will of God to be made prevalent in our lives. Saying that our choices, even sin, are preordained by God and there is nothing we can do about it seems to be a little theologically cross. Overall, good post though.
I have come to find that most people would either say. Yes there is a sense that sin is preordained by God. Wouldn't most people say Adam and Eve were preordained to sin? Also, sinful choices as extreme as murder...I think most would say you werent a Christian to begin with so no one would say you were living by God's plan.
This is good discussion man, I wouldn't say that Adam and Eve were preordained to sin, both were created with reason and the ability to choose, and were lead away momentarily from God's plan by Satan. I guess you could call me a compatabilist when it comes to predestination. Think of it as a map. The way I discern the scriptures, I believe God has predestined according to his foreknowledge points in our life that are unchangeble. I think we would agree there. These points can be visualized as destinations on a map, yet we can go of course. In the end however we will hit those points. Free will to choose within the will of God I suppose. Thats the best explanation I've heard to describe such a difficult issue. And yes, I would agree that someone who commits murder after being redeemed has questionable salvation. I would say you could write something on my blog, but blogger locked because it looked like a spam blog. sorry.
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