Choices

I believe that man has a free will. If forced to pick, I would choose to come down on the side of Arminius, but I believe that the real answer to the question: "Is God sovereign or is man free?" would be "Yes." Not just because I love to answer "either ... or ..." questions with a "yes" or "no" answer, but rather because I believe the question is too simple to capture the complexities of the issue.

However, I have another thought on the subject of man's free will. Personally, I think we have a good many fewer truly free choices than we realize. I believe that the combination of our created nature and our upbringing (nature and nurture) determine the vast majority of our actions. There are situations in which we theoretically have control over our choices, but in reality, the experiences we have already lived through have so shaped who we are that our actual behavior is effectively determined.

I wonder if, when we look at our lives from the perspective of eternity, if we won't be surprised to see that we made, not thousands of decisions, but maybe just 2.

OK, 3.