Free Will vs. Predestination, rants of a lunatic

I'll start by saying this, in no way to I intend to go deeply into this subject in this post. This will be more of an eclectic overview of my own views and opinions. This will not be some type of systematic look or approach at the two subjects.

Ahh, much better.

Now, why is there such a hub-bub about Free Will vs. Predestination? Honestly, the more I read of them, think, or even pray, I find myself thinking that it's more of a non-issue than anything. Sometimes, as humans, we will over-analyze something because we cannot fully comprehend it. Not to say that's always a bad thing or should be avoided. It's just that in this case, we've analyzed wrongly (can you tell this is my opinion now??).

Let's look at both sides of the argument, albeit, in generalized and fallacious form:

Free Will

Free Will, the tabula-rasa of the human soul. Freed are we from the divine puppeteer and unleashed to play craps with our daily decisions. God, most likely a firm believer in deism himself, has set things into motion and foregone any semblance of rigid prophecy. We are the deciders of our own future, period. God gives us enough rope to stay safely in the yard at the same time allowing enough leeway with it to wander past the electric fence, trip, and slowly shock ourselves to death. As you're probably aware of now, this is just a general observation of mine on free will. The limits of my understanding in regards to this and the other half of the dichotomous pair should be quite evident.

So, we have the eternal sand box. We can build sand castles, tear them down, restart from scratch. We can dig up earth worms and fossilized excrementum felinus. We can sit and do nothing. We can cry all we want and whine. We can also even step out of the sand box on to the infinite beach of our destinies. Life, while started by God, is ultimately what you make it to be. Sounds grand doesn't it?

Not so fast. There are a lot of holes in this approach. When and where does it say, if we indeed follow the God of the BIBLE, that God has left us to our own devices? I don't mean "Please take a quote in ellipses from your favorite section of scripture you butcher to support your point of view", what I do mean is this: "Show where deism, or free-will, is concretely espoused and stated in scripture and devoid from mentions of any idea of predestine situations 100 verses in either direction." You can't do it. I promise you won't. If you do do it, I'll just have to knee cap you with a crowbar. Because that's what you would deserve for doing such biblical gymnastics.

Too many logical inconsistencies arise when we take free will to our beds. One I could think of, is that somehow the God of ordered creation left his desk and thereby endorsed entropy. If we are truly to have every choice open and available, it cleaves God from his omnipotence and omniscience. Suddenly, the problems of sin, disorder start to outdistance his reach. God is no longer responsible for the earth, nor is he following any type of plan or structure by which to consistently judge. Truly, Free Will's main problem exists in that it places us at the center of the universe. I understand how you might counter all of this, but in order to do so, you must first throw the Bible out of the Free Will van and take the exit to Vacuum Drive. Unfortunately for your hackneyed arguments, we don't exist in a vacuum and it's utterly impossible for us (as mortals) to consider the scope of the Biblical God without his written divine word! I realize I haven't made any logical sentence to establish all that I claim against.

If God has created us and foretold our existence, then it's impossible to choose an avenue of life that he has not known we would do so previously or/and without his involvement.

That rests on the presuppositions that if our God is infinite and all-knowing/powerful/present and is our loving creator (as he says he is) and that the Bible is his divine word (Sola Scriptura) then our existence will reflect exactly that and his nature accordingly. Another presupposition follows such, due to the fall of man by sin. God allowed two choices, we picked one, and now we are serving our pertinence in a world tainted by sin. And while it does approach slippery slope, Christ's arrival and sacrifice could also be used to argue God's effect and non-reluctance to shape events to the benefit of his will and his creation.

You see, what I'm incoherently getting at is that if God loves us, as he states (take that dead horse!), then he would not hang us out to dry with our own mortal, failed understandings. To escape that you really have to abandon the Gospel, the Prophets, and most of the Bible itself. Though I can understand in our society today why Free Will would be popular among Christians. It really does give one a taste of independence and self-worth. Too bad Jesus came to die to save us from such narcissism that ultimately dooms us to a wrathful hell. If you haven't figured out you can't do it on your own by now, you need to take a serious step-back and look at your life.

Enough ranting about Free Will, now on to:

Predestination

And now we have the indomitable steamroller of destiny: Predestination. I find this camp mostly occupied by logicians, self-labeled clever people, and half-empty glass owners. Usually, the dichotomy starts in terms of perception. Predestination isn't exactly a comfy home for those of the idealist/pragmatic persuasion. Enough ad hominem though, let's examine this football squad in Lehman's terms.

God, seated upon his eternal architect's chair, has designed the greatest creation of all. No, I'm not talking about man here, though we're pretty friggin' great I might add. No, this creation has to relate to the fourth dimension. Fourth dimension?? Have I had wayyy too much benadryl today? Perhaps. But give me a second here. When we establish that all things are foreknown and preset, it implies that God has firmly entrenched every direction, path, choice, situation into the very fabric of time. You see, man is fallible and stupid in the way of probability. Time however, provides the perfect vehicle for predestination to take it's roots and ensure we're guided along like lemmings to the destinies that God has chosen for us.

Now that I've removed the responsibility from mankind completely, let's air out predestination a little more. All actions of ours have consequences, just not in the way you or I would normally expect them to. It's like knowing the outcome of a playoff game you've DVR'ed or recorded illegally, it's still a big deal to know who's going to win, but you're still going to watch the game anyway, albeit, with less excitement. To use another horrible analogy, it's like when two cars crash, but not at the err of their drivers, since both were on auto-pilot on pre-determined paths.

In predestination, the great clock maker is obsessed. All things happen without our say. Sin and salvation appear to run amok to us, but are merely falling like dominoes in the pattern set by God. I don't know of many more examples to make this point any more clear, so we'll examine some of the impossibilities this ideology brings up.

First, I'd like to postulate, that if we're truly 100% predestined, it'd be therefore impossible to be aware of such. If there truly were no alternatives, I fail logically to understand how we would manage to be aware of any. It's like living in a vacuum. You have the void and absolutely nothing else. If that is the way it was before your existence and will be afterwards, then there's no way to cogitate something beyond that. That's just me guessing though, and totally an opinion. (I'm kind of following a physics theory here; by just observing, you change the result::by being aware, you can shape/change)

Also, this idea of complete predestination can make God seem pretty cold. Babies are born just to die immediately (or die before birth). Wars happen for reasons unknown. Death becomes part of the plan. Evil is still not God's issue, but it creates some hard theological questions in regards to the fall of man. Was it really Eve and Adam's choice to eat the apple? Or were they predestined to do so. Most theology scholars argue predestination began at the moment they were cast down. I understand that viewpoint, and it makes sense, that in a perfect environ, Adam and Eve were without sin or evil and had the perfect freedom to choose. It wasn't until evil enters the world that God sought to draw up a master plan of Salvation for us. It makes sense, but it does require some creative thinking.

That's about all I can really drag out about Predestination. It's a kind of no-nonsense approach that eliminates our stupidity to a large degree by the forethought of an infinite and all-powerful God.

My Esteemed Opinion

It's neither one or the other, silly! It's 100% both! Suck on that Grudem!

Seriously, give it some thought (and prayer obviously, wouldn't want to follow my train of thought if the Holy Spirit is like "Look, this guy is a blaspheming heretic...you should burn him at the stake..and his blog!") and come back to me on it. I feel like the Bible, not just the OT or the NT, but the whoooooole Bible makes a good case for both of these methods of God's Will. If God is truly omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite, and omniscient, then why can he not have both parameters intertwined and acting out His glorious decisions? God has saved all of mankind, whether they are aware, He has saved me from what I could not save myself. Henceforth, I will never question what He is or isn't capable of.