Peace Be With You

I need to take a break from writing about IM topic.

My daughter Rebecca will be in holy communion with the Catholic Church in June. Last week I attended a meeting in the church in preparation for her first communion. We had to understand what needs to be done on that big day.

A spiritual motivational speaker was invited to give us the parents a talk. She is an impressive public speaker. I agree mostly with what she has to say about human nature, behaviour and desires. Most of the ill feelings, thoughts and desires one harbours are kind of like 'self-inflicted'. The speaker mentioned that inviting God into us (or should be her?) and let Him take care of all of our problems will cause most of our difficulties to go away. Ok, I am not saying it exactly, or as convincingly or elegantly as the speaker herself put it. I wish I had taken some notes. The essence of her speech was probably still there in what I just said, maybe 30% intact? Anyway, I can live with what she said there and will not put up any feeble challenge. After all, it is an unprovable argument, one way or another.

What striked me most was her statement that God gives us free will, and with free will we take responsibility over our own actions. We sort of should not blame God for our actions, as we have free will to do what we want, literally.

On the other hand, I have also heard often that God is all powerful and all knowing.

My simple mind just can't reconcile the two. A free willing human kind, and an all powerful and all knowing God. What am I missing here? Please tell me.

To my simple mind, if we have free will, then God can't be all powerful and all knowing. Would that not be right? I mean, if God says you can really do what you want, as you have free will, but He knows everything that is going to happen including what you will be doing with your free will. Shouldn't you wonder if you really had free will to do what you are doing? I mean would you not suspect that God Himself (or 'someone' or 'something' else) had planned what you are going to do if God knows, and knows consistently, ahead of what you will be doing? Does that make sense? It does to me. Take for example, someone is able to consistently predict, without error, every single lotto draw. It must make me wonder if the lotto result has been fixed, and therefore not a freely drawn set of numbers. How else can we explain the mathematically impossible act of predicting every lotto result?

To a limited extent, we can all predict the outcome of a certain event just seconds or minutes before the event happens. That is because we are able to logically deduce and therefore predict an outcome from the previous chain of events. For example, if I have been insulting your mother for the last five minutes I can be pretty confident that you are going to do something ugly to me in the next few moments. That is a no brainer prediction. But if I can consistently predict events well into the future, say ten years down the road, then would you say that people who are involved in that future event that I am predicting now really have free will to carry out that event?

So God says to you, you are free to do what you want. But wait a minute, everything that you are going to do, I already know it, and know it now. As God is also all powerful, meaning that He can not be wrong, therefore your only choice left is to freely and willingly carry out what God already knows. Logical fallacy?

Many of us have heard this story. There was a great flood. A religiously devoted man climbed to the roof of his house. There he sat and faithfully prayed for God's intervention to save him. He never doubted God would certainly pull him out of imminent death. Soon a helicopter hovered over him and he was offered to be hauled to safety. He declined the invitation, reasoning that the helicopter could go and save others while his God would save him. Then another boat passed by him, and again he declined the offer to be saved. Soon the water rose and he finally drowned. In heaven and coming face to face with God, the man lamented, God, why have you not saved me? God replied, what can I do? I sent the helicopter and the boat but you declined My help.

We can see that the man indeed had free will. He had the free will not to be saved. Now the questions. Did God know beforehand that the man was not willing to be saved? If God had known, why was He wasting His time and precious resources on someone not willing to be saved? And again if God had known, then did the man have free will (to refuse help from God)? And if God had not known beforehand, why is He all knowing and all powerful? What is the likely answer? I don't know.

Many years back I read another beautiful article posted on the internet about 9-11. I wished I had archived the article. I can't find it anymore. The article was in the form of a narration by a Franciscan priest who was at the World Trade Centre on that fateful 9-11 date. The priest was called to the scene to help out the sufferers of the worst terrorist attack in America. The priest himself died. Apparently (yes apparently) he spoke through a medium after his death on what he saw after he died.

The priest said that, on crossing over (to the other side), there was actually a huge welcoming party going on. The angels, the saints and departed loved ones were all gathered there to welcome all those who deceased. There was great joy and celebration on the other side. (I can imagine the party had to be really huge, with 5,000 deaths guests).

The priest learned from the angels that just 10 minutes before the impact of the first plane on World Trade Centre, all the angels from all over the world and heaven received an intelligence (a la 007) that it is now inevitable that the crash on World Trade Centre would occur. So all the angels immediately gathered in New York in readiness for the big event, and the party to follow.

I like this story, and I can believe it. It shows free will. Yes, the free wills of the pilots who crashed the planes. Just minutes before the crash, only these pilots knew what would happen eventually. They had the free will to make it happen, or not. I believe even Osama Bin Laden would not have total, and I mean total, control over these pilots. (Osama was probably praying to His God at that moment for his plan of attack to be realised). The pilots really could abort the attack at the last minute. It is their free will. Perhaps they really made up their mind, that is to not change their course of actions, only 10 minutes prior to the crash, hence the intelligence received by the angels at that point in time.

In all probability, the angels could have known that something big had been planned for that day. But, even as angels they could not be sure until 10 minutes prior to the event, because the pilots had free will. It was the pilots' call.

I wonder, did God know beforehand, about 9-11? Is He all knowing?

Peace be with you.

P.S. The Franciscan priest made no mention of the welfare of the terrorist pilots after cross over. I wonder if they joined or were welcome at the party?