Free Will or destiny?

Question

Do you believe in free will or destiny? Is life just the consquences and reaction of the decisions and actions we make in life or is it all predestined for us? I find destiny to be hard to believe. I don't believe that someone's destiny can be to live in poverty and then starve to death or to be raped, tortured and murdered. I want to believe in God and an afterlife, but with all the evil in the world, I don't know. Is God not able to intervene in our lives? Do we make our own choices and decisions and whatever happens to us is just the consequence? What about people who have terminal illnesses and get cured miraculously. or other people who survive near death? How come some people have wonderful lives, never knowing of misery or sorror, and others lives are the complete opposite? I may sound stupid, but I would like to know what other people think or believe.

Answer 1

If you care to look at Calvinism, it's a theology that puts the two together quite plausibly. Through the fall of Adam, sin propagated to the rest of humanity. Free will is so tainted with sin that we cannot look to God for salvation, and therefore it must be looked at in a negative light. Enter predestination, a variant of the "destiny" you're asking about, and you have an Elect that God chooses from before the foundations of the earth, saves, and keeps in the palm of His hand. However, rather than looking at our destiny as being "forced", predestination can now be looked at in a positive light of rescue from a path that would have led to certain destruction.

And if you read through the predestination passages in the Bible, it does show a God in charge of His universe, where foreknowledge can now contain the same meaning as Adam "knowing" Eve -- intimately, that is, meaning a pre-love for those He has chosen, as opposed to merely looking into the future to see who would choose Him. This gives us a God who we can pray to, read about, see His works in nature in a whole different light, and see ourselves as unable to do anything without His work in our lives.

Answer 2

Free Will