“Welcome, my son

Welcome to the machine

Where have you been?

It’s alright, we know where you’ve been

You’ve been in the pipeline, filling in time

Provided with toys and ‘Scouting for Boys’

You bought a guitar to punish your ma

And you didn’t like school

And you know you’re nobody’s fool

So welcome to the machine.”

Pink Floyd, lyrics by Roger Waters

You probably remember that song. It is apocalyptic. It is saying that we don’t have a free will. Philosophers call it determinism. Hindu’s call it fatalism.

But as Christians we don’t believe in all that stuff. We have a free will. That is why in the garden of eden God gave Adam and Eve a choice. “Eat from whatever tree you want just don’t eat from that tree.”

That is why, way back in time you yourself made a decision for Christ. Maybe you thought about it for a while, did some research, read some of the Bible, etc. then you made the big decision.

That was the best decision you have ever made. Nothing else comes close. Congratulations! Welcome not to the machine, but welcome to the family of God, where love reigns.

You see, in God’s economy he doesn’t want “machines” in heaven with him. If he did he certainly doesn’t need us. Well, it is true that he doesn’t need us, he doesn’t need anybody or anything. He is self sufficient. But I regress, he created Adan for a reason. It was something that he wanted to do. He wanted a being like himself that has a free will. And he wanted them to have a choice about the matter. They could choose Him or choose to go their own way.

After all God is love the Bible teaches us and for God to have a loving relationship with us we have to be free. And when we choose Christ, how sweet it is, and most of the human race chooses not Christ, that is sad.

Okay I think you get it and I don’t think I need to hammer this simple truth to death, we all believe this stuff right? But what about this scripture?

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” and “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called…” Rom.8:28-29 partial NKJV  Or this one…

“Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will…” Eph.1:4-5 NKJV

Do you believe these and other scriptures that apparently teach us that God before the world was even created hand picked those who would end up being His children amongst the human race?

You do? I don’t. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have a loving God that gave us a free will to freely choose Him and a God who has already decided who was going to be His children. That is clearly a contradiction and in the universe there is no contradictions.

So how are we going to reconcile this apparent contradiction? The secret is in the above verse in Romans 8 where it says “For whom He foreknew”. That’s it in a nutshell. It is His foreknowledge, He sees the future so He knows who will choose Him and who will reject Him.

The Gnostics back in the early Church days took these scriptures and developed the teaching of God determining before time who would be picked. This my friend is determinism or fatalism. 

“It is a thing of beauty” the Gnostics would say to the young naive christians, “you can pretty much do whatever you want, live a life of disobedience and pleasure and you will still get your sorry bacon into heaven because after all God chose you before the foundation of the world, yahoo!”

This is not what the whole body of scriptures teaches. Scriptures teach us from cover to cover that we are responsible for our actions, that God will punish the disobedient and reward the righteous. It is a theme that is threaded throughout the whole bible, cover to cover. Don’t let a few “hard scriptures” trip you up.

1Peter3:15,16 says, “ and consider that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist, to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.”

So yeah,  don’t let some of these “hard Scriptures” trip you up and don’t think this is a true biblical doctrine, it isn’t. 

You must decide what to believe, does God love us and want us to have a loving relationship with Him without coercion on His part. And are we, the whole human race, accountable for our actions (decisions)? And can God then judge the world justly and be found blameless when He judges like it says in Psalm 51?

Or did God hand pick some before time began and is going to judge and condemn all the rest to hell?

Or is it somehow both? Dude, be real, you can’t have both, don’t let the so called “wise” teachers tell you any different. If God pre-determined who would go to heaven and be His loving family forever than you are a determinist. Little robots, that is all they will be for eternity.

And if you do believe that then… well, welcome to the machine.