Grant - Young Adult #3

If I had to big a topic for dinner discussion, Calvinism vs. Arminianism wouldn't be the topic of choice. Yet somehow my brother and mine's conversation landed on the topic. Do we really have free will? Or did God or some all powerful being set our entire lives out in some predetermined fashion? Or is it both?

Do we really have that much freedom in our lives? Please, go tell a 35 year old Dominican woman with 4 children, barely scraping by, that it was by her choice that she is in the position that she is in. Or tell a homosexual that he chose the sexual attractions he feels, the attractions that aren't the norm, that are hotly contested, that no one "wants." Rude? Offensive? Yes.

Did I chose to live in a country that has so much debt and politicians on two sides to arrogant to be right that nothing gets done to solve said debt problem? No. Did I choose to live in a country with Islamaphobia that seeps through the most conservative of hearts (and yet how is that a conservative emotion/fear?)? No. These were not choices I made. Yet here I am, in that country, and now I must adapt to it.

The point here being that it is ignorant to think that our destinies are determined. But it is also a folly to believe that we have the power over our destiny. I think God does. But I think it is indirect. He doesn't watch me every day, moving pieces and pawns into place. Rather, he has created the universe, with it's science of laws and theories, and people's, with independent minds and moral values, that I interact with on a daily basis. They influence my decisions, they keep me from making decisions, they also make decisions for me. It isn't like I have no control over life. But it is so limited in scope.

So rather then decide what theory is correct, understand that we are small feeble characters in this large one act production of humanity. Not at the will of the writer himself, but at the setting, characters, and plot he created.

*fin