Posted on 09/22/2015 2:05:58 PM PDT by NYer
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi styles herself as a devout Catholic, and the New York Times happily promotes that myth with a puff piece whose title drives home the editorial point: In Pelosi, Strong Catholic Faith and Abortion Rights Coexist. But it’s Pelosi herself who gives the game away, with a telling quotation:
The church has their position, and we have ours, which is that a woman has free will given to her by God.
Taken by itself, that sentence is a muddled non sequitur. The Church teaches that women have free will given by God. The topic is abortion, not free will. Pelosi has played the trump-card of “choice” so often that she apparently believes the abortion industry invented free will.
But that’s not the most revealing part of the quotation. Notice that Pelosi says that the Church has “their” position, as opposed to “our” position. For Pelosi, it’s a question of them vs. us.
In this case “them” means Catholics, “us” means Democrats, and so Pelosi lets us know which side she’s on.
The Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church. As I pointed out, seven books were removed during the Reformation, no doubt, my FRiend, because they did not fit their interpretation.
You may wish to read a real history of the Scriptures...
When the Bible says, "The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps" (as you quoted), both halves of that statement are true, not just the second half, which you are exclusively selecting for your own belief within that text. How God does that, we don't know, just like we don't know how God brings about a new life, but we know for sure that He does that. (The same insight has to be applied to all the vague, nebulous texts you posted there, if one is really interested in the truth.)
God specifically said we should choose (as that text plainly says), and God provides a way for us to do that, within His infinite, omnipotent will, whether you are able to understand how He can do that or not.
The reason we know that God can and does give us free choices, is because God said so, and God does not lie (no matter what you may think).
A very rough and imperfect way to illustrate that is to picture that you choose to take a bus from Fifth Avenue to 42nd Street. You freely choose to get on the bus destined for 42nd Street, and the bus driver freely chooses to drive that bus from 5th Ave. to 42nd St. Both you and the bus driver must choose to take that bus to 42nd St., and if either one of you chose not to take that bus to 42nd St., you would not arrive at 42nd Street on that bus.
God ordains that our lives be sort of like that, because that's the way God wants it (just as the Bible says). God is not some kind of impotent wuss who is too stupid to figure a way to provide His creatures with free will operating completely within His omnipotent and omniscient will. If you believe God can't possibly do that, you are imposing your own mental limitations on God, which is silly. If God did not provide that free choice ability, He would not have told us to "choose" something, as that would be deceitful, and God is the Truth.
Do you think when God made you, He just created a robot with no choices? Do you really believe God picked "Dutchboy88" to be your screen name here, not you?
Your problem, and the problem of most "free willies" is that they cannot accept the humbling position described by the Scriptures. When that occurs, give me a shout. Other than that, re-read your post and notice you have no Scriptural support for your position...because there is none. That is why the RCs have to use the spurious apocrypha to support their untenable position.
Maybe not in yours, but it was in Jesus’s.
You need to read your unabridged, non-propagandized history my FRiend. There was no such thing as a “Catholic Church” until hundreds of years later. Jesus used the Torah, w’Nebiim, w’Kethubim. The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The books we call the Old Testament. Your Apocrypha was added much later in order to appease Rome, but no Jewish believer recognized them as Scriptural.
And, believers everywhere had circulated the recognized Scriptural letters of the NT long before Rome got its heavy hands on the texts. Sorry, this disappoints, but it is true.
Deuteronomy 30:19 most certainly is in the Bible (including the truncated protestant Bibles). That is where God, in no uncertain terms, commands us to choose something. God would not command us to do anything that we were unable to do. That would be unjust, and God is a God of justice (Isaiah 30:18).
You can continue to deny that, and argue against that simple truth until the day you die, but, remember this, it will always be the truth that God commands us to choose, no matter how many times you try to deny it.
We’re going to get you some reading lessons for Christmas...
I noted that the question is not, “Are there any places in the Scriptures where man is asked to choose?” For goodness sake, if you only found this one, you don’t know your Bible very well...there are many of these statements. The question is, “Does man make choices without any input from God, completely free from His control?” If you believe in “Free will”, then the answer is “yes”. If you read the Scriptures, then the answer is “no”.
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What an odd thing to say! I never said that was the only text I knew like that. What on earth made you jump to that false conclusion? (Just to be clear, when God says something, He only has to say it once for it to be true. For example, when He was crucified, Jesus said "It is finished" just once, but that declaration was just as true as any other declaration He made. You should not need multiple examples of an obvious truth to understand that it is indeed true.)
"The question is, “Does man make choices without any input from God, completely free from His control?” If you believe in “Free will”, then the answer is “yes”."
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No, it is not. There are many different definitions of free will, and it is a very complex subject, but that definition you provided is not an accurate definition of "free will" in any discussion I've ever encountered. That is a fallacious and invalid definition. (If you know of some solid source that defines "free will" exactly as you did, please provide that source.)
"We’re going to get you some reading lessons for Christmas..."
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You do that, Dutchboy88.
In the mean time, perhaps you can apply your apparently stellar reading skills to some more serious and in-depth discussions of free will and predestination, in the following links.
"Freewill and Predestination"(With that, I'll use my free will to bid you goodnight, as I freely move to the political forum.)"Predestination and Free Will"
...Calvinist view of free will...
"Catholic View Of Predestination"
"Predestination: Its History and Five Protestant Views"
"Is Our Free Will Really Free?"
Well, your reading list is full of the same mixed-messages that the RC organization uses all of the time. If you care to read your “Catholic view of predestination” you will notice (if you are at all honest) that this writer has absolutely no answer to his questioner.
Allow me to paraphrase your writer...”God of course is in charge of all things, but He is not really in charge of all things...you are. And, if you are then He also is, because He is in charge of the things which you do not understand but are responsible for. He has predestined some to Heaven, but that means the others are not predestined elsewhere, they just are not predestined to heaven. They are predestined to be somewhere else, or not.”
This is what I love about “free willies”...they are being maneuvered by God to be muddled in their thinking and believe a lie...just as He announces in II Thess. 2:11, “For this reason God sends them a powerful deluding influence so that they will believe the lie...” Yes, my FRiend, God does control what you believe. Actually, He controls everything according to the Scriptures. But, I notice that you don’t use that resource.
I watched the Pope in Congress today, and I did not see any shots of Pelosi there, surprising since she professes to be a Cajthilic. Was she even there?
And, the Scriptures explain and argue for a God-controlled universe beyond Calvin’s remarks. In that sense, I find Calvin trying to appease the Catholics. The Scriptures are plain, if you care to read even those passages which I referenced prior. But, of course, that would mean God would need to alter your thinking to consider this...which is entirely up to Him. But, your “philosophically” based view on “free will” is a man-made, self-constructed, “religion” of rebellion against the One who made everything Ex Nihilo.
God is in charge of evil, yet He holds Himself innocent. How can that be? Because He said so. When you get to be God, you can run your universe the way you want to. Right now, you aren’t Him. He says,
Amos 3:6, “If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity (evil) occurs in a city has not the Lord done it?”
Lam. 3:37ff, “Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and evil go forth?”
I Sam. 16:14, “Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him.”
You may continue living in a fog of self-determination...if God so decrees. But, if He permits, you will acknowledge that He in fact controls all things, including men’s wills.
“You did not choose Me, But I chose you...” John 15:16
Of course it “feels” like you are “free”...that is His genius at work, but the mature believer recognizes that, “...it is God at work in you BOTH to will (choose) and to do (perform) for His good pleasure.” Phil. 2:13
Trot out all the philosophy you wish (at His behest), but hear these words...it is wrong.
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