Free Will vs God's Plan

Well I don't know what Christians believe regarding Gods plan, but I see it as you have free will, but God plans on you to be a teacher. You might hate this, but its what you're best at. The journey to this predestined destination may be winding and take longer than God had hoped, but eventually you will become a teacher. You might not be a professional teacher, maybe you give guidance to others, but you teach, and that was Gods Plan.

Granted, I see Gods Plan more as a way to explain hard things. The ending of 'Where the Red Fern Grows' is probably the best example. [Spoilers] Billy's dogs die and his father explains it as Gods Plan, they were praying for more money, Billy won enough money with his hunting dogs, but when the family was to be split up [because hunting dogs don't live well in the city] God had the dogs killed because they A. fulfilled their purpose and B. he hates families to be split up. I see this as a horrible thing for a loving God to do, but it works as an explanation to a confused person about a tragedy.

I was raised with a strong Christian background (though I no longer consider myself Christian) and this is how it was explained to me, so I hope it helps. :)

God does have a plan for us, but having given us free will we can divert from that plan. It would be like your own parents trying to make sure you get a great education to become a doctor and you deciding in the end to be a painter instead.

I think most Christians (at least those I have known) believe that yes God has a set path for you to take, if you so choose to. This path (being the all seer that He is) will lead you to ultimate fulfilment spiritually. But as I stated before, taking into account our God-given free will, he has allowed us to make our own choices, which don't always follow what he feels would be best for us.

I hope that makes sense. :)

Cheers,

Chy

All things serve the creator. Even those who attempt to defy him. Free will isn't so much of an illusion as more of a carefully calculated part of an equation.

My take on this topic is that I don't believe in fate, just that some things are fated.

OP, you say you cannot believe in something like freewill and gods plan simultaneously? Examine a magnet.

You will find that it has two sides. Positive and negative.

Imagine that free will is the ability to choose whether to be positive or negative [so to speak] .

Imagine the creators [God's] plan as the magnet itself.

Hope this helped! :D

Well to simplify my answer i will say that by turning your will over to god and doing gods will is a choice that allows you to move forward in the religion based on faith. If you take your will back and go against god, which your free to do, then that was gods plan for you.

You guys all have interesting perspectives

I have never heard that. My spouse grew up catholic and never heard that either.

What is it that you "never heard", Betsy? If it was my own post, I was quoting directly from the Catholic Catechism. The Question and Answer little booklet given to all Catholic children; at least it was when I went to school in the 1930s and 40s.

I'm not Christian and this is totally off topic....

I believe that we are born to this world to complete a task. Sometimes we were born with our Karma from our past life. We have the free will not to complete this task. The older souls are the spiritual people who try to find spiritual meaning in their life. The younger souls are those who just want to party all day long and only care for themselves. When we are born, our life movie starts playing. We decide to switch to a different version of the scene.

For example there is this busy women who is riding the subway. She drops coffee on her shirt, drops her bag, and she isn't having a good day. When she reaches the subway the subway doors close. She turns around instead of opening the subway door. If she would have opened the door, she would have found her soulmate. However, because she was already having a bad day she didn't want to go through the struggle of opening the subway door.

As I understand.
We all have a (planned) life, but we follow it like nothing is planned at all. Making one think we have (free will, but we never do, always walking a path set for us.
No matter faith or God/dess we follow.

In reply to the original post, this is how I explain it, being Christian myself. God's plan is "destiny," or what going to happen. Destiny has 3 equal parts:

1. Free Will (our choices)
2. Chance/Luck
3. Fate (God's will/what happens)

Fate is the end result, thus God's will. But Fate is also made up of 3 equal parts:

1. Free Will (our choices)
2. Chance/Luck
3. Destiny (God's path)

There are some theologians that claim there is only divine will, that we cannot think or act for ourselves - that we were born destine to Heaven or Hell. However, this is just as foolish as those that think their horoscope, written in the stars, takes their free will leaving us as little more that puppets to astrology. We must take from the divine and act for ourselves. What will be will be, but we must chose our own paths. Keep in mind, this is not to say that God or astrology (seeing that is the other example I used) have no power, as clearly both do. It is to say that we have power to make our own path, and that God and astrology may both work through without sapping us or others of our free will.

Hope that helps.