God-nerd: The Motion Picture - Part III
"Fate blows her kiss
Chills your heart
Takes your hand..."
"I don't even know if I believe in fate!"
"Fate feels like this,
Play your part,
This was planned..."
-The Genie and Aladin
In the quote above, part of an unused song entitled 'High Adventure,' from Disney's animated feature Aladin, fate is presented very simillarly to our chaos theory model- a planned series of events that led up to a certain choice for the main protagonist. It is also portrayed as a force unto itself, controlling the actions of an individual to deliver them to a pre-determined end. Is either one the correct answer? Let's move into the final part of this discussion...
I mentioned Star Trek being the second of two things that inspired this topic earlier. Well, now we finally will get back around to that. Almost.
The question before us is destiny. If God can say there are those chosen to be saved, and if He can tell us the future which is apparently set in stone, does that mean that there are things indeed 'destined' to happen?
Star Trek: The Next Generation's episode "Parallels" seems to be almost the direct contradiction of the 'destiny' idea in which a person has one set future, moment, action, thought, etc., to which all events are inescapably leading him, and which cannot be altered. In that episode, Lieutenant Worf, the Klingon Security Chief of the Enterprise-D, is sent switching through alternate quantum realities.
It's a concept shared by the 90s series 'Sliders,' which I have just recently become somewhat hooked on, in which a group of travelers is bounced between different realities trying to find their way home.
The gist of it is this. There are an infinite number of universes out there, and anything that possibly could happen does happen- thus, if I am driving down the street towards the freeway, I have a choice. I could keep going towards the freeway, as I plan. In a separate universe, everything throughout all of history is identical, except that I slow down and consider turning at a random intersection just for the heck of it. In yet another, I decide to pull a U-turn and go home. In another still, I stop the car, leap out, and yell "Pie!" at the passing cars.
Now, let's say I continue on in the first universe, where I drove on towards the freeway, as reasonably I ought to be doing. I get to a stop light. Again, I have a choice. In one universe, I continue forward. In another, I turn left. In another, I turn right. In another, I run the stop sign while screaming "Pie!" at the top of my lungs. Straight, left, right, and Pie. Four choices, four separate universes that are identical except for that choice.
When I get to the on-ramp, the choices are limitless- even out of the selection that involve merging onto the freeway, I could go twenty miles per hour to start with and slowly accelerate, or thirty and do likewise, or forty and speed up more slowly, or fifty and roll down my window to scream "Pie!" at the people on the nearby overpass. Each one of those choices happens in another quantum reality.
Just my drive to the freeway creates thousands of different choices, and thus thousands of quantum realities- now imagine one being created by every choice ever made by every person, and each one of those in then affected by another set of choices- for example, a man standing at that intersection after I go straight may go left or right- two more universes. Likewise, if I turn left at the intersection, he may STILL go left or right- the same choice as before, handled the same, but they are two more separate universes because they happened in the right-turn quantum reality instead of the straight one. So, he creates another two universes for every single one I created with every single decision I could have made at the stop sign. Even with that, the combinations are nearly endless- there's the one where I go left and he goes straight, the one where I go straight and he goes right, the one where I scream "Pie!" and he screams "Pie!" right back at me... mix and match, every one of them happens, somewhere... and who knows, from when Adam and Eve decided to take a stroll down the left path instead of the right one how many random branching scenarios might have come from that 'alternate reality' already. It's a nightmare- a number of quantum realities that is beyond the highest number we can count to or even theorize- almost infinite possibilities.
In the Parallels, Worf is bouncing between closely-associated realities- some things barely change at times, just a painting, for example- others, whole new crew members are swapped out- in one, the controls and circumstances are so different that Worf cannot man his station in the middle of battle, because the tools he normally used developed differently some time in the past.
In Sliders, or at least in the first season which I have seen, they tend to visit slightly more 'clichéd' worlds with bigger, noticeable differences- San Francisco in a world where the Soviet Union won the cold war and took over. San Francisco in a nuclear winter. San Francisco in a world where there are oil gushers in California. San Francisco in a world where penicillin was never discovered. You get the picture. Same place, different worlds.
To some, the future is like this concept- an infinite number of possibilities. Everything you can do has the potential to affect everything. And saying that something 'will happen' is the straightjacket of Destiny- as if in every universe Worf visited, counselor Troi was eating a chocolate Sundae- it consistently happens in every universe- one might say that eating that Sundae is her Destiny. Because no matter what varying circumstances surround her, no matter how many different scenarios or sets of choices led up to that moment, not matter how many different ways she approached from or different settings she was in, she would inevitably be eating that Sundae. Everything else around her was free and different and able to change in various circumstances, but she and her chocolate were not.
In other words, destiny is like pulling the handle on the jackpot machine- beforehand, it was three spinning rows that could become anything at all- afterwards, one of those three is locked into place. No matter what happens with the other two, it is a cherry and will stay a cherry- it can no longer become whatever you make it.
So, we have the future, an infinite number of possibilities. The spinning jackpot. And we have destiny, the pull of the handle, locking some part of that future into place irrevocably so that nothing you can do will change it. After all that setup, am I saying that doesn't happen somehow? And if it does, doesn't that interfere with free will?
"Yes to the first, yes to the second, but only in as much that we keep to the shallows as much as possible."
"Those orders seem somewhat... contradictory, captain."
"I have every faith in your reconciliatory powers, mister Gibbs."
-Jack Sparrow and Crewman Gibbs
Well, you heard Jack- yes, and yes. If that were happening, I think that it would indeed contradict Free Will. And no, I don't think that's happening.
But how, you ask, can God tell the future or say people are chosen to be His without overriding Free Will or locking the future into place, just like Destiny? Or perhaps you don't ask that. Perhaps you are still feeling guilty over killing Louie. Or wishing you had some "Pie!" Or perhaps you figured out my point ages ago. Well... it's my blog, so I'm going to assume you asked it anyway. I know it's been a long road so far- take heart, the end is almost near. I will try to, as Jack further suggested, keep to the shallows, and keep it simple. As a crooked Night Guard once said, "Moving On..."
The answer is deceptively simple. There are no quantum realities.
Well, wait... that was just a sci-fi concept used to illustrate a metaphor or something, right? It didn't actually have any bearing on your actual point, did it? Yes, actually, it did.
The thing of the matter is... there are no quantum realities. The future is loaded with endless possibilities, endless choices we can make... but in the end, there is only one choice we will actually make. I might have infinite options when I'm stopped at that intersection- but in the end, I'm only going to make one choice, which is of course the only logical one I could make- screaming "Pie!"
This is why the chief source of worry, our asking the question "What if?" is so pointless. Because what ifs do not matter, only what is. (Not that it keeps me from fretting about the what ifs constantly anyway... ahhh, the pitfalls of being human and fallen...)
So Luke Skywalker is forgetting one important thing is his concern at Han and Leia Solo's destinies being 'fixed' by their message from the past- Han and Leia were going to be there anyway. The Jedi that contacted them did not cause them to come there- he merely observed that they would and took advantage of the situation. He did not lock them into the choice of coming out of myriads of possibilities by sending the message- they locked themselves into the choice of coming... by making the choice to come!
Likewise, God, who mist certainly exists outside of both Space and Time and has a clear overview of each is more than capable of seeing what will happen and informing us! And while God does have the power to alter events to His will any way He wishes, that information from the future does not cause what it says to become true- it simply informs us of what will happen based upon the very choices of Free Will we make!
To answer my own question, if God gives me a promise about my future, He is not fixing it against all interference from me or something like that- He is telling me what the result of my 'interference' as I will choose myself to commit, along with His guidance, will be.
And...
...The audience draws in an angry breath.
"That's it??? You take all of this time, make all of those explanations, put us through all of that just to hear "God doesn't make the news, He just reports it?" That's all there is to it?"
Well... yes. Sometimes it's the simplest concepts that are key to the most complex ones. And it's really that simple- there aren't multiple realities, there is only one way that things are 'going to be,' not based on Destiny but on the decisions we will make by choice. And God knows every one of them, and can tell them to us. He knew before He even created the first person who would come to believe in Him and who wouldn't- and thus, He knew who was 'chosen' to be His and who was doomed to perish from the misuse of their own Free Will. I hope, after reading all of this, that won't be you. If you still have questions, doubts, or issues in this regard, I'd certainly be happy to talk to you about them- my e-mail is Nolinecinemas@juno.com. And take comfort... you didn't really kill Louis Pasteur.
If you've stuck around this long, my kudos and my thanks. I meant to take about 3 and a half hours less writing this than I did, but some concepts can't be explained simply. Isn't it glorious to know that God has given us the freedom we need to choose the right things, and the salvation that free for us to choose? And also to know that no matter how complex the past, the future, or even the sometimes-trying present may be... God is in control of it all! And every one of these mind-bending concepts that wrack the brain so trying to understand, He will someday explain to us with the most infinite patience you could ever imagine. Now that will be a lesson worth hearing!
Until that day, or the time here on Earth when inspiration next strikes, this is the God Nerd, signing off.
