If God Already Knows What We’re Going to Do, How Can We Have Free Will?

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Lee — 285 Comments

Here is a Spiritual Conundrum submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by a reader named Josh:

It says in the Bible that God knows our every word before it even leaves our tongue. If God already knows what we’re going to do, then how could we have free will?

Thanks for the great—and classic—question, Josh. I’ll get right to the point, and then we’ll explore the question in a little more depth.

The most basic answer to this question is that knowing something is not the same as causing something.

If I hold a book up in the air and let go of it, I know that it will fall to the floor. But I do not cause it to fall to the floor. Gravity does that.

In the very same way, God knowing what we will do does not mean God causes us to do it.

Further, the very idea that God “already” knows what we “will” do in the future is human, time-bound thinking, and a misunderstanding of how God knows everything. God does not look into the future and see what’s going to happen. Rather, God sees everything from an eternal state of being outside of time and space. God simply sees and therefore knows everything that to us is past, present, and future.

In other words, just as you and I can survey an entire scene from the top of a hill or mountain, and see everything in it in one view, so God can survey the entirety of creation, not only taking in everything that exists everywhere in all of space all at once, but also taking in everything that exists in all of time all at once.

But just as our seeing a vast panorama from a mountaintop doesn’t cause that scene to be the way it is, so God’s seeing everything that exists in all of time and space does not cause all of those things to be the way they are.

We’ll look at these things more closely in a minute. But first, let’s take a look at the Bible passage Josh is referring to.

For more on God’s omniscience and human free will, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: causation, determinism, foreknowledge, free will, freedom, God, omniscience, the Bible, the future, time, time and space
Posted in All About God

What if I’m in Love with Someone Who’s Already Married?

Posted on January 24, 2018 by Lee — 8 Comments

Here is a Spiritual Conundrum submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by a reader named Scoope69:

Hi, Lee I have been pondering about this spiritual question for some time and I was wondering if you could answer this for me. Yes, I have read Everything so far, and it is very welcoming and true. I can’t say I’ve been the most righteous person, nor can I say I’ve been the worst either. I have graduated high school already and I have some college under my belt. To start, I have a spiritual background in my household. I have prayed and longed for a relationship I could share because I am very loving and caring. I saw many spiritual signs and messages in my dreams that I followed. Many of these signs told me to hold out a little longer, the love that I wanted would near. I fell in love with a foreign woman, she is very nice and sweet to everyone. I found out she is married already, and we exchanged numbers and parted after that. Slowly but surely, somehow we naturally worked up a feeling for each other, it is nothing that we forced, it just happened. Now we sort of have this soul mate relationship thing happening. She loves me deeply, and I love her deeply. We were only sexual once, and now could be more. I always wonder now if I am doomed to hell for having sinned. Nothing that I have done is for my own gain or greed or to destroy her. Everything is out of love from my heart. Her inner relationship isn’t the best, I know probably shouldn’t be a part, but it feels right and wrong, I make her happy, but I also want an exact answer, and I feel like you can help. I don’t blasphemy the Holy Spirit, and I very much believe in God and everything that comes with it. I know that only God is good, and I have been researching a lot, I am for sure not evil. I do show love for the neighbor, and coming to you, I know there are no slick ways out for anyone. So I wanted to ask, am I doomed, what should I do?

Thanks for your spiritual conundrum, Scoope69. I do sympathize with your praying and longing for a soulmate with whom you can share your life. This is a longing and desire that God has placed deeply in our souls.

Unfortunately, your current relationship situation is more likely to bring you heartbreak than true love.

There’s just no way to sugar-coat this one. If you are engaged in a romantic and sexual relationship with someone who is already married, you are committing adultery. And adultery is wrong and contrary to God’s clear and direct commandment.

So here is the exact answer to your conundrum. Either:

The woman you are in love with must divorce her husband, or
You must break off your relationship with her.

It’s just that simple.

And even if she does divorce her husband for you, the prospects for a good and healthy relationship with her are not the best. It will tend to be poisoned by the fact that it began with adultery.

For more on adultery and soulmates, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: adultery, commitment, love, marriage, relationships, sex, The Ten Commandments, trust
Posted in Sex Marriage Relationships

Imamu Baraka: Compassion + Knowledge = Effective action

Posted on January 14, 2018 by Lee — 4 Comments

Imamu Baraka

A few days ago (as I write this) Imamu Baraka was heading home from work one evening when he saw something he could hardly believe. Four people in hospital uniforms had just dropped off a young woman at the bus stop across the street from his office, right near the hospital’s emergency entrance.

The woman was wearing only a hospital gown and a pair of socks.

It was about 30 degrees out.

Her clothes and personal belongings had been packed into plastic bags and dropped at the bus stop, too.

The woman was wandering around, and stumbling as she went.

Baraka knew what he had to do.

He started taking video with his cell phone, and followed the four security guards back to the hospital, asking them why they were doing this, and how they could possibly leave this woman out there half naked in the cold. They kept right on walking into the hospital, giving unsatisfactory answers.

Then Baraka realized there was something more important to attend to. The woman at the bus stop needed his help.

You see, Imamu Baraka is an experienced psychotherapist. And he could see that the woman who had just been dumped on the street was struggling with mental health issues that were clearly not being addressed. So he went back to give her whatever aid he could.

The hospital that had summarily dumped the woman was the University of Maryland Medical Center, at its midtown campus located between Linden and N. Howard Streets at Armory Place in Baltimore, Maryland—which just happens to be across the street from Baraka’s psychotherapy office.

For more on Imamu Baraka and patient dumping, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Baltimore, compassion, experience, homeless dumping, homelessness, hospital dumping, Imamu Baraka, knowledge, mental illness, University of Maryland Medical Center
Posted in Current Events

If Jesus was God, How was God Still in Heaven?

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Lee — 296 Comments

A few days ago a reader named Annie made this comment here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life:

I am a Christian who loves Jesus and God. But what I don’t understand is that if Jesus is God, then who created people to come down to earth in Jesus’ time, if God wasn’t in heaven?

My ancestors aren’t from Israel, so as well as having no God in heaven to pray to, they would have had no Jesus to listen to. As God loves all, what must Jesus’ thoughts be on the fact that most people in his lifetime he would never meet, as Jesus was in a small space in the world, and most would have no link to God, including my European ancestors.

But if Jesus is the Son of God—a part of him but not actually him—then for me the whole idea that God has his one and only Son takes away from the belief that we are all God’s children, and he created all of us. I am a Christian who loves Jesus and God, but am confused.

(I have edited Annie’s comment for readability. You can read her original comment here, and my original response here. The rest of this post is an edited and expanded version of my response to Annie.)

These are all excellent questions! A good question is the beginning of understanding.

To understand God, and how Jesus was and is God, we must expand our mind beyond our usual limited, material human conceptions of things. For you personally to understand these things, you’ll need to stretch your mind to grasp concepts that you may not have thought of before. So if what I’m about to say sounds complicated at first, please bear with me, and at the end I’ll link you to some articles that explain it further, and provide some supporting Bible quotes as well.

Though understanding God is a challenge for us small-minded humans, it is not impossible. And as we gain an understanding of God, we gain an understanding of the meaning and purpose of our life here on earth as well, and everything starts to fall into place for us.

For more on Jesus and God, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Advent, Christianity, Christmas, God, Immaculate Conception, Jesus Christ, Mary, salvation, the Bible, the Incarnation, Virgin Birth
Posted in All About God

Does John 3:18 Mean that All Non-Christians Go to Hell?

Posted on December 8, 2017 by Lee — 9 Comments

John 3:16.

It’s everywhere.

You even see it on placards at football games:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Then there’s John 3:17, which sounds pretty good too:

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

However, in John 3:18 the hammer falls:

He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

In three short verses, the God who so loved the world turns around and condemns everyone who doesn’t believe in his Son. And that means most of the people in the world are going straight to hell.

At least, so say many Christians.

Apparently these Christians haven’t bothered to read what comes before and after John 3:16–18. And they haven’t even carefully read what John 3:18 itself says.

The fact is, John 3:18 does not say all non-Christians go to hell. And if we read it as part of Jesus’ whole teaching in John 3:1–21, it says something very different from what these Christians preach.

These “Christians” have strayed very far from Jesus Christ. Instead of showing love and compassion to all different types of people, healing the sick and serving the poor and needy, these “Christians” consider themselves better than everyone else. They condemn billions of good people to eternal torture just for believing the wrong thing.

But it is these “Christians” who believe the wrong thing.

Read on to learn what these words from John 3 really mean in the original Greek, and in the context of the whole story.

For more on John 3:18, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: belief, Christianity, damnation, faith, God, hell, Jesus Christ, non-Christians, salvation, the Bible
Posted in The Bible Re-Viewed

What if the Right Woman has the Wrong Feet?

Posted on October 21, 2017 by Lee — 32 Comments

This article is a response to a Spiritual Conundrum recently submitted to Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life by a reader named Jared. We’ll get to his query in a minute.

But first, the question in the title is not the question Jared asked. Rather, it is the question I am asking Jared, and others who have a foot fetish—which is what Jared did ask about.

I ask this question because for those who have a foot fetish, their answer will say a lot about whether their foot fetish is a serious problem or just one of the particular harmless idiosyncrasies we humans have, or is somewhere in between.

But first, let’s let Jared ask his question.

For more on foot fetishes, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: body fetish, foot fetish, foot fetishism, lust, masturbation, pornography, sex, sexuality, the Bible
Posted in Sex Marriage Relationships

“Wives, submit to your husbands.”

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Lee — 30 Comments

Wives, submit to your husbands. (Ephesians 5:22)

That is a misquote of Paul.

“What?!? That’s exactly what Paul says! Here it is from the King James Version—God’s own translation of the Bible:”

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.

“And in the New Revised Standard Version:”

Wives, be subject to your husbands.

“And in the New International Version:”

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands.

“And in the English Standard Version:”

Wives, submit to your own husbands.

“Paul absolutely says that wives must submit to their husbands!”

No, he does not.

Every single one of those “quotes” is a misquote of Paul. There is no period after “husbands.” What Paul did say was:

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

Paul is not telling wives to submit to their husbands.

Paul never tells wives to submit to their husbands.

In Ephesians 5:22 (as well as in Colossians 3:18 and similar passages elsewhere), Paul is telling wives in what way they should submit to their husbands.

There’s a huge difference.

For more on wives submitting to husbands, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Adam, Christianity, complementarianism, egalitarianism, Eve, female submission, love, male dominance, male headship, marriage
Posted in Sex Marriage Relationships, The Bible Re-Viewed

Thoughts on Seeing the Eclipse

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Lee — 12 Comments

The total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, as seen from Glendo State Park, Wyoming

Where were you for the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017?

Annette and I, plus several visiting family members, were camping at Glendo State Park, 100 miles north of where we live in Cheyenne. Our campground was right on the centerline of the path of totality.

After several days of swimming, kayaking, mountain biking, seeing the local scenery, and generally relaxing and enjoying one another’s company, Eclipse Day arrived. The weather in eastern Wyoming was perfect. It was a warm, sunny day with crystal clear skies. In and around the small town of Glendo (population 204), it was a people- and vehicle-choked madhouse. But where we were camped, a 25 minute drive around on the other side of the lake, all was calm and peaceful. There were groups of people here and there on the beach, in the campground, and on the ridgeline above it.

We picked out a nice, sandy spot under a copse of trees on the edge of the wide beach. There we could enjoy the shade while we were waiting, and head out into the clear sun for the eclipse itself. We had been planning this event for nearly a year. Now it was time to sit back and take in the spectacle!

For more on the eclipse of 2017, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: eclipse, eclipse of the sun, Glendo State Park, God, science, solar eclipse, spirituality, total solar eclipse of August 21 2017, totality, Wyoming
Posted in Science Philosophy and History

God’s Children

Posted on July 31, 2017 by Lee — 11 Comments

The disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

Jesus called a little child, and had the child stand in front of them. He said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name, welcomes me.” (Matthew 18:1–5)

Now, this is ought to cause some consternation for those of us who are, or have been, parents of young children. We spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to get our children to grow up and become mature adults. Then Jesus turns around and tells us that we are the ones who have to change—and become like little children!

Young children tend to squabble . . . a lot. Parents who have more than one child have most likely spent many long days playing referee as jealousy over matchbox cars, stuffed animals, and trading cards erupted into name-calling, shoving, hitting, and kicking. After a day like that, the last thing a parent wants to hear is Jesus telling us that we have to change and become like little children!

For more on God’s children please click here to read on.

Tagged with: children, children of God, fighting, parenting, parents, sibling rivalry, war
Posted in Sex Marriage Relationships, Spiritual Growth

Why Did God Choose Israel?

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Lee — 2 Comments

The Bible’s history of the Israelite people is put in the context of a branching family tree of humanity going all the way back to the first humans on earth. At each point where the tree branches, the lineage is traced through a particular son in preference to the other possible lineages. Though the reason for picking one lineage over another is usually not stated explicitly, there are several criteria that determine what line the ancestry of God’s people will follow:

The default option is for the lineage to pass through the firstborn son.
If the character of the firstborn son is not suitable, the lineage will pass through the first son whose character is suitable.
Required character traits include faithfulness to God and tenacity of character.
And in general, God chose the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because the nation that would come from them could serve as a light and a blessing to the other nations of the earth.

These factors can be seen operating in the various points at which one lineage prevails over another in the Bible story. However, the fourth puts the other three in context, and deserves its own special coverage before the rest are taken up in a sequential account following the Bible narrative.

For more on why God chose Israel, please click here to read on.

Tagged with: Abraham, Bible genealogy, Cain and Abel, Isaac, Israel, Jacob, Noah, Shem Ham and Japeth, the Bible, The Chosen People
Posted in The Bible Re-Viewed

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