If you’re watching a movie and the main character is a teenager who has parents who have their whole life planned out…where they will go to college…THAT they will go to college…what they will be…etc…How do you usually perceive those parents? And, how does the movie portray them? Are parents who hyper-control their children’s lives heroes which raise happy and healthy kids? Hardly. We all acknowledge parents who control every aspect of their children’s lives to be tyrants and their kids will rebel and reject those parents and get as far away as they can. Kids in an environment like that are not treated as individuals…as “people” with minds and dreams and ambitions of their own at all. Kids in an environment where everything about their life is already decided for them are more like objects which have no thoughts or feelings. Having our futures “planned out” for us is a curse…
That right there is the truth that we live with. That right there is the evidence within us. So, what is the spiritual equivalent of that?
We hear a lot of talk about “God’s plan” for your life…right? People wonder, “What is God’s plan (or will) for my life?”
There are Bible versions which have verses translated in ways to make it seem that God has a plan for our lives in this way…(Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 29 are 2 of those) and everyone seems to know those verses by heart. (I will show their actual translations below)
But, what my son pointed out agrees with Romans 1…that “that which is knowable about God is evident within us”…
Luke 11:15 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
If we can see that controlling our own children in this way would be evil…why would think that God would not see it, too? If we would not treat or children as objects to be controlled…if we give freedom to our children to choose their own paths…Why would we think that God has our life “planned out for us”?
(Remember the “Stepford Wives” is a horror story…)
Had God wanted dolls to play with, he’d have stuck with the animals…but He created us in HIS IMAGE…with the ability to think, to choose, to love, to hate, to dream, to hope, to create…and to live lives we choose to live…
His “plan” for us is that we do what we do…without sinning…while loving Him…that we do all that we do for the glory of God…
Jeremiah 29:11 in an accurate translation…
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
Psalm 139:16 in an accurate translation…
I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are your works; and that my soul knows right well. My substance was not hid from you, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in your book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
WORTH CONSIDERING…
A human who controls all aspects of the lives of those in his kingdom would be a dictator. And, a king who would purposely inflict pain and suffering on the people in his kingdom would not be considered a kind, fair, or loving ruler. Seems to me that the picture that most people seem to have of God is more like Hitler than Jesus…and in my opinion it would be partly because of the church’s insistence on raising kids the way they do…hurting them “for their own good”…
ALSO…
If God had “a plan” He was working out…Jesus woulda’ surely mentioned it! If God had “a plan” it seems to me that THAT would be a pretty BIG IMPORTANT thing…and Jesus does not mention it…
If God had “a plan” for all of us, we woulda’ heard people asking Jesus what to do with their lives…"Should I become a nurse or a teacher, Jesus?” But, no one asks Him questions like that. And, neither does Jesus ever tell anyone “what to be” with regard to the working out of their life…His focus is on how people can attain eternal life…that’s the only “direction” He gives people…So, either Jesus was not aware of God’s plan for everyone’s lives when He was a man…or…there is no such thing…
There is a whole other thing we could discuss also about God’s will and how often He gets what He wants…but that’s another day and another rant…but basically earth is “at war”…and there is a battle going on and that’s why we’re to pray that it will be “on earth as it is in heaven”…because on earth God does not often get His way…and holding to this belief actually “takes His name in vain” and “bears false testimony” against Him…because He is not the one doing the bad things in our lives…He is love…and tho’ we’ve all mostly been trained that our parents love us and sometimes hurt us…that love is from man…God’s love is perfect…HE never hurts us…we’re at war…and when you live in a war zone sometimes you get attacked directly and sometimes you get hit by bomb shrapnel and sometimes stray bullets hit you…but that’s all from the enemy and not from God…
.JPG)
