We just finished an adult Bible study series at my church on election/predestination today. Boy, was that an interesting one! We certainly don’t shy away from the difficult topics. That is one of the things I like best about my pastor. It turns out that my pastor and I are pretty much aligned on this topic. I assure you that isn’t always the case. I will have to think and study this some more and then maybe do a series on predesitnation here some day. I just wanted to make a quick post here to maybe get you (and myself) thinking a little about it.
Much of the discussion today centered around free will. If God does indeed give us free will then how much of our actions are predestined by him? As you know if you follow this blog at all, I am one of those who believe strongly in the concept of free will ordained by God. Without free will there cannot be love and as we saw on the recent study on this blog Jesus was almost totally about love. Love very much depends on free will. If we program our computer to type (or say) “I love you” everyday then does the computer actually love you? Of course it doesn’t, it is just putting out what you programmed it to do. It doesn’t have any feelings; it is just a computer (robot). The same goes for us. If we are predestined (programmed) by God then we have no say in what our actions are! God did not make robots but instead gave us free will to make our own decisions. Sometimes, and maybe most times, we screw it up and make the wrong decisions but that is part of free will isn’t it? Our free will along with allowing us to make mistakes also allows us to truly love God and our fellow man.
Sometimes I think we think too much about this sort of thing. It is infinitely complicated for us but of course quite simple for our infinite God.