Tag Archives: creation

Spirituality

How Can Free Will and Predestination Coexist?

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We have the right to choose, but God knows our decision

Some people insist that God gave us free will to make our own decisions, that we hold our future in our hands. Others claim our future has already been set, that God charts our course, with the outcome predestined.

Which is it?

Both.

God gives us free will, but he already knows what we will choose.

Let’s start at the beginning. Actually, let’s start before the beginning. Before God’s creation.

God is an eternal being without beginning or end. He exists outside our spacetime reality. When he created us and the space we live in, he created time, too. Consider the spacetime continuum. If he made space, he had to make time, because the two are inseparable.

To him there is no past or future. I suppose this means he sees everything as a present, existent reality.

However, our existence unfolds as we move through the time he created for us to live in. Because we are bound by time, we see our future as unknown, something yet to be determined. Therefore, the question of free will and predestination seems to us as an either/or proposition. But to God, it isn’t. God, who exists outside of time, doesn’t have the constraints we have. Click To Tweet

God, who exists outside of time, doesn’t have the constraints we have.

Though our minds are finite, and our reasoning has limits, here’s how I reconcile the two. God gives us free will to choose. But he already knows what those decisions are. Because of his awareness, one not bound by time, he knows our future as if it is the present.

What we see as an unknown future, he sees as a known reality. To God our future is foreknown. In essence, it’s predestined. It will happen for us in our future even though it’s in the present for him. It’s known in advance, predestined, because he sees the outcomes of the free will that he gave us.

Though God allows us to choose our future, he already knows what those choices are. Nothing we do surprises him. In this way, our future is predestined, even though we have the free will to choose it.

And since he already knows what will happen to us in our future reality, he works things out for our best (Romans 8:28-29).

Spirituality

The Role Faith Plays in the Creation Versus Evolution Debate

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For all their differences, both creation and the theory of evolution require an element of faith

In school I learned about evolution. In church I learned about creation. Creation marks the beginning of the Bible and forms the foundation of my worldview, which started as a child from my parents and became an informed decision as an adult.

I’m not sure if creation versus evolution is an either/or consideration, or if there’s a way for them to peaceably coexist. It could happen. But I do know is that either perspective requires an element of faith.

Obviously, it requires faith to believe in an unseen God who created the universe and has an interest in us as his creation.

However, when I look at the theory of evolution in follow its path back to the beginning, I reach a point where something had to come out of nothing. That requires a great deal of faith, too, even more then is needed to accept that God made us and the world we live in.

To me it’s easier to, by faith, except a superior entity who exists outside our time-space reality. In fact, since time and space exist on a continuum, if you perceive God as the creator of space, then he’s also the creator of time. That means he exists outside our time-space reality, which he created as our playground. On a simple scale, it’s much like you or I constructing an ant farm. We would exist outside our creation, and the ants would live inside it. The ant farm would be the ant’s world, their reality. We would be an entity external to them and beyond their comprehension.

The issue of creation versus evolution boils down to faith. Which is easier to accept in faith? At its basic core evolution requires we accept that something came out of nothing. Conversely, creation requires we have faith of an entity who lives outside our time-space reality. Given this, I need less faith to believe in creation than I do to accept the theory of evolution.

Yes, there’s a middle ground, that God created our reality using the process of evolution. To me it doesn’t matter how God created us and our world. I see myself as a created being and desire to worship the God who made me.I see myself as a created being and desire to worship the God who made me. Click To Tweet

The Bible

God’s Creative Force

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Jeremiah provides a succinct summary of God’s creative force: power, knowledge, and wisdom. Through it, he established the entire universe, our physical realm of existence.

Power: God is a god of power. He is all-powerful, that is, almighty; he is omnipotent. There’s nothing he can’t do; nothing is too big for him, too complicated, or too hard. He unleashed his unlimited power to create us, our world, and the universe we live in. How he did it doesn’t matter, but he was there at the beginning and before the beginning, creating our temporal reality out of his power.

Knowledge: Power without knowledge is, at best, a wasted effort; at worst, it is a tragedy. Fortunately, God is also a god of knowledge. He knows all things; nothing is beyond his comprehension; he is omniscient. Creation is birthed by his power and through his knowledge.

Wisdom: Without wisdom, knowledge and power have no purpose. God is wisdom; he exemplifies the ultimate in understanding. Wisdom guides power and informs knowledge to create something truly marvelous. In his wisdom he made all things, working perfectly together in the ultimate masterpiece.

We are an amazing creation, living on an amazing world, stationed in an amazing universe. We applaud God for making it all, using equal parts power, knowledge, and wisdom.

Thank you, God. You are awesome.

[Jeremiah 51:15]

[Discover more about the Bible at A Bible A Day.com: Bible FAQs, Bible Dictionary, Books of the Bible Overview, and Bible Reading Plans.]

Spirituality

Another Way to Worship God

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For the past few days I’ve helped on a home improvement project. I’ve urged my body forward, performing physical tasks long ago forgotten. There’s an ache that permeates my muscles and reaches into my joints. But it’s a good ache; it’s an ache of accomplishment.

When God completed his creation, he said, “It is good.” When our remodeling project is finished, we will likewise take a step back to survey the results and say, “It is good.” I think that will please our creator who will receive our work as an act of worship.

The opposite of work is idleness: watching too much TV, playing too many games, persisting in meaningless conversation, and sleeping when we don’t need it – wasting the time God gave us and squandering what he intended us to be. Though we need rest and to guard against busyness, we also need to avoid the opposite.

God made us to do things: to work and to create. When we do as he intended, we sense fulfillment. When we do so for his honor, we worship him. Then we rest.

Spirituality

Do You Appreciate Nature?

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In the pre-dawn haze, I perched at the edge of a meadow. From a distance I watched three whitetail deer arise from their slumber, moving with deliberate slowness as though waiting for their circulation to return and their muscles to wake up.

I don’t know if they saw me, smelled me, or heard me, but at once all three looked in my direction, freezing in time and place. For an eternity of seconds, we stared at each other.

They were wary, but not afraid; they were cautious, but not fearful. They did not know to fear man and this man was in complete awe of them.

Sensing it was again safe to proceed, they sauntered towards the woods. The fawn was not keeping up and once he realized this, it took only a couple of graceful leaps to restore contact with his parents. As a group they continued meandering towards the border between field and forest.

At the fence separating meadow and woods it took one mighty bound, seemingly effortless but extraordinary in power, for the first to clear it. Then the second and finally the third; they were gone.

I thanked God for letting me witness the wonder of his creation and to be in awe of him for his created things.

And then I sensed something extraordinary: God appreciates his creation even more than I.

The Bible

Questions in Genesis: Number Six

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Asking respectful questions about the Bible is not a sign of rebellion or indication of disbelief, but can be a means of more fully pursuing the God who is revealed in the Bible. It is from this perspective that I’ve been pondering the creation account and asking some questions. My final query is:

6) People were not made until midway through the sixth day, so there were no eyewitnesses to most of God’s creative efforts. How then could details that no one saw have been known, passed down from one generation to the next, and then recorded in the Bible?

The solution is that God would have had to tell his creation how they came to be. Just as a parent leaves out details when a young child asks “Where do babies come from?” so, too, God must have left out details when he explained our origins to us. Still, I want to know more.

However, Moses puts my inquiring mind into perspective, confirming that God has kept some things from us:

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”

God is, in many ways, a mystery — and that is one of the things that draws me to him.

[Deuteronomy 29:29]

The Bible

Questions in Genesis: Numbers Three through Five

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Continuing with my questions about the Genesis account of creation — but never doubting that we and the world we live in were created by God — I focus on the person of Cain — who killed his brother Abel — asking questions 3, 4, and 5.

3) At this point in the story, only three (living) humans have been identified: Adam, Eve, and Cain (Abel is dead). So, who did Cain marry? The conventional answer is his sister. Yuck! In addition, it would have been a genetic disaster. A more reasonable answer is that God had created other people as well, and from them, Cain picked his bride.

4) If there were only Adam, Eve, and their offspring, why would Cain need to build a city? Surely, one couple and their offspring would not warrant Cain constructing a city. The reasonable explanation is that as Cain wandered the earth, he encountered other people to live in it.

5) Cain was afraid that the people he encountered in his wanderings would kill him. God’s solution was to put a mark on him to protect him. Why did Cain need this mark for protection? Certainly, his family would know him. Only if there were numerous other people, would this be an issue.

Again, I ask these questions, not to poke holes in the Bible’s creation account, but to acknowledge that we are lacking details. In my next post, I will pose my final question and offer my conclusion.

[Genesis 4:17, Genesis 4:13-15]

The Bible

Questions in Genesis: Numbers One and Two

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By faith, I believe that God created us and the universe in which we live. But that resolute statement does not preclude questions about the biblical account of our origin. Here are two of them:

1) On the fourth day of creation God made the sun to separate day from night and to mark the passage of time. If it wasn’t until day four until we knew what a day was, how then could the first three days have been measured and counted? Consider that if someone was in pitch-black, solitary confinement for a period of time and then later given a watch, he would still not know how much time had already passed.

2) What about Eve? In Genesis 1, it says that on the sixth day God created man and woman — at the same time. In Genesis 2, the timeline is different. The world is made; Adam is created and placed in the garden of Eden to care for it and all the animals. Then God realizes that his creation is incomplete. Adam is alone. So then God makes Eve. This occurs after he made everything else and not at the same time he created Adam. Which is it?

More Genesis questions will be asked in the next post about Cain.

[Genesis 1:14-19, Genesis 1:27-31, Genesis 2:4-22]

The Bible

Questions In Genesis

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In my prior posts, In the Beginning, Creation or Evolution, and the Time-Space Continuum I pondered about the reality behind our origins.

The Bible’s book of Genesis provides us with an explanation of how things began. This is an account that would have been comprehensible to ancient man, one that would have sufficiently answered the timeless question of “Where did we come from?” in a way that a primitive people would have understood.

But the debate for a modern man is if the Genesis saga is mere mythology, scientifically sound, or theological truth. I hold firmly to this third view and am simultaneously open to the second, while firmly rejecting the first.

As I read the creation account in Genesis, many questions come to mind. These are not faith-confronting issues, but rather ponderings that lead me to conclude that there is more to the story than what the Bible provides.

I will share my creation queries in future posts, not to poke holes in the creation narrative, but to stand in awe of a creator who has all the answers, but didn’t feel it germane to share the details.

So, despite unanswered questions, I am unfazed. Isn’t that what faith is?

The Bible

Creation or Evolution?

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If we were created, as the Bible says, how did it really happen?Creation or Evolution

I have heard different views on the subject:

  • Creation occurred in seven literal 24 hour days.
  • Creation occurred in seven increments of time, paralleling the evolutionary time-line.
  • Creation occurred when God made all of the requisite ingredients, setting the stage for evolution to transpire.  He then sat back and joyfully watched things happen.

One of these is probably true—or perhaps there is a completely different understanding. It is easy to fixate on the details and lose site of the critical unifying element: that God was instrumental in creation; the rest doesn’t matter—not really.

[See my prior posts on this subject: In the Beginning… and The Time-Space Continuum.]