Are Our Lives Fated?

Fate or predestination, Are We Living Ours ?

Do you believe in fate? Are you one of those who believe in predestination, that if something is bound to happen to you, you don't have any chance of avoiding it?

Let us examine if there is such thing as fate.

1. What is fate?

2. Who is in control?

3. What should we really expect to happen?

What Does Predestination Mean?

Predestination or fate is the belief that what we are experiencing are bound to happen to us, because God has preordained every details of our lives, that we cannot change them or influence any modification to it. It further believes that God being God has total control of every details in our lives, and we are just living it out as it should be.

As the Wikipedia defines it: 'Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God'.

Who Is In Control?

God is in control. Or else He is not God. So does that mean that God have to preordain things to remain in control?

No. He does not have to preordain anything to remain in control. Actually, while many evangelists and religious minister are teaching that indeed there is predestination, they do not realize how this teaching can affect the characteristic of the God they would like to be worshiped by the people listening to them.

Why? Here are the reasons why. If God preordain everything, it would mean that everything that happened and will happen is His choosing. Remember the first commandment of God to man?

15 Then the Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. 16 He told him, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, 17 except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day."- Genesis 2:15-17

Here is a simple command with a clear stipulation on the result if and when disobeyed, which is death. Now think about this particular scene and command. Will this be proper for a God to command if He predestined Adam and Eve to eat it anyway, as it happened? If predestination is God's way of doing things, then this will not be a just command, but a make believe, scripted show of how things will unfold anyway.

Predestination teaching makes God a liar. Leading humankind to believe that they can do something when in fact they cannot. (For example, to obey Him, have faith and be saved)

What else is wrong about this? Imagine again that God really predestined Adam and Eve to disobey God (to act the way they did) will it be right for God to punish them for it, when they couldn't do anything to change how things would happen?

Predestination teaching makes God unjust, a tyrant and cruel. Characteristics that even a self respecting "Christian" will not be proud to be labelled with, much less their God.

The confusions and the complications do not end there. It would mean that the long history of human suffering, and struggle are just scripted and was done for naught. God, if God did that, deserve no worship or praise, instead will deserve our disdain and deepest resentment.

Happily, God did not predestined our lives. Instead, He asks us to obey His commandments so we can gain good results and warns us of disobedience because it will result to our eventual death.

But the question remains, if God does not preordain things how can He be in control? This is the point of tangent, many people cannot harmonize these two facts about God: Being in control and no predestination. As though one cannot happen without the other.

Really, how can God be in control if our lives are not predestined?

The secret lies in His laws.

31 Can you tie the Pleiades together or loosen the bonds that hold Orion? 32 Can you guide the stars season by season and direct the Big and the Little Dipper? 33 Do you know the laws that govern the skies, and can you make them apply to the earth? 34 Can you shout orders to the clouds and make them drench you with rain? 35 And if you command the lightning to flash, will it come to you and say, "At your service"?- Job 38:31-35

So without the need for predestination God is in total control, by laying out the RULES, the LAWS that govern everything!

Image: http://www.science4all.org/le-nguyen-hoang/newtons-laws/

He made the physical laws, the natural laws, the sacrificial laws, the moral laws and all other laws that we have no idea about, to govern everything, all the time. So that when a thing does something, everything else will react in a certain way, following God's established laws.

God knows exactly what will happen to every choice and decision a man makes. He knows exactly the end of a given action because HE HAVE SET THE RULES for them.

This right here prove why God should be praised and worshipped because only Him can keep up with all the random acts of everything, everywhere and still be in control.

Is this true? Did God put laws to govern everything? Here is an excerpt from my article:

"Scientists have also proven that there are positive and negative parts of an atom that render an element stable or not, they represent them as a part revolving around the other part, it will mean that everything is actively moving at atomic level of things. Trillions and trillions of them, all moving at this very moment, all, in everything. Mind boggling actually if you try to imagine. Yet they actually do in total order, as how they were designed to do."

No more no less.

Molecules behave in total orderliness too. Ask the chemists how are they able to repeat a particular solution. A mixture? How are engineers able to calculate the strength of materials, how manufacturers are able to continually produce the same product with consistent quality. They all depend on the stable orderliness of matters. Order that no man had put in there.

As to the elemental frequencies, ask an engineer how everything is emanating frequency, every element, a different frequency. That these days, some company can use a frequency modulator to be able to tell what things are under the soil without making excavation. They can tell: what element, how deep, how wide and to what extent, how much is there. If there is no order, this sort of things will not be possible. Telecommunications, radio, internet and a host of other things will not be possible without order in elemental frequencies.

How about in our simple daily lives, do we depend on those orders too? Yes, we do. Although we're so used to them that we just take what's going on for granted. When you put sugar in your hot coffee, don't you expect it to be sweetened? What will happen if the order and law that is supposed to work there is not consistent? Will your life be happier? Say, sometimes when you put sugar, it sweetens the coffee, but sometimes you see the sugar just don't dissolve? Maybe if it happens one day, you will think that you have put something in your coffee that is not sugar. Because you will reason out that sugar should be dissolved in that situation. Yes, we depend on the law and order in our daily activities.

Another simple example: Suppose you're driving a car, what do you expect to happen when you rotate the steering wheel? What do you expect when you press the clutch? the fuel or the brake pedal? What if the laws of physics is not consistent? Would you like to drive with a steering wheel that makes your car go in unexpected directions when you turn it right or left? Pedals that does unexpected things? I hope that you are following with my train of thought here, it can be a fun mental exercise.

Obviously, without the law and order operating in consistent manner, our daily lives will be unbearably hard.

Even if we consider the gigantic things like our planet, the sun, our galaxy and other galaxies, this law and order is evident. Planets rotate around the sun, our solar system rotates around the center of the milky way galaxy and our galaxy rotating around the center of the cluster of galaxies which milky way is clustered with. All in order.

There is order everywhere, from the smallest to the biggest things known to man. Therefore, there should be someone who put all these things in order. You may call it whatever you like. I strongly suggest you call it "God."

These laws are so dependable, that an exact action will always get an exact reaction every time.

This dependability of God's established laws can easily be confused with predestination. Like in God's word saying: "the wicked will be destroyed" or "the righteous will live" when in reality, it is telling us that a person will reap what he sow, whatever he sow.

Why would this be confusing? Because as humans, we are so limited in time and capacity that when the action that will reap a certain reaction takes a long time to happen, we may view that as a predestination, when in fact it is only taking the course of event as laid out by God's established laws.

What example can we cite? Here's one: God's law forbids Angels in having sexual relations with humans. The transgression of that rule happened thousands of years ago. So when God said that those Angels and the offspring of these illegal union is bound for destruction (Jude 1:6), God is actually pronouncing judgement after a sin and not announcing a predestination. Then we have to remember that the descendants of that mixed marriages(sexual relations) are still here today. So those powerful people who are actually carrying the gene of their fallen angel forefathers are bound for destruction. No matter how 'good' or 'bad' they may appear before our eyes, they will be destroyed. Not because of what they have done or have not done, but because they are the very result of an act against the law of God. This may appear as predestination. The same goes on the other side, Israel was chosen long ago by God and God declared that his descendants will inherit what God has promised. So, only the people that belong to Israel have this promise, when they finally receive that promise, it may appear as a predestination while in fact it is only the result of the chain of event that lead to that particular point. Which the individual can fail or succeed.

Another thing, if we would search the Bible for the word 'predestination' and 'preordain' the words appear only in the letters from Paul. Paul is a proven liar and a twister of God's truth. So, if many people are confused about this issue it is largely because of his teachings. Indeed a leaven makes the whole dough rise.

What Should We Expect?

We can take heart. We can gain the approval of God even if we are not doing His will at the moment. We are not destined to be destroyed (unless you are one of the fallen angel's descendants), you can still search for God, do His will and be considered righteous.

God has given us the information we need to act according to His will, He has made a way for us to learn His will. Let us learn the laws of God and obey them. He has made a way for us to be able to approach Him again, thru our Christ. Let us learn about Christ and follow His ways of perfectly doing God's Law.

When we have done that, we can expect the established reaction:

12 "Listen!" says Jesus. "I am coming soon! I will bring my rewards with me, to give to each one according to what he has done.- Revelations 22.12

The words 'according to what he has done' clearly shows that there is no predestination involved in receiving God's gifts, it will be on how we acted. Act good, reap good law. God bless us all.