In any creative endeavor, the task of the master is to discover and realize the implications of the thing on which the endeavor is based. When it’s all completed, in a masterpiece there are actually no possibilities for anything to be any other way than they are. Nevertheless, at each step of the way, there were many choices to make and the artist was free to choose any of them. In hindsight, there is story with many twists and turns that ended with the completion of the masterpiece, and the master can see this complete story.
I think of Heaven as such a masterpiece, and our lives as episodes within the story of its creation, a story that began with the creation of the universe. God is in Heaven, as are all of those who were saved and thus able to join him there, but we are each trapped in the part of the story that we inhabit in our present. God can see the whole story—and so can we in Heaven, but in our present, we can not see the whole. We can see none of the future and only fragments of our present and past. We are faced with choices and we must choose, we are free to choose, but when we look back on our individual and collective story, we will see that we could not choose other than as we did. The whole of existence comes from God. He is the “thing” on which the masterpiece of Heaven is based and all of existence between “let there be light” and the completion of Heaven is the process, the story, of Heaven’s creation.
What you are seeing as contradictions only appear to be because your view (like everyone else’s) is limited to fragments of the present and the past. If you could see the whole from God’s view, you would see that there is no contradiction between God already knowing the whole story in all its details, God being involved in those details, and us having free will.
Kevin. Thank you for your input regarding Buddha. That would need a detailed response–maybe in another post. For the present, I agree with you that God is love; and could not deliberately causing us to go down a path of such suffering and destruction (and confusion). The problem of Adam, however, could be that he was lethargic and would not eat of the tree in the middle of the Garden. So, God’s love manifested in giving him a negative suggestion. Does that jell with you?
Bharat, I understand what you are saying. I just don’t see any Biblical support for it. Or other support, really. God had eternity to work with. What would it matter if Adam’s progress was slow? After all, God’s urgency in the Bible, the prompt for his interventions, is man’s accelerating wickedness.
If eating of the fruit was not actually a sin, but rather what God wanted, what is sin?
I need to do more research. May we let this lie for the present. I really appreciate the efforts you folks have put into this discussion. Best wishes to all in these difficult time.
That’s similar to how I se sit as well. God is beyond time. The past, future, and present is all the same to him. It’s us that it’s different.
I believe that God knows everything, and works with it based on the hearts of people. I don’t believe everything is predestined by him but instead is known by him. If not, then prophecy could not exist.