Free Will -- What's the Point of It if God Already Knows What We'll Do?

I haven't been consumed by this question for two days now, and maybe writing out my reasoning will help me to come to terms with some kind of answer. What's the point of human beings having free will if God is omnicient? So I logged on to the internet to look for some answer, and most of what I read involves a related argument... namely, that if God already knows what we'll choose, then how are we really choosing it? Aren't we then following a foreordained script like a bunch of agreeable puppets?

Well, I don't feel God manipulating me like a puppet. I make choices. As a result, I don't see the rationale of this question; mine is step to the side. What is the point of free will if God already knows what we're going to choose? If he's really omnicient, then he knows if we're going to mess up, he knows if we're going to triumph, and he knows when a piano's going to fall on us... why bother giving us free will at all... just to watch us twist in the wind?

I think... when we look backwards in time, we see clearly that some events are just facts. The Kennedy assassination. The American Revolution. The birth of Prince William and the death of Diana. My move to Texas or the end of my marriage. They are definite and immutable. How we see them in retrospect, or the power or impact they have over us, can change. Before my parents had me, the idea of a baby was just an idea... now, almost-36 years later, it's as though I always was. And I was. Always.

I think... for God, what's going to happen in the future is like us when we look at the past. It IS. We as people can look only backwards, but God can see everything in both directions. God knows, just as a mother knows her children, what we are capable of doing.

It's like... there's the person God means for me to be. Then there's the person I am. And then there's the person who has given up. That is what's up to me. God knows how far I can go if I trust the destiny that awaits me with the spiritual support that's available to all of humanity. He knows what will happen to me if I play it safe. And he has another path for me if I just stop trying altogether. Of course, he knows this for all of the people everywhere, and our paths cross, come together, diverge, and end, all in a great big concert through which he weaves himself, the chance to know him, and the chance to exceed our own expectations and perceptions of life on earth or off of it.

Does God micro-know or care about my free-will decisions? Free will gives us a chance to become the people we're meant to be, so there's no need for anyone looking over our shoulders or pressuring us. But God knows what's going on. He is always there. We have the gift of prayer (or meditating, or whatever anyone wants to call it) to connect us with the power of the universe (that sounds dramatic, but I don't know what else to call it) and to call upon those powers to guide our thinking and our decision making. But as for the decisions themselves... well, they're always made. I don't mean already made, but always. Just like I was always going to be here. Just like my cat was always going to go away. Just like a mother knows that her children will die (though hopes she won't be around for it), knowing that they will someday die doesn't negate the value of having them, loving them, teaching them, and raising them.

Perhaps in the face of God always knowing our destinies, that process of living that destiny is important for us to undergo. It's a step on a progression that we don't as yet understand. After all, if God knows... and I believe the design of the universe is bigger, wider, thicker, deeper, and more complicated than humans can understand... then God knows. There's way more to everything than science or religion can let us see.

Thinking Makes It So

William Shakespeare said, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." All day long, that quotation has run through my mind, and it runs hand in hand with Liz Gilbert's idea of controlling our thinking and not allowing our thoughts to control us, as presented to her by "Richard from Texas" in her memoir.

As I mowed the grass tonight (prime time to peruse the thoughts), I kept thinking about how disassociated my aerobics teacher stays, by choice, in order for him to expend his energies and attention on what he chooses instead of risking heartbreak by allowing himself to be "weak" (his word) or vulnerable (mine) by hyperinvolving himself with others. Blasphemy, my Italian ideology cried. Smart, insisted my post-divorce perspective. Is it so wrong for him to be like that? Would it be wrong for me to emulate him and thus avoid future heartbreak? Ah, there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Then I think about relocating my pet whom I loved, I think about my husband walking out, I think about throwing in the educational towel and going to law school or doing something else totally different; if I'm going to live another fifty years, I've got the time. All of these events or possbilities are wrong only if I think it so? The demon of relativism joins hands with my carpe diem quotations, and then everything seems muddy again.

I think I liked being in a relationship with a man because, well, if he thought I was worthy of loving, then obviously, I was lovable, and that made me feel good. I was lovable; his thinking made it so. He was someone who chose to love me instead of having to love me, like my family. So as I pushed around the mower, I thought, why doesn't my own thinking count? What do I think?

What do I think?

Damn it, I've never thought about it. That's my assignment this week.

Grief

It's been a week with a potent loss that I don't want to talk about, but I have to mention it as a responsible diarist.

The resulting grief has thrown an emotional wrench in my attitude and outlook, and I find myself actually punishing myself for my misery. I have no justification to be miserable, I tell myself sternly. I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and be a big girl. I need to recognize that in the context of world suffering, this is not something about which to complain. I am a lucky fortunate girl, my inner voice insists. Bellyaching about making a best albeit difficult decision is both self-indulgent and counterproductive.

After all, negative feelings have no place in today's society. They have lost against modern culture, where self-help is a lifestyle choice and counselors du jour provide a battalion of mood-altering techniques and medications to ensure constant contentment. Why feel bad when there are so many reasons/ methods/ solutions to feel good? Turn that frown around! But while it's bad to feel bad, I have indeed felt bad all week. I haven't been successful at quelling the encompassing desolation that's engulfed me over and over like a hyperactive tidal wave. It's a failure... and I've learned that atop the failure that generated the grief, the failure to handle my feelings positively renders grief squared, not added. I punish myself exponentially for punishing myself.

Have I enjoyed any of this? No, not on any level. I did find my divorce-grief fascinating, because I knew that someday I would prevail, and a part of me watched me outside of myself, waiting to see how it would all work out. Now, however, there is no curiosity. There is no confidence in my ability to remain afloat, no confidence in my instinct, even, to want to remain afloat. As I can't keep back the literal tide of water, and I cannot fight against an emotional one, either. I don't want to anymore. I want it to engulf me, toss me about, and either throw me ashore ready to begin again or just put me out of my misery altogether.

I think that's what it's come down to. I wrote tonight to my friend that I think "more changes are in store for me." I think, really, it's time for a total change. On some level, I have to give up the person I think I am, the one who's tied to the past and defined by preconceptions and indoctrinations. I have to bury her, figuratively. She is done. Then I have to start again, reconstructing myself authentically to who I AM, poking and testing and gauging what really does matter to me after all, what are my true prioroties, and understanding them, honoring them, living them out. I have to find myself dwelling authentically in The Way Things Are, not The Way I Want Them to Be, not The Way They Should Be, not The Way I Imagined They Are. It sounds dramatic, perhaps, but truly, I have to let go... altogether. Shed my preconceptions and the resulting frustrations. Remove my rose-colored glasses and the related expectations. Surrender any imagined or granted power or control over what happens next. Acknowledge my limitations and weaknesses and love myself in spite of them... because of them... while searching for purpose outside of myself and others, but in dedication to God and in alliance with my own creativity.

I can't reconcile my life now with what I expected from life five years ago or fifteen years ago. But instead trying and regain ground, which is how I've felt for so long, I can kiss the ground before me instead. This is where I am, whether it's anywhere I've ever expected. I've done what I've done, what's happened is happened, I do my best, and any regrets or sadnesses or second-guesses are normal indicators of transitions that I can begin to practice greeting with trust and faith, not with fear. After all, maybe my aerobics teacher is right that everything does happen for a reason, and that I have a purpose that's placed me precisely where I am because, unfathomable as it seems, it's precisely -- precisely! -- where I need to be, for all I've done or not done... or undone... to get here.