God Pressed Play

Alright, let’s take this post out of the strictly Biblical and delve into a more Theological concept: the problem of free will and God’s plan.

I find that the problem always comes back to the concept of Time. But I’ll get to that.

Here is what we know:
• God is omnipotent- He can do anything, change anything, destroy anything,
breathe life into anything. He is limitless.
• God is omnipresent- He is everywhere, in space and time. There is no
geographic location in heaven or earth devoid of him (Hell, I suppose, is the
exception, by His design). Likewise, there is no time, past, present, or
future when God is absent.
• God is omniscient- He knows all. Nothing is hidden from God, neither in the
mind nor on the earth.

Because we know these, we know something else: we can never truly understand Him. It is one of the great ironies of our faith, that we are compelled to understand the nature of God, without the ability to ever fully comprehend Him.

From the English Standard Version:

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Philippians 2:13 “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

John 16:13 “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

These verses speak of God’s Plan, a concept that I’ve been taught in Sunday School since I was old enough to understand language. They said, “God has a plan for you and He knows what will happen long before you do. He knew what would happen before you were even born.” It’s a rather comforting thought for most Christians—God has the entire realm of existence planned from beginning to end. Every thought, word, and deed is set in stone. We can do nothing but try to understand what that plan is.


The Ancient of Days, by William Blake, showing God as the architect of the earth.

So here’s the problem. How does prayer work?

Luke 11:9-10 “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”

Another inspiration verse, and another fact that I’ve been taught since childhood. God listens to our prayers and needs, and responds to them (with “yes,” “no,” or “wait”). So what this verse is telling me is that if things aren’t going the way I like, then all I have to do is ask and, if He finds it wise, God will change his plan?

That seems wrong.

Then there’s the classic question of free will- do I make my own decisions? Because God knows everything, does he direct everything? Then, has he destined that there are those who will never follow Him, that will die without ever knowing His salvation?

That seems wrong too.


That was just the introduction. Here’s where things get weird and my own potentially heretical theories pop up.

The problem, as I said earlier, is time. If today I have a problem, then I pray and God hears me and he answers my prayer. This is the way we think, linearly. The problem is, God is not linear. He exists outside of our time, the very concept that he is here with us NOW, is ridiculous. God cannot be limited to here and now, or there and then. That speaks against his omnipresence. This is why we say that He knows what you want before you ever ask for it. You just have to ask.

But think of God as outside of our own time led me to an interesting line of thought, one that ended in the theory that I used to title this post: God Pressed Play.

I'll use Windows Movie Maker as my object lesson.



I used to use this program all the time in college, to make slideshows for clubs and presentations. The multiple bars along the bottom allow me to insert music, pictures, videos, and transitions. Then I can edit them, flip them around, crop them, cut them, delete them. I watch what I have, then change what I don’t like. When I’m happy with the finished product, I publish it to movie form and the file type changes from a Windows Movie Maker Project file (.MSWMM) to a standard video file (.WMV).

I propose that this is what God did. He saw the potential and created a project. He made the earth, then changed the waters, then added life. He watched it and saw what the forms of life were doing, so He backed up and changed things. He added more layers, more complexities, then watched it again. The timeline is linear, but God is not on that linear line. He sat above it, at his computer screen, moving the timeline back and forth, and deciding where it would go. He saw a conflicting part, a discordant note, and allowed it to play out because He knew how much more beautiful that resolution would be for the overall project. The process repeated, over and over again. Eventually, he reached November, 2011, when I prayed for help as I presented a paper at a conference. Perhaps God changed the project, or perhaps He decided to leave it the same.

And this continued until He decided that the project was finished. He watched it again, to be sure, then he clicked publish and saved the file as something else. He brought up the movie in a separate program, got a bag of popcorn, and pressed play.


Some of you may worry that this theory reaches too closely toward Deism: the view that God has set the universe in motion, but does not interfere with how it runs. But that is not the case at all. He listened to humanity while he was creating it; He changed the course of events while he was deciding what the course of events would be. In that way, our prayers don’t change His plan; God listened to our prayers before his plan was complete. What we live in now is the .WMV file, the version that he perfected and sat down to watch, after answering all of the prayers and addressing all of the problems.

As far as I can tell, this theory solves the problems: God is still omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. He still has a plan for existence. He still listens to our prayers and decides our fates, and we have the free will to decide our own destinies.

So, this is my theory. God Pressed Play. Tell me, friends: Is this heresy?

Possession

I recently saw the movie The Devil Inside, Directed and Written by William Brent Bell.



In a nutshell, it’s another faux-documentary horror film, cashing in on the success of the Paranormal Activity franchise. A woman named Isabella embarks on a mission in Italy to discover what really happened to her mother, who allegedly murdered three people during her own exorcism. Isabella joins up with two unauthorized exorcists and becomes involved in a series of exorcisms while she tries to discover the truth.

I personally loved the acting, particularly by the demon-possessed mother, played by Suzan Crowley.


The way the filmmakers depicted the possessions and the exorcisms were gruesome and terrifying. Unfortunately, the movie did broadcast many of its moves and there were very little surprises storyline wise, but it kept my attention because I had no idea how these things were going to take place.

And it felt rather short—only 83 minutes.

But this isn’t supposed to be a movie review. This is the story of where my mind went after seeing it. That next Sunday my preacher taught on prayer on fasting, using The English Standard Version of Mark 9:14-29

14 And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. 15 And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him. 16 And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 17 And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. 18 And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” 19 And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.” 20 And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said “I believe, help my unbelief!” 25 And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” 26 And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. 28 And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”

This is a familiar passage, but one that has always puzzled me. Why could the disciples not cast out the demon? Why is this demon different from all the others? Why does Jesus make a point to ask how long this has been happening?

So here is my real question: Is it heresy to suggest that the boy was not possessed at all? That the “demon” who throws the boy down, making him foam at the mouth, grind his teeth, and become rigid, is actually just a medical condition, such as epilepsy?
Could this be why the disciples were not able to help the boy? Jesus gave them authority over demons, not over this—they were pastors, not doctors. Jesus knew when He saw the boy that this was no demon, which was why He asked how long the boy had been like this. It was a life-long condition, not a recent possession. And to “expel the demon” was actually to heal the child.

But how to explain that to his disciples? Jesus said, in verse 29, that “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” Could this be His commandment to his disciples for how to help heal the sick? Could this be Jesus’ way of saying, “Medicine won’t be able to heal this boy for thousands of years. For now, pray and fast, and let God do the rest?”

For thousands of years, people have taught and believed that the boy was demon possessed.


The Bible, no matter the translation, says the word “demon.” I suggest that it could be otherwise. Is this heresy?