Pastoral Problem (Part Deux)

Well, I still have more to say about the pastoral problem of Divine Foreknowledge and human freewill. Now, when a woman goes through a painful divorce she wonders why God (given she believes that He is the greatest posssible being) would allow her to make such a mistake. The openness answer to this is that given God's knowledge before she was married, that she made the right decision. If you believe that God exists outside of time, such as myself, you believe that God knew the marriage would not work. So why did God allow this to happen? (This problem is really another facet to the problem of evil - a lot of ins and outs, a lot of strands in the ol' duder's head.) Anyway, I digress, We need to have freewill. Evangelicals often believe that they have freewill to choose salvation but forget that they have freewill when choosing a mate. Does God have plan for everyone? Yes. Does everyone follow God's plan? No. The best way to think of this is that God desires for everyone to be saved, we could rephrase this as God's plan for everyone is that they become saved, unless one is a universalist, one does not actually believe that this will happen. For a good explanation and argument for universalism see here. It seems that we often have a wish fulfillment that when we come to an area where we face uncertainty that God will work it out for us without us having any responsibility or work to do. Look, God will take care of us, but we still have responsibility for our actions. If not then freewill doesn't mean a thing - it's just lip service. I can make bad decisions on where I will go to school, I can make bad decisions on whether I will write a good paper. What if I decide not to study for a test? Obviously we say that all things work for the good of God and I believe that, but there is still an element of human responsibility. Now the question to ask is how do all things work towards the good of God, e.g. the holocaust, or the crusades? I will answer this question soon...