Predestination or Free Will? …. Yes

By M. McCoubrey

I’ve always been bothered by the apparent conflict between predestination and free will in Christianity. It’s not something that impacts salvation or anything, but it’s one of those things that just nags at me. It seems that in half the sermons I’ve listened to, the takeaway is that God’s plan rules, that His way is always the way, and that He chooses the elect based on His criteria – things sound pretty set. The other half of the sermons revolve around the fact that we are to choose Jesus, that we need to make ourselves one of the elect (thank you Spurgeon), and that our prayers can change outcomes. 

And the fact is, these differences reflect a duality found in the Bible. God says that His will is done, Paul talks about God having selected the elect at the beginning of time, and God says to Pharaoh “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may demonstrate my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth”. I mean, what chance does it sound like the guy had? You think that Jonah felt real empowered as a giant fish swam him to the shore that he was running away from? God and His will are clearly sovereign. 

But then in other passages it is very clear that we have a choice and that our actions and prayers can actually change outcomes. There’s the parable of the persistent widow which, while primarily focusing on a different topic, spells out that prayer can affect change. There’s Paul’s command to the Philippians that they work out their salvation with fear and trembling. And then of course there’s John 3:16 “…that whoever believes in Him shall not perish…” – an open invitation to all, but clearly not all choose to believe. Even back to the very beginning, Adam and Eve were given a command not to eat the forbidden fruit, but equally given the freedom to choose to do so. 

So what to make of this?

I’ve often heard that the answer is that it’s both - predestination and free will. But not having a clue how that could be, I’ve tended to fall on the side of God’s plan being sovereign and as a result, prayer felt pretty useless. I mean, if God knows everything, and how everything plays out all the way to the end of the world in Revelation and beyond, then what’s the point? And if I look at my motivations honestly, this view gave me an excuse to not be praying and, in the worst cases, a justification for poor behavior. 

But I kept coming back to these verses that seemingly contradict that view. Why does God so frequently tell us to pray and show us to pray through Jesus? Why would we be pressed to ‘pray without ceasing’ if it doesn’t have any effect? And really, who wants to believe that they are a choiceless cog that has absolutely no input in how their life or faith turns out? Even if that was what we wanted, it sure doesn’t seem to jive with many parts of the Bible. I was missing something.

I mentioned the persistent widow parable above in particular because that happened to be the discussion in our Saturday night group that made something click in my brain. I tend to think in simplified pictures for difficult topics. It helps me keep things straight in my simplified brain. And two pictures jumped into my head that really helped me to understand how God’s plan can be sovereign and complete while we can somehow still fully retain our free will.

The first involved my kids. There are times that I’m watching Joe or Ella and I know they are about to do something wrong. I mean, I don’t have any future telling ability, but I know my kids. I know what tempts them, I know what drives them, and I know when they are looking to get away with something. But my knowing that doesn’t mean that the choice is any less theirs to make. And I’ll often let them complete the disobedience so that I can use that as a teaching moment, because in the end I’m more concerned about molding their heart than pre-empting bad behavior. Now since God knows us infinitely better than I know my kids – of course He would know when I will mess up and can use that as a chance for discipline. But just like my kids are making their choices, so I am free to make mine. In other words, just because He has a perfect understanding of His creation and knows I’m going to sin, that doesn’t make it any less my choice to actually do it.

But as I processed this, I needed a second picture, because while that first one does a good job of separating ‘knowing’ from ‘doing’, I still struggle with the Biblical passages that appear contradictory – two views that seem mutually exclusive yet we are told are both true. My brain flashed to a thought puzzle that Einstein had early in his career that led to one of his most profound theories. I won’t get into too much detail (your welcome), but, in a nutshell here’s the deal: Einstein tried to imagine what it would look like if a train was traveling at near the speed of light. The answer has all kinds of profound implications including how we could travel far into the future, effects of black holes, and the like. Many of these have since been experimentally verified and have some really cool ramifications, but that’s for another time.

For our current topic, I locked onto the impact of relative viewpoints. You see, the answer to his initial question of what it looked like is that ‘it depends’. If I’m the one on the train, everything in the train appears to be going at normal speed. For instance, if I looked at my watch, it would be ticking every second as normal. But, if I was outside the train looking in, it would appear that the person inside was essentially frozen in time. The watch would have effectively stopped. Inside, a second takes a second, but at the same time that tick of the watch takes hundreds or thousands of years on the outside. Both viewpoints are true and occurring simultaneously, yet appear mutually exclusive.

Cool stuff. Ok – cool to some, maybe yawn material for others - but you don’t have to like, or really even get this to see the important picture for our problem which is this: the observer impacts the answer. Turning back to the Biblical examples, when we’re looking at God’s sovereignty and control over everything, that’s from His viewpoint and it’s absolutely (and thankfully) true. He sees all things across all of space and time because He’s bigger than all of that and understands everything He created. Nothing is puzzling or unaccounted for. But when we’re looking at our responsibility and choice and freedom to walk away, that’s our viewpoint and that is also absolutely true. While we can’t see all of time or understand everything like God does, we have the ability to make choices that are truly our own and which are incorporated into God’s great plan.

The observer impacts the answer. God was fully in control when Jonah was being taken by a giant fish to Nineveh. Pharaoh’s hardened heart was completely used for God’s glory. God has, before time even began, chosen each member of His eternal family. But also because the observer impacts the answer, our desire makes a difference in our salvation, Adam and Eve chose to taste the forbidden fruit, each person has the invitation, but not all have the inclination to follow the Lord, our choice decides whether we are saved or not. Because there are two points of observation, at the same time we both make the decision to follow God and are chosen by God to follow Him. Despite the fact that these two things seem completely exclusive, they are both true because in the end, the answer depends on the observer.

And that means that even though God is fully in control and knows everything that is going to happen, prayer can and does change things and has a real impact on our world. After all, just because God knows that we are going to pray to Him and that He’s going to give us what we ask for, it only actually happens when we accept our responsibility and say that prayer. Praise God for His awesomeness that we get to be a real and affecting part of His creation!

By M. McCoubrey