Well, its been a while since I updated my last post which I left off in the middle of. I'd say it was because I was being productive, but sadly, I usuallly was not, usually I ended up procastinating writing it until I forgot about it. In the meantime, I had been doing a lot of other thinking, a lot of other reading, so a lot has changed in the things and way I think. I've decided to attempt to update this blog regularly so that I have a record of what I was thinking at a given time, and also, so that I can at least feel like I'm doing something.
So, where was I? God, outside of time, and free will.
As I see it, the two sides of the argument go like this. If God is Omnipotent and controls everything in particular, from leaves falling down to what I wear today, then that leaves no room for free will, since everything was predetermined. I've come to the conclusion that that position is morally untenable. Free Will is a necessity if we are to be held responsible for our actions. However, saying that God doesn't control everything, that he started the machine and it runs on its own, is theologically untenable if we are to believe in an Omnipotent and all-powerful God. One side is morally problematic, and one side is theologically problematic. So while there are those who are content to leave it as a paradox, saying the two are mutually contradictory but both true, which is a road I see a lot of merit in, I see my own way of understanding it. God is omnipotent and nothing happens without his willing it to be done. That makes theological sense. But what about us? Is everything predetermined from our end? No. There is no predetermination by God, as there is no "pre". Nothing has been decided already, but rather, from God's perspective, is in a constant state of being decided. Creation is happening at the same time as the end of time at the same time that I am making whatever decision I am making. Once I make it, it becomes part of the world God created. You have the ability to make that decision in the present, but once you've already made it, your decision was "predetermined". Perhaps I'm not making any sense, so an example. I have a doughnut in front of me. I could decide to eat the doughnut, or not eat the doughnut. At the moment I am making the decision, I have free will whether to eat said doughnut. I cannot claim that God compelled me to eat the doughnut, which if I was able to do so, would be morally problematic. At the moment, the world exists in a state of a safek as to whether I eat said doughnut or not. Now let's say I eat the doughnut. The world is now a world in which I have already eaten said doughnut. God created a world in which I ate the doughnut. I have no free will as to whether I ate the doughnut. I did have free will to eat it. The past becomes part of the world God created (which from his perspective, is BEING created) and its plan for it. It is now part of the divine plan that I ate that doughnut. We tend to, as time bound beings, view past decisions as "I could have done this, or I could have done this". But God does not view things that way. There is no past to God. What you did already only could have happened that way. But what you're doing now is up to you. And ultimately, even if I'm dead wrong, thats what it comes down to. We need not concern ourselves with God's perspective so much. We're here to do our job, and we need to accept both the concepts of an all-powerful God and Free Will and the responsibility that comes with that. This kind of mental acrobatics will perhaps help people who find these questions an obstacle to doing what they need to do, but our religion is not one that focuses on such questions. The main thing is, learn, do mitzvos, be a good person, and try to bring the divine down to the world we live in.
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