I don’t know if cherry picking is the proper word.
When I get an idea ( as I am very open minded and want to learn and challenge). I like to play “devil’s advocate” or put on the rose colored glasses of the challenging idea (as if I momentarily adopted it) and then try to disprove it. I recommend that method as hard as it may be. But of course if you never take off your rose colored glasses, it will be greatly difficult to to not see rose colored things.
If you are born with blue glasses on, someone asks you if the sky is blue, you look at them like they are crazy, the sky is “normal” it’s not a color. It isn’t until you take those glasses off that you could even attempt to understand what others are saying.
I have recently also tried on the glasses of condionalism or annihilism and and having a hard time proving that wrong…but that is another topic…
You also saw I has some form of YEC glasses on most of my life, so I put on EC glasses and then attempted to disprove it, and haven’t been able to yet, and I am putting my roots deeper into the EC theory more and more.
So with those glasses of God knowing the future details off…
But most of my idea I build from the foundation of God’s character or how I perceive it being throughout the entire Bible. We are created in the image of God. So when we grieve it is due to something occurring right? People die everyday, and it is sad but that is an impersonal fact. It isn’t until we see that individuals or group of people in the news or in the now, that it becomes a specific event, that we tend to grieve over it.
If we had foreknowledge of this event ( which in a way we do as again statistically speaking many people die daily) would we grieve as much?
How many verses speak of God grieving over an event witnessed? Do you think He would grieve as much if He had forknowledge of this event?
Also like I said about your kid in my last post…
So it is the Bible as a whole and God’s characteristics, are the glasses I put on, when reading other scriptures. Though some things are pretty irrefutable, like God’s goodness or glory. So I am searching for verses that would invalidate my latest beliefs/theory on which does God know/see the future details. Most of them, I can explain another interpretation. So I am searching for more of them, that maybe I can’t explain, and would require me to go back to the Calvinist beliefs with which I grew up and spent most of my life believing.
Cherry picking is more picking certain verses while hiding others to support my view that is long held and I am trying to defend. I am not leaving any verses out, I want to use them all, to verify and validate as instructed to do. Rather than cherry pick using philosophers of past or indoctrinated “givens” that I am starting to see are possibly not so. Nor am I trying to defend a long held stubborn view. The opposite, I am trying to look through the glasses of this new found view and use all verses to invalidate it, if it can be invalidated.
And no, I don’t think it would be an odd limitation. Once God creates a circle, it can’t be a square. Sure He can change it into a square, but it can’t be both, that is a limitation. It is possible that God is limited by timeH when He gave us free will?
Like a chess player (which I don’t like to use as it is too strategical and impersonal) but a chess player who is wise and knowledgeable, will win, and achieve check mate, but they don’t know what the player is going to do, but they do no of the possibilities and contingencies. God is not caught of guard or scared of the future or taken by surprise and is in ultimate control of check mate and victory. But He might not know the moves of the next player on their turn.
Which I understand free theism was given great scrutiny and disregard for a long time so I am not surprised by it. I am not trying to convince anyone of it. I am trying to convince myself out of it, ( as it is difficult to change such a long held belief) but have yet to have been able to do so, so far, it I have only put on these glasses very recently, there is plenty of time to find fault.