Do you believe in… ‘by chance’? For me, it falls into the same category as ‘luck’ – good or bad. Simply, I don’t believe in either. The Lord that I serve would never be that willy nilly as to leave ‘things’ to our luck, or the lack of it, or to chance. The God who created the universe would never be that cavalier.
Everything predetermined? We are only pawns? Fatalistic? Not really. No. No. Predetermined: I do believe that God knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) but I also believe in free will. And no, they aren’t incompatible, perhaps a bit of a conundrum at times but also they coexist, simultaneously. What I’ve discovered is that the Lord provides all we need to make the (our) best decision, however He doesn’t predetermined that we will necessarily understand or make the best choice. This is because we have free will and aren’t infallible – it’s always our decision. Sometimes we deliberately choose ‘our way’, sometime we follow our best understanding, there are all sorts of ways we come to our decisions.
None of that is based in ‘by chance’ or ‘luck’. I would argue that we all do what we do because we are motivated to act that way. It is our motivation based on… our experience, our training, our mindset – so many factors are involved in our motivation, why we choose what we choose when we choose it. There are those who would protest that they ‘didn’t have a choice’ that they ‘did what they had to’. Perhaps. But what got them to that point in the first place? “Line upon line, precept upon precept…” (Isaiah 28:10) principle. We never suddenly arrive at a point, even when we are surprised. We are where we are because of when, how, why, we did what we did.
That point is never simply positive or negative in my world of definitions. It is a given – it is what it is. The place that you are standing in/on at this moment is the result of a number of both positive and negative previous decisions – not ‘by chance’. The question is – now what? If it isn’t a ‘good’ place, you don’t need to compound the problem, you can change. And if it is where you believe the Lord wants you then you have the confidence that He will be in this with you.
Webster defines ‘chance’ as:
“… something that happens unpredictably without discernible human
intention or observable cause; assumed impersonal purposeless
determiner of unaccountable happenings,,,”
Does this really describe, define your life? Do you believe this? Do you think that the God of the Universe who created you in His likeness would simply leave you to your own devices, to chance? Hardly. He is always with us – all we need do is to turn to Him and begin to walk in all He has for us.
