I hope you can read the image posted just below. You can click on it to see a larger and more readable version. Its basic premise is this: according to someone the poster had a discussion with (a “debate” actually), God has predetermined and predestined everything. He is in complete control. He is pulling every string. Nothing happens that isn’t His doing. According to this argument, the concept of free will is merely an illusion. And it makes “Judgement Day” an exercise in the ridiculous: people will be judged based on actions over which they had no control. Everything, after all, is predestined and predetermined. It hardly seems fair, does it?
The poster (“Anonymous”) makes perfectly valid points. But whoever he had a debate with is disseminating inaccurate information. Let’s cut him some slack, because plenty of pew-fillers believe the same thing: that God is in charge, and everything that happens – yes, everything – is in some way or another an expression of his will.
Here is a sho-nuf fact: the Bible does not teach that. And if it did, it would make no sense. The key point within the context of the Church of the Infinite Chasm, is that misconceptions of this sort are the very things that turn people away from true religion. Impersonal science and blind evolution seem a lot more benevolent than the mysterious God the churches portray.
Many people have a mistaken viewpoint of power. Let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that God is all-powerful. Does that mean he always must use all his power? Must he know everything that will happen in advance in order to be all-powerful?
Not at all. If so, then he is actually a prisoner of his own power. He would be like a Commander in Chief who, in the face of an imminent threat, is forced to use every last weapon in his entire arsenal, right down to the last bullet. One would have to call that an indiscriminate use of power.
That is not how God uses his power. He does so judiciously. By choice. As needed. Reason on this for a moment: if we take the Bible at its word, God never had a beginning. He is eternal. And then at some point (“in the beginning”) he chose to become a creator. He built Adam and Eve, says the Bible, and gave them one simple law: “eat anything you want, except the fruit from this one particular tree.” With me so far?
If we accept the predetermination and predestination argument many so-called Christians believe, what that means is that for untold eons of time, only one being was in existence. That further means that all of the heinous acts of human history – wholesale genocidal slaughter, rape, cancer, hatred, warfare, poverty, starvation and a thousand other horrible things – existed in exactly one place: the mind of God. And it further means he saw all that and deliberately set it in motion. He knew Adam and Eve would fail the test and get the evil, murderous ball rolling in no time at all.
Once again: this is not what the Bible teaches.
Does being GOD mean that you must know everything in advance? To answer, imagine yourself reading a mystery novel. You have the ability at any time (call it “the power”) to turn to the final chapter and see how it’s all going to end. But just because you can does not mean you have to.
There is an account in the Bible (Genesis 22) which shows that God is like the mystery novel reader who doesn’t peek. To some people it’s a controversial account: God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and then intervenes at the last minute to stop him from doing so. Let’s skip the controversy for the moment and focus on the foreknowledge issue: after Abraham almost went through with it and God intervened, the account says that God was impressed with Abraham’s obedience and said something like “now I know you are faithful.”
Take the Bible at its word: everyone is free to choose to do whatever they want. That has been true since Adam and Eve. We may have to face various consequences caused by our choices, but we are free to make them. And God does not have every action of every person predetermined. Neither logic nor the Bible’s pages support that argument.
(PS: as for the controversial story in Genesis, it’s not as horrible as you might think. “Like hell it isn’t! This supposedly benevolent God asks a man to murder his own son? And let him almost go through with it? That is revolting. It’s like some cruel puppet master making his own children an evil science experiment!” So noted. But remember two things: Abraham’s belief was that God could and would resurrect his son. Secondly, God wasn’t asking Abraham to do something he wouldn’t do himself: God’s own son, says the Bible, willingly accepted the assignment to come to Earth to lay down his life as a sacrifice on behalf of every human. The Abraham story was an illustration of that unselfish act which, unlike in Abraham’s case, actually ended in the death of God’s own son.)