I know, I know, Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace, calm and joy. I just want to invite you to calmly, peacefully wrestle afresh with one of the questions that has knotted knickers since the dawn of time: Fate vs. Free Will? Destiny or I Decide?
Do we have a choice, and as followers of Jesus, how do we come to answer that question?
Turns out, Muslims have debated this within the ummah for a long time as well. (Not as long as us, since they’re younger overall, and us not as long as our Jewish forebears.)
If you’ve hung out with Muslims much, you’ve heard, “Inshallah.” (If God wills.) Maybe you have on rare occasion dropped to my level and thought, “Oh, don’t blame God. Just decide to show up!” Similarly, Christians will sometimes add to prayers, “If it’s your will. . .”
According to Justin Parrot, the debate for Muslims goes back to their early days, “This question led to one of the earliest sectarian schisms in the Muslim community, between the Qadarites, who believed in absolute human free will, and the Jabarites, who believed in absolute determinism and fatalism. Each of these groups developed an extreme and misguided theology.”
On our side of the divide, we have Calvinists and Arminians. Do you identify with one or the other?
Maybe as Justin tries to show in the article referenced above there is a middle, or multiple middle, ways. At any rate, it’s a fun debate that gives me opportunity to examine my assumptions.
Sitting here by the fire and the tree and in the midst of my family, I’m happy that however God actually orders reality in reference to this debate, we are assured that when, “the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman. . . .” (Galatians 4:4)
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