Imagine a machine that is connected to two different tubes. At the end of one of these tubes is box A and the end of the other is box B. Now suppose this machine sends a ball with a mechanism that directs that ball through the tube to either box A or box B. This machine randomly produces the path which the ball will take and right before the machine send the ball through it notifies you whether it will send the ball to box A or B. Now imagine also there is a button on this machine that allows you to override the original path and that when pushed, you can change which path the ball goes. If it says A and you push it, the machine activates the mechanism and it redirects the ball to go to box B. If you don’t intervene at all the ball goes to the original destination for the ball that was randomly generated. If you leave the machine alone it will continually produce balls that will randomly fall in box A or B and essentially “nature takes its course” but remember at any time you can sovereignty choose to alter the course of the balls path and change the outcome of the machine. In a sense the machine is making its own “decisions” but at any point if that machine produces an outcome that does conform to your will of where you want the ball to end up you can override the will of the machine to conform to yours. In other words, the machine can only do what you allow, while at the same time making real random decision. So it is with God and human free will. Let’s break down the analogy…
The boxes are decisions, the balls going through tubing are humans approaching that destination, the screen that notifies you of the decision to go through box A or B is God’s omniscience and your ability to redirect the ball is His sovereignty. Lets tell a story and tie it back into the original understanding to help comprehension…
One day a man named Nicholas is walking down the street about to cross to reach the gas station to pick up some milk for his family of three (married to a wife with three beautiful children). At that intersection is a teenager named Jonah on his phone texting a girl he is interested in as he is driving down the road unaware that Nicholas is about to cross the street. There are a few possibilities that could unfold.
- Nicholas looks up, sees Jonah coming down the street and stops before crossing suffering no harm.
- Nicholas doesn’t look up from his phone and crosses the street but Jonah looks up and jolts out of the way and hits a mail box
- Nicholas and Jonah both don’t look up and Jonah kills Nicholas making his wife a widow to raise 3 kids on her own.
“For my thoughts(A) are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts
Isaiah 55:8-9
I think the common human response is to obviously prefer scenario 1 happen. This way Nicholas goes home, his wife won’t become a widow and he can happily raise his three children and Jonah gets to meet up with his hot date and everything goes to normal, but let’s just play this situation out a bit and let’s see what happens if scenario 1 plays out.
Nicholas phone messes up for half a second causing him to stop for a moment. Jonah feels an itch on his forehead causing him to scratch which then leads him to see Nicholas standing at the corner checking his phone and he zooms on by. Nicholas returns home to happy kids and wife and Jonah goes on the best date of his life and eventually marries the girl name Katherine. Happy ending right? In this case you would be wrong…
Jonah is a reckless person and rarely ever considers the consequences of his actions.