If you don't think someone can shape their own future, I SURE hope you aren't teaching such nonsense to your kids, as my mother did. :bigfrown
I will start my explanation with what I teach my kids, and dedicate it to you good sir.
Every day we make choices, one of them being whether or not we resist temptation. When we resist tempation, things go well. When we don't resist temptation, things do not go well.
Do we? or are what we call choices really only an awareness of our own reality to which there is no alternative to what we would have done?
In a sense, we can't alter the future because it's already happened, just further down the timeline in our space/time continuum.
That a good line. I'll add it to my list of stuff I say.
Prediction and altering your own future is still a choice.
I'm saying you can not alter or predict your own future, and thank you Felix for answering the opening questions. Your answers where just as I predicted
WHAT? I did not actually say that.
To Pizzaguy's story on growing up with this type of nonsense, that life just happens, I started this thread with a bold statement to say that we don't actually make choices. I'm sounding like a broken record, but again; We don't actually make choices, and further more, we can not shape or alter the future because to do so would mean that we would have to alter the future before hand, and since everyone agrees we can not travel back in time to do that, and that the past is unalterable, and the present is yesterdays future, then we can't change it.
This seems pretty simple to me. I don't know why people have such a hard "Timex" grasping this, but perhaps more illustrations are in order.
Of all the things of God and the bible, I think I can prove to just about anyone is the reality of time and presence, because we all share it. And for Christians it should not be a contention that God has a plan and a purpose for our lives. But let's hold that thought.
I have 800 + Channels on my TV. My TV provider says it's a "Total Choice" package. Meaning I can choose to watch any of those channels I want. My answer to that? "No I can't! The reality is I can only watch one!"
I do not have 800 + choices. I have no choices at all, because the reality is if I am watching one channel the other channels do not exist in reality. I can switch channels, but I can not watch 2 or more channels. Even Jesus agrees....
Matthew 6:24 (NIV)
24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
In this life there is only ONE reality. We hear people say things like; "If I'd only gone to college..." or, "had I just not meet so in so...." and the list goes on of the could haves, should haves, might of been, and would haves......but none of that speculation changes anything, nor can it even be said because the fact is none of those speculations exist, or even existed.
Often times we hear people talk about life as a path. "This road I'm on". even the bible uses the term path, and journey, as a visual for life.
Matthew 7:13-14 (NIV) 13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
The rock band Led Zeppelin had a popular song called "Stairway to Haven" and in the lyrics they suggest
there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road your on. However, they are wrong in saying there are two paths you can go by, or that you can even change it.
There is only one path any one can be on at any time, and the path we take is the path we where destined to take, and as we traverse that path it leads to a destiny.....might be the wide gate, might be the narrow gate, but no one knows this in and of them selves. It is told to us only by God and if God is not speaking to us, telling us the one direction then we are left to take a path, and most likely the wide one, because on that one there are many choices and many ways to travel it, and that path is left totally up to us. That's why Jesus says it's a wide path, but it leads to the same destination.
The narrow path is a one way path, and can only be traveled one way.
"
But I can choose the wide or narrow path!" Can you? The bible says man will not choose the narrow path. Unless we have the spirit of God to lead us to the narrow path of God we will not "choose" it.
1 Corinthians 2:14 (NIV)
1
4 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
So again I say, we do not have a choice, and we do not make choices. We only think we do, when in reality we are only aware of our own reality in what we call choices, and if we do not have the spirit of God in us, then we do not have the will of God in us, and we are left with only our own will which is the only thing we can have to make what we call choices.
: No you might say?
Earlier I mentioned that for Christians it should not be a contention that God has a plan and a purpose for our lives. The bible says this in many places. One of my favorite is
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) 11 For I know the plans I have for you,†declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Clearly the plans God is speaking of are not ours, but his.
Check this out,
Proverbs 16:9 (NIV)
9 In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.
If God has the plan for us, and God directs our steeps, and the person without the spirit of God does not follow God's plan, then do you still think you have choices?
I've said this often. It is my only testimony. I did not choose God in my life. I did not even accept him. All I ever did was cry out to him empty and void of myself. I had given up thinking I had any choices left in life, when I was picked up by God and set on a path I would never have chosen of my own, and at that moment I realized I had no choices to make.
What do I tell my children about this nonsense? Good question, and the answer is this.
God has a plan and a purpose for your life. God directs your steps in his plan and his purpose for you. You have been given special talents and abilities to fulfill his plan and that plan has already been written for you to fulfill, otherwise it's not a plan.
Our privilege in life is to discover God's plan for us, and we can not do that with our own plan. Can you know of His plan? sure! But you have to get rid of your plan first, because you can not serve two plans at once, just as you can not watch two channels at once, or walk down two paths at the same time, and if you think you can change your path, or the channels, or your plan, then your really only altering your own reality with your own will. God says your free to do that, but your not free to pick up God's plan and call it your own, because it's not your plan, it's Gods for you. Your either living for God, or your not, but only one is reality, and only one determines your destiny.
BALDERDASH!
