Friday, October 3, 2008

Decision Making

So, the question is as follows: Is there any point in asking God to help us make decisions? Would God affect our thinking so that we decide to go one way on something we normally would go the other?
This would be only too great, but I think that although God certainly has the potential to be able to tweak our minds, I think that that is the one area God will not invade and control. After all, if he were willing to make up our minds for us, would there ever be any sin? If he were willing to enter our heads and make us decide to do or not do certain things, then Jesus wouldn't have had to come down and die for us, would he? So it seems to me that if God was willing to go to such extremes by having Jesus die rather than affecting our decisions, then he's pretty determined that we are going to be responsible for our own decisions.

Bottom line: If God will make our decisions for us, then we have quite assuredly lost our free will. I think that is the whole thing about the human experiment: that God gives us free will and sees what we do with it.

At any rate, I know that God has helped us along with the decision making process by giving us a conscience and reasoning abilities. And I can't explain how, so it's pure hypothesis on my part, but I am convinced that God will act on our behalf and help us make the right decisions, whether it's God removing temptation from us, our God putting us through experiences that will help us grow in wisdom, or by putting people in our lives who will give us good advice or be a good example, or some other means I have yet to realize.

And yet, while I don't want to put God in a box, I cannot fathom he will make our choices for us.