Last weekend, the some of the ladies of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship got together for an all-girls' fondue night. There was a lot of great discussion about the Scripture and some of our different takes on what the Bible had to say. One topic in particular really stood out to me, though, and it was about how time is perceived. Well, to be more specific, how God perceived time.
One of the girls there believes that everything in time has already happened and is set in stone. God sees the past, present, and future simultaneously (comparable to how Dr. Manhattan sees time). I think the gist of what she said is that God has meticulously planned every event in time and that each one has a purpose and that this belief is very Calvinistic in nature.
However, I don't think it's true. The primary reason for this is the fact that a Hell exists. Now, if God purposely made some people to be nonbelievers, would it not be hypocritical of Him to allow those people to end up there after death? Also, He calls us to spread the word to others so that they may also be redeemed in the eyes of God (and not end up in Hell). Evangelism would be pretty pointless if everything was set in stone already, wouldn't it? I just have a hard time believing that God would plan for us to fall into sin (not to be confused with Him letting us fall into sin. See Luke 15:11-32).
So what do I believe regarding this? Well, have any of you seen the movie Push? If you haven't, then you're better off for it. It was a terrible movie. But anyway, in the movie, there are these people called "watchers" who are able to see into the future. However, the future is constantly subject to change due to...well, stuff happening. So whenever someone makes a decision to do something, the image of their projected future changes a bit.
I'm not saying that God doesn't intervene into our lives at all, but He doesn't necessarily dictate every moment of it. Instead, He manipulates the events happening around and to us based on our decisions. Now, if we were all to obey God's every command like we were supposed to, then I would find the hypothesis that everything that happens in the world was planned by Him to be a bit more believable.
But anyway, that's the end of that spiel. I'm pretty tired, so I'm not sure how much of this is going to sound logical. I'll probably revise it tomorrow.
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2 comments:
Interesting discussion. Definitely a difficult but noble subject.
One word of friendly critique: Your analysis seems to assume that God must see time the same way we do. But God is infinite. We are finite. Shouldn't the way He sees time be different by definition?
But philosophy will only get us so far. What does God say about Himself? There are lots of places we could go (predictions of the Messiah, Revelation, Jesus' announcements of His death and resurrection, etc.), but one of my favorites is Isaiah 37:26.
Well, I will say this: A lot of my reasoning about this revolves around my lack of understanding of things. It sounds weird, but it's true.
"I just don't understand why God would plan for so much conflict between those He considered His people and the 'other' people."
You know what I mean?
But anyway, I'm sure I'll revisit this (in my head, at least) after reading and learning more.
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