What do you think of the concept of God having a perfect will and also a permissive will? Is this related to Calvinism in any way? And then he gives an example here. In conservative Mennonite circles, there is a school of thought that says God has every detail of our lives planned out, even the time and the manner of our deaths. As an example, a young man died in a swimming accident. I heard his parents say it was his time to go, and if he hadn't drowned, he would have died in another way.
To me, it seemed more plausible that there were some poor choices involved, and he simply succumbed to the consequences of his actions, and their attitude had more in common with pagan fatalism than faith in God. I never thought of it before going through this course, but this way of thinking, but is this way of thinking a sign that Calvinism has affected us? And if so, what other ways have plain people, and I would argue, anybody been affected by Calvinism?
Yeah, and so it's a great question that Jonathan raised there. And I would say, first off, that that is an excellent example where I think Calvinism has indeed infiltrated our thinking. So this notion that we often hear of this perfect will of God and you want to be in the center of God's will, it's sometimes called the dot view where you can make a picture of this target, this bullseye, and you want to be right in the middle of that bullseye, right at that center point there.
You hear that all the time, I heard that all the time growing up, and you pray and you have all this angst, am I really in the center of God's will, and I gotta marry, and there's just one person out there for me to marry, and if I find that wrong person, well then the fabric in the universe is torn in some way because now I'm married the wrong person and the person I was supposed to marry marry the wrong person and you set this big chain of events out.
It's very common and as I said, I think it's something that causes a lot of angst. There's a whole cottage industry of books out there about finding the will of God. And I remember reading those when I was young with great interest. Because who doesn't want to know the will of God? Of course, yeah. Particularly when you frame it in that way. Yeah, exactly. And wanting God's best there.
I think what we can say is that, yeah, this is all this is nearly entirely something that is a corollary of the Calvinist system where you at least get this sense of there being this ideal plan out there. Now, I'm going to put a big asterisk on it, which is that the reason why it doesn't necessarily square with Calvinism is that in Calvinism, everything has already been decided. And you can't do differently than what's already been decided. You don't even necessarily have to have a decision. Exactly.
So on the one hand, it squares well in the sense that you have this notion that God has this perfect will. But on the other hand, it doesn't square so well there and so it's kind of this weird hybrid that is kind of Calvinist, but kind of not. And so I wouldn't want to necessarily lay it at the feet of the Calvinist community per se. But it is it is something where it's unbiblical. We have no notion of this in Scripture.
I'm going to make another book recommendation here, which I didn't mention this in our session on the doctrines of grace, but it's called Decision Making and the Will of God by Gary Friesen. And I read that book when I was in, I think I was in college, I might have been in early medical school. And it totally changed the way that I looked at this whole question. I don't know how many of our listeners have listened to have read that book, but I would highly, highly recommend you. It's a great read.
It's a quick read. And the bottom line if I had to summarize what he would articulate is that we have been indeed given a level of authority in decision making. That's a meaningful level of authority in decision making. God does have a perfect will with respect to righteousness, with respect to following His commands. But in terms of do I marry this woman or that woman, or am I going to, in his example, do I drown today versus do I die of a heart attack in 30 years?
I mean, these are choices that are very much in our purview. And then God wants us to have this sense of authority over. And he would say the author would say that a better view instead of the dot view where you're aiming for this little dot in the center of bullseye is the wisdom view. And the wisdom view is that we are called to seek wisdom from above. The call from James. And really you can make all kinds of analogies from parenting, for example, where you and I are both parents.
And you know do we want our 18-year-old or 22-year-old to come to us and ask us what shirt to wear and who to marry and what to do with what to prepare for dinner? Of course not. We would say use good judgment. Use wisdom now. This is something where I think there's an analog there where God has given us tremendous gifts. He's given us the Holy Spirit. He's given us a community of people.
And when we make these decisions, we got to draw on those resources and not necessarily act like there's this dot that we've got to hit. And I've even heard stories of people having over what gas station to go fill like that. I mean, it's just like this thing can go to ridiculous extremes. I really like using the terminology angst in the concept of everyday decisions. I don't think God desires that. We're constantly unrest with things that he's given us ability to make decisions about. That's right.
And also I see the danger in marriage, especially like if I'm wondering if I'm with the right person that God wanted me to be with, I see that potential to feed all kinds of unrest or dissatisfaction or just all kinds of things that go wrong with that, rather than realizing that God cares about my choices regarding righteousness, regarding His will, regarding His teachings. Yeah And that applies to any situation that we're in, and He gives us the ability to make those decisions.
And that gives me a lot of confidence and also faith in God that He will provide wherever I am, what's needed.
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