Zech's Blog

I just got home from a small group session at my church and we came across a few pointless but very interesting questions. One of them that stuck out to me was 'Do we have a free will to direct our lives, or does God always control the outcome, and if so then does God call or condemn us from birth?'. It's one of those questions that the answer is based mostly on mindset and opinion, but I'll just share some of mine and countering opinions. Now I personally think that we have a predestined life. God made us and knew exactly what would happen to us. Not saying that we can't enjoy life and make choices, I just think whatever we do may it be good or bad, our life has been mapped out from the start. It's really hard to actually pinpoint what the Bible is trying to say on this matter because it does express that we have a free will and are aloud to choose our destiny, but a controversial verse that sticks out to some is when God "hardened pharaoh's heart' to the point where he didn't free the Jews. In that the normal understanding of that is that He changed pharaoh's mind and therefore took away free will. BUT the antithesis to that thought would be that he put certain and particular circumstances in pharaoh's life to nudge his heart into 'being hardened'. Still that can be countered by saying that it doesn't matter how God might have done it, by way of changing settings or circumstances, it still ended up being God altering a decision. That's one part of this subject. The next part that was brought up in this conversation was if predestination is true then why would a perfect God predestine people into hell? And it went even farther to say if God is perfect then why did he create evil. I won't get into that now but I have a few entries awhile back about what I think on that subject. Again this subject can be argued on forever but if any reader has an idea on the subject I'd be glad to hear it. Also a friend that's on the people I follow on here is writing about the same subject that I haven't read yet and it might mention something I missed so read that one too, her name is sequoia. :]