james watkins

God created the world, meaning everything we can perceive and everybody you will ever meet. I think a look around tells us He is incredibly creative as evidenced by the number of species we continue to catalog; the perfect balance of the earth’s life-sustaining capabilities unique in the unfathomable vastness of the universe; and that the universe appears to be equally infinite through a telescope or a microscope. God also sustains all life, and the plane of existence we are in, through His awesome powers.

People have a tendency to take Him for granted or outright ignore Him when all is well. There are some who deny He exists. According to them, human beings and all life came to be through some sort of random, cosmic accident; even though it is virtually impossible mathematically for this theory to be true. God says He spoke this universe into existence in an instant and the Big Bang Theory confirms this.

People exist in time and space that is full of great mysteries. Faith is required to believe in any worldview. Darwin speculated that humans evolved from monkeys and that all living things evolved from other simpler forms of living things. Most children are taught in public schools that this is fact, but theories are not the same as facts. I wonder why, in at least six thousand years of written observations by humans, no one has ever seen anything change into anything else—not even once. And why do primitive forms of life such as alligators persist? God said He formed the first man from dirt and biology confirms we are made of dirt (and water). Science now agrees all humans had one common ancestor.

Mankind’s highest calling may be the search for Truth—or the search for God. God says He is Truth so that would make either search the same search. God says He is Love and very few people disagree that Love is the most important thing in Life. God says He is Life and we know how important Life is to all species of living things. The will to live is the most powerful force on earth.

God says He formed every person in the womb to be who He wanted them to be and each with a purpose He planned out for them to accomplish. He granted people free will to accept their purpose or not. I have friends who think everything we do has been planned out for us and everything that is going to happen has been planned out by God—all predestined. Others think God just watches as events unfold and doesn’t interfere. Some think certain people have been pre-selected before they were born to live forever in Heaven after they die but that most people are born to burn up in Hell after death and that there is nothing any of them can do to change this destiny. Others hold that Eternal Life is available to all human beings—and that it can be had and then lost through “backsliding.”

Does God ever change His mind? In particular, can fervent prayers cause God to change His mind? It is one thing to say that God knows what is going to happen—even if He did not directly cause it to happen. On a cosmic scale this would be because space and time were created for us to experience but He exists where there is no time so one could say everything happens at once for Him. In a simpler way, maybe He knows what we are going to do because He knows us so well. I know that if I open my front door right now my dog will bolt out and run down the street because I can usually predict his behavior. Is God ever surprised?

I don’t believe everything is predetermined because if it was we would be similar to robots or worse: pawns in some kind of celestial game. It seems to me the middle path makes the most sense, that some things are predestined and some things are decided by the free will of human beings; that sometimes God allows people to decide their own fate and sometimes He steps in to alter that fate; that sometimes He changes things based on prayer and sometimes He doesn’t. For instance, if one had a saintly person in their family who prayed incessantly for the Salvation of a particular child or grandchild in their family God could decide to honor His Saint by taking an active role in forcing the action in that case. If God wants you, He is going to get you. You can go quietly (recommended) or you can resist and force may be applied. If a whisper works, great, but with some people God has to shout to get their attention and this shouting can be quite painful to experience. It does seem as if God has His favorites and that sometimes that is because of the relationship He enjoyed with a parent, grandparent or other ancestor. It also appears that God favors entire nations that honor him—Divine Providence. God enjoys the relationships He develops with people and works through those who love Him to bring Love, Hope and Faith to the world.

Tags: Love, truth, universe, Who is God

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm and is filed under God, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.