Swallowing determinism, but not all of it.

What is our role in our actions, i.e. what responsibility do humans have for their own actions? I chose to go to North Texas, study hard the first year, goof around for three years in a row (i.e. party), and then study hard the last year. Was it God's plan for me to party? I know that some good happened because I partied, because all things work for the good of God, or do they? Am I appropriating that text for my own usage? So what if God's plan was for me to not party the middle three years, now am I paying for that because I am finally going to get an M.A. in philosophy when I am 28 (my birthday is on April 10, so when I begin school in the fall I will be 28). Now I began at SWBTS when I was 23, and spent 5 years here, 3 on an MDiv, and 2 on a PhD that I will leave uncompleted, which is not a bad thing. Was it God's plan for me not to complete my PhD? How do I know what God's plan is; what if it's God's plan for me to stay at SWBTS or go to another school for an M.A. in philosophy? Does this mean that I foiled God's plan? Or is everything determined such that we have no role in our decision making process?

Dr. E. Earle Ellis, claimed that there were two types of will for God, there was (1) God's ordained will, and (2) God's will. God's ordained will, will happen, e.g. the devil will be punished and Jesus will return (the parousia). God's will is what He wants to happen but it probably won't, e.g. for all people to be saved. So how does this relate to my discussion, it might have been God's will for me not to party, but I did, and somewhat delayed God's plans for my life... I have to believe that we have some control over our own decision making process otherwise God is responsible for all our actions and then God is responsible for sin. God is perfectly good and cannot be tempted - as I stated in a previous entry - so we are responsible for our own actions. Yet, conservative evangelicals always talk about how God "has a plan" for their lives. Does this plan have to take place? If so then it doesn't matter what we do, and those who obey God should not be rewarded and those who do not obey God should not be punished, because they have no role in their own decision making process. I have to conclude that while God may have a plan for our lives, we don't always follow His plan.

I think we fool ourselves into thinking that whatever we do God will bless, because it's what God wants us to do. God blesses it because we are believers and follow Him and He loves us. So God will use bad situations that we are in to teach us lessons about who He is so that we might make a wiser decision in the future. How do we know what God wants us to do? We read His word and learn about who He is. Unless we know God, how can we know how to follow? We can't. We often rely upon emotions to learn what God is telling us, but we learn what God wants us to do by reading the scriptures. We can make mistakes but they can be corrected. When we do make mistakes we can learn from them to get back on path. I think the will of God is kinda like the Yellow-Brick Road, in the sense that we can leave the path and can be attacked on the path, yet God has shown us the way to follow Him in His word, which would be the equivalent to the Yellow-Brick Road. So, we can stray from the will of God and can leave God's plan but if we do, God will teach us lessons through our disobedience and we can either choose to learn from our lessons or rebel even further.