Freewill and Predestination.

Recently I had a small but serious discussion with one of my dear friend and brother about freewill and God’s providential will.

Well! The actual story start from way back when, one Sunday, we were coming from Hillvue to campus. I said there are things that we can never understand or know about God fully, like the freewill and predestination. He said it is simple and easy and give me a really convincing theory. In God’s providential will He predestined each and every thing, but for us who don’t know the plan we have a choice to make even though we eventually make the predestined choice. I don’t know if I felt like my pride is broken or if it is my subconscious wisdom, I felt like something is wrong with it. I thought for a second and the first thing that strike me is may be this is a revelation to me by God for all my prayers to tell me the truth and I shouldn’t let Satan tempt me question it. At the same time my second (I don’t know which one is bad and which one is good, so I call first and second) conscience argued what if it is wrong? Do you want to believe something blindly? Question and seek! Moses asked for reconfirmation again and again. So, I thought a while. I asked him does it not sound like God is making us sin. He said Satan couldn’t do anything without God’s permission. It is in His providential will, in the beginning, that God ordained that Satan be. Satan tempts and make us sin under the God’s permission, but it is not God who tempt or make us sin. My next question is so anything we do, even sin or any bad choice, it is God’s ordination. So the people who don’t accept God are doing it because God ordained it so. If they are obeying the God’s ordained plan how are they called the disobedient or the sinful? He said one shouldn’t take the extreme and do what ever they want to do and call it upon God. I was immediately tempted to say isn’t that a question of choice? Well! I didn’t ask that question for I assumed what the answer would be. A week or so later I realized he is a hard core five point Calvinist. I have no problem with Calvin, but I strongly believe no one on the earth, except for Jesus, have known the mysteries of God. May be they mastered the art of explaining the reasons by making an intellectual argument, but no one ever brought the two ends together without denying the other end at one point or the other. So whenever I read a book, I try to draw a fine line by separating topics or arguments that are supported with scripture and arguments drawn from scriptures with the application of Human logic. So I do with the Calvin. But I do believe the five points are true. It is like the condition of necessity and sufficiency of a truth. The points are all necessary, but not sufficient to prove the Doctrine of Truth. Well! I know very too little compared to Calvin to criticize him. Now, again I tried to tell him that make scripture your standard and not Calvin five points, but I messed it up as usual and felt like a fool when he replied saying that Scripture is his standard and Calvin’s points are just the summarized way to know the whole truth. Well! I tried to divert the topic and made another mistake. I said something that lead the topic again to the freewill and predestination. The discussion ended me defeated, I think. Well! at the end, He stood with God planned everything for His glory, He knew the fall, the cross and the resurrection, We didn’t kill Jesus, but we are found guilt in God’s eye for it, God picked in the Beginning who will be saved and who don’t, which in the sense they do what God planned and still some go to hell to suffer for eternity and it glorify God. I see some really good points, but some things really bothered me. He gave me a lot of scriptural references to support His argument. Well! I stood with we can make a choice and if it is Good or Bad it is not ordained by God, but he do have a plan for each one of us which we can not spoil what ever we do and each moment of our life is recorded in his book of life. Our sin (We) killed Jesus. Our prayers change God’s plan for good. I could be wrong and I wish I were. For if I know everything right, I would be God which is a blasphemy or may be I’m correct and that will be God’s grace.

Well! The next two days I tried to get over with it and started reading books about freewill and predestination with no biased ideas. I re read Calvin’s commentaries. I read my systematic theology book. I finally got convinced that Bible directly point at the providential will of God and only predestination. This made me realize why Hinduism believes in what it believes. My quest for the psychology bridge between Vedas and Bible had one thread tide now. I know how God work with simple things to prepare for the future big things. My dream of writing a book explaining how Vedas have evolved from the ideas of Bible and Biblical History will one day be blessed and will show the light unto the whole India and so the world. Well! May be he had other plans to use this. I do believe that God reveal his plans before they happen.

Well! Then I tried to contradict my new belief to refine my stand by finding scriptures to support freewill. I found two. Well! They can still be interpreted as predestination. So, finally I gave up and fell to my knees and prayed. How powerful and wonderful is it. How did I miss it all this time? Why haven’t I done that before? ( I don’t mean I was not praying everyday, but I was not praying to give me wisdom to understand this, may be I was being proud to do that) As I was talking to God, he started taking to me back. I heard this voice saying if I’m the voice whom are you listening to? I first didn’t understand the question. I tried to figure out. I gave up too soon for I know better and asked God to talk to me and told Him that I want to listen to Him. I didn’t remember clearly now if it was the voice or it occurred in my mind, but suddenly the whole Bible stories played before my eyes and all the verses I read been read to me. Well looked all overlapping and fading, but one thought sparked a light that hit my forehead. The thought of how people have been disobeying God and how he has been calling them to turn back. If they are all doing what God planned as predestined, why is God calling them to turn away? Doesn’t He know what He planned? Well! It is clearly talking about freewill and choice. May be not directly, but clearly. How is God glorified when you do what He makes you do and He sends you to hell? Where is God’s love and forgiveness? What did Jesus die for? Just for God’s plan? So do you call it death? How compassionate the cross and resurrection is if it is just a plan and not reality. May be I’m asking some ridiculous questions, but these are the questions that strike my brain on revelation. It made me fell down to my completely with tears in my eyes and the only words I said is ‘God you are awesome!’

Yet! I woke up with no clear answer to the question, but with a much better understanding of where I should stand and why.

It doesn’t matter if you choose or it is predestined, as long as you have a choice, you have hope and as long as you have breath you have a choice. The choice can be good or bad, it had consequences and you need to take the responsibility.