[Today’s run: 6 miles]<\/p>\n
We have a warm, windy and wet morning today.\u00a0 I went over to Starkville and ran with some folks over there.\u00a0 By the end I was very well soaked.\u00a0 But with the warmer temperatures it wasn’t an unpleasant experience.<\/p>\n
I had a shower thought recently.\u00a0 I went to a Christian school from 8-12 grades.\u00a0 One of the mysterious issues that we pondered frequently was “How to determine God’s will for your life.”\u00a0 From the students’ point of view this frequently was attached to questions of career, relationships, decisions which chart the long-term arc of\u00a0 a person’s life (or so it seemed at the time).\u00a0 And the older people never had a quite satisfactory answer.\u00a0 What if I go to the wrong college or marry the wrong person, will I miss some sweet-spot of success in the course of my life?<\/p>\n
Looking at it from this end (having had a career and a marriage, etc.) and that all looks backwards.\u00a0 Maybe this was understood by the adults at that time also, but I don’t think it was communicated, or at least not communicated well in all of those angst-filled discussions.<\/p>\n
I remember they seemed to have some tiered approach to the “will of God” with general will (things on the line of ‘obey the 10 commandments’) and specific will (‘this guy here is supposed to be a missionary, this other guy is supposed to be a computer programmer’).\u00a0 And the angst was that somehow I’m going to miss some vital clue about my place in the world and mess the whole thing up.<\/p>\n
This is defective thinking about the nature of God\u00a0 as seen in the Bible.\u00a0 If God wants me to be a prophet, He has given every indication of ability and inclination to make that known in an undeniable way.\u00a0 Ok. So I haven’t received a blinding-light ordination to take a message to Nineveh.\u00a0 Am I supposed to carry my lunch to work or buy something at the local taco stand?<\/p>\n
Ah!\u00a0 So what are the boundaries of my personal responsibility?\u00a0 I think that is the real question.\u00a0 Do I wear the red shirt or the blue shirt.\u00a0 Should I go on a date with X?\u00a0 Become a vegetarian?\u00a0 Take that job offer?\u00a0 And suddenly we are in the realm of generalities, rules of thumb, and subtle shades of conscience.<\/p>\n
I wish I could tell my high-school self that it’s OK.\u00a0 Look at the image of perfection we have in the Bible: the Garden of Eden.\u00a0 God said, “Of all of the trees of the garden you may freely eat\u00a0 (except for this particular one)” .\u00a0 You could say that in the post-Eden condition my judgment is faulty about how much to eat or lacking variety or whatnot.\u00a0 But I think it is obvious that the inclination of God is to hand some decision-making over to individuals.<\/p>\n
Maybe that’s why I like movies about the nature of reality (The Matrix, The Truman Show, etc.).\u00a0 The big question is how should a person choose, and what are the implications of a choice.\u00a0 Is reality an automation with no “real” choices?\u00a0 Is the game rigged?\u00a0 And the happy ending in these films is that choices do make a difference, personal agency wins.<\/p>\n
[Like most of my blog posts, this is half-baked at best.\u00a0 I’m sure there are philosophers and theologians who spend serious time and effort putting these things together.]<\/p>\n
So you really do get to pick if you want to be an artist or date whats-her-name or whatever.\u00a0 It’s good to have some decision-making criteria, get good advice etc.\u00a0 And the rest you can leave to God and his grace to fill in the gaps.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: 6 miles] We have a warm, windy and wet morning today.\u00a0 I went over to Starkville and ran with some folks over there.\u00a0 By the end I was very well soaked.\u00a0 But with the warmer temperatures it wasn’t an unpleasant experience. I had a shower thought recently.\u00a0 I went to a Christian school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6153"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6158,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6153\/revisions\/6158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}