Have you heard the song “Already There” by Casting Crowns? If not, there’s a link to it at the bottom of this article, so go give it a listen.
This song tackles the omniscience of God and how He sees His plans for us compared to how we do, but I think many of us Christians understand this well enough to use it as a skipping point to a much more complicated subject that’s hinted at in this song, too, and that’s God’s presence existing outside of time and how we are to rationalize that with the concept of our ability to decide what we do.
We know God existed before time, in the beginning of time, in the past, the present, the future, and He also exists currently outside of time. It’s hard to wrap our heads around a God who can play with time like we do Play-doh, stretching it out and squishing it together. I know I struggle with it a lot, but I had to at least come up with some way to think about it because I had to tackle the topic of free will to answer a query presented to me by someone struggling with the concept.
Take the lyrics for the chorus of “Already There”: “To You my future is a memory / Cause You're already there.” It’s a little weird to think about God knowing what we’ll do before we do it. I think to some it sounds like He knows what we’re going to do because he’s destined us to do it, and there are a few Bible verses taken out of context that can make it sound like we’re destined to believe or not believe in God, to be saved or not be saved.
Of the verses I’ve seen taken out of context in this manner, here are just a few: Jeremiah 1:5, Ephesians 1:5, and Colossians 3:12. But those verses don’t necessarily mean that God made all humans, picked, for example, 50% of them and said, “these people will be the ones I choose to be saved.” To believe in such an idea changes the very character and nature of God. But what those verses do mean is that God knows something we don’t.
The simplest way I used to rationalize God’s omniscience with my little-iscience, my limited, fallible brain power, was that whether God knows you’re going to say yes to His gift of salvation, He still chooses to offer it to you.
And that’s an important conclusion, but it only addresses a small part of the question: how does free will work? So, let’s apply this to a much larger scale—the scale of one lifetime. You see, the thing that was bothering the girl who got me to consider this in a deeper way was concerned with how to live her life and fulfill her desires when she knew that God wants us to fulfill His desires over our own.
And we could get into the whole discussion about how our desires work in relation to God’s desires for us, but that’s a topic for another day and another article. So, the way to really think about this is to take a look at how God’s omniscience works and then try to compare it to something a little easier to think about.
See, if we’re doing this relationship with God right, then part of what we have is the deepest friendship we could ever have with someone. It’s one where our friend knows us so well He can tell what we’re thinking. That friends knows us so well that He could see us presented with any situation and know exactly what we’d do every single time.
For example, you’re presented with a choice of three flavors of ice cream: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Your friend is with you as you’re given the chance to choose which one you want, and right before you reach out and take your preferred flavor, chocolate, your friend leans over and says “I bet you’re going to pick chocolate.” So, you reach out and grab the chocolate ice cream and eat to your heart’s content.
Does the fact that your friend told you that you would pick chocolate change that you would have picked chocolate anyway? Did it suddenly eliminate the other two options? Did it change how much you enjoyed the ice cream? Of course not. You picked chocolate because you like chocolate more than vanilla and strawberry, and you enjoyed it because you like it. It’s actually pretty simple, all things considered.
Someone else knowing that you’re going to choose a certain way doesn’t automatically make the other options disappear, and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to like the option you chose any less than if they didn’t know.
It’s the same thing with God. Just because He knows you’re going to choose career Y over career Z doesn’t mean you didn’t get to choose career Y. Just because He knows you’re going to choose to serve in a certain way doesn’t mean the option wasn’t there for you to serve in another way. Don’t let your fallible mind’s inhibitions keep you from doing what God wants you to do. You might end up pulling a Jonah and Nineveh situation, and that’s just not as pleasant as doing what you would find the most joy in anyway.