Chriatians, what is your take on destiny?

Question

I don't really know what to think.

I mean, do we have a destiny or do we make our own destiny.

Answer 1

destiny is what God planned or you but it's our choice if we do it or not.

Answer 2

Destiny
theological ramblings on God's decrees

Without trying to embrace the philosophical opinions of Plato like did Augustine and many of the early church fathers have, let‘s approach destiny from a Judeo-Christian perspective.

It was the belief of Plato and his teacher Socrates that nothing could occur unless it was determined or decreed beforehand by natural and spiritual laws or will. Pardon my paraphrasing but destiny and determinism are of the same source.

I encourage everyone to examine proof texts of early Christian writers and their relation to Plato who was Socrates’ under study.

http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture16b.html

this does not however mean that things like prophecy from the bible will be overridden by man's choices

God desires and He also decrees. God desires that no one dies lost but when He makes a decree, it cannot be overrun.

God’s creation cannot be overridden. True prophecy cannot be overridden. The prophecies and laws in the Bible are God’s decrees and cannot be overridden.

Are all events the decree of God? If God allows something, does that mean He has decreed it?

If you stump your toe, smash your thumb with a hammer, wear a blue shirt, clean your nostrils, or spill milk, does that make it God’s will? Shall we attribute some events to Satan? Shall we attribute events to chance or destiny? Chance and destiny both are Greek-like in nature.

I have found that the most Judeo-Christian way to put it is like these statements combined:

God desires and God decrees.
Cause and effect.
Foreknowledge and choices.
God’s plans and man’s will.

Let’s take one section at a time.

God desires that no one dies lost. God didn’t desire for Satan and the angels to rebel.
Do His desires substantiate a divine decree? Does His allowing events to occur mean that it was His will for it to occur? To say so dips into a pagan belief that all things that occur are the will of the ‘gods.’ To say that our choices automatically line up with God’s will is to say the same thing as did the worshippers of Greek and Roman gods. They believed that all actions of men are the will of Zeus and The Fates. There has to be a Judeo-Christian approach that isn’t so in-line with paganism.

Do men and angels choose their own paths and relationships, or is everything that occurs, both good and bad, the will of God? Does every choice humans make link up perfectly with God’s destiny liken unto two parallel railroad tracks? Sounds rather Greek to me in terms of Mythology afore mentioned. It runs along the lines of early Catholic opinion and some of the assertions of Luther. Martin Luther was a good man but he still embraced several weird practices even after his forced break from the Roman Catholic Church. One of those being his Platonistic approach to free will and God’s will. I am many times concerned for these early Christian philosophers who have obviously been educated beyond their intelligence. A mistake that the Pharisees made as well.

Did God want Satan and 1/3 of the angels to betray Him in Heaven? Did God want Adam to lead all of creation into the fatal sin disease? Was Hell created for mankind or Satan and the fallen angels? Is to say that God did all He did for His good pleasure a statement more rooted in pagan based societies or is it a Judeo-Christian one?

God has made decrees throughout history. Creation was a divine decree and cannot be overridden. Covenants and promises He made with and to man are divine decrees that cannot be overridden. Prophecies, dreams, and visions from God are also divine decrees that cannot be overridden because He has destined them to be reality. God has selected people specifically through time for His purposes. He saw that Enoch, Noah, and Abram were righteous men. He selected them for divine duty because of their hearts. For those who are flaming at this time over the word “chosen,” I ask again if Hell was prepared for Satan and his angels or humans? Both you say? The Bible says it was prepared for Satan and his angels.

Isaiah 5:14 says that Hell enlarges itself. Does Hell have to be expanded to accomodate for those persons it was not created for? Matthew 25:21 says that Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. God did not create humans for Hell. You were not meant for eternal torment.

Here is where we divide God’s decrees and God’s desires.

God desires that no one dies lost. That is not a decree.
No one can come to the Father unless they go through Jesus. That is a decree.
Mankind must individually choose the good and yield to the Holy Spirit to be saved.
It is God’s desire for the above statements to be so for every human. It is a decree that you cannot come to Jesus unless the Holy Spirit draws you. It is a decree that no one can come to God unless they first accept Jesus.
It is a decree that salvation is found in Christ alone.

You see it is not about parallel tracks, destiny, fate, chance, or any other -ism.
God has desires and gives us opportunity. But, God also decrees many things that cannot be negated. God does not decree every event that occurs. He does decree some things but not all things.

The Western world loves to flirt with the notion of one person they are destined to be with Romantically. Have you noticed or searched for origins of this opinion? One person you are destined to marry? The opinion's source finds its way into many Western pagan cultures. This divine destiny of you marrying a person you were "meant" to be with. Don't get me wrong though. It's possible. But is God so confined to destiny that He cannot rework our outcomes? Isn't God able to change the future for our good?

All good things come from God. We agree. Will we embrace the opinion of the Gnostics that God or gods created evil for His or their good pleasure? Again, God desires and He decrees. There is a distinction.

Jeremy Brown 2003

Answer 3

Short and to the point:

Everyone makes their own destiny. Why? Well because if we didn't and everything was planned out, then that would mean that the horrible deaths that some people have, are also planned out by God.

But how can that be, if God is love (1 John 4:8)? It wouldn't make sense.

Also the condition of the world today you can see that everything went off course to God's original plan for us.

Answer 4

pre-destiny would imply no choice to direct ourselves. Destiny is happening as we speak. It is choices becoming action.

Answer 5

That's one of those questions that doesn't have a clear and definite answer. On the one hand you see in the Bible that God has predestined some people to be saved, that He looked down through the corridor of time and chose them before He created this world.

The Bible also says that God made Christians new creations in Christ to do good works that He planned in advance for us to do. So in that sense you see that people have a destiny.

What the Bible doesn't teach is that God takes away a person's ability to make choices. The Bible is full of exhortations to people to make choices God's way and to stop making choices according to the ways of this world and according to their fleshly desires.

Since God exists outside of time, He already knows what choices people will make and what will happen during their life time. Some theologians compare God to a master chess player who already knows every possible move his opponent might make and who even knows how his opponent will respond to the moves that He makes. They say that God will work in such a way that while a person may stray from the path that God wants them to be on, that God's overall plan for their life will come to pass. That the major goals He wanted to accomplish through them will happen even if they don't come about because every day or week or month or year they are following the perfect path that He would choose for them to be on.

Answer 6

God has a plan for all of us. We need to establish a relationship with Him to know what that plan is.

Answer 7

God has a plan for us but it is up to us if we follow it

Answer 8

After your born, you are destined to Die,
Your soul spends eternity either in Hell and torment,
or at peace in Heaven- the choice is 100% yours.

Answer 9

I believe that were were foreordained to accomplish certain things on Earth, but I also believe that all the blessings that were promised to us are by virtue of our faithfulness.

Answer 10

Destiny is if we take the high road or low road to get there

Answer 11

"Destiny" or "fate" implies that all of life is a pre-arranged pattern from which there is no possible escape. However, I believe that because we human beings have free will, we can make choices. God does indeed have a Will for each life (an optimum plan, if you will) but our choice is to accept or reject that plan. Each choice that we make affects all other aspects of our lives--kind of like the choices you make in a computer game. (Rotten comparison, but you get what I mean). The outcome depends on the choices we make. God can see all possible outcomes from where He dwells. Where God is, it is always "here" and it is always "now." That doesn't mean we are pre-programmed robots. We have. a. choice. at every turn.
It is our best interest to make wise, informed choices.