Christina Alberino

Ergun Caner

Theology 202

                                                     Chosen But Free

In Geisler’s book, Chosen but Free, he mentions the argument of predestination. But before Geisler mentions this, He talks about God’s various characteristics that obtain to the fact of predestination. He mentions that God is all knowing and all powerful, He is creator above all. I completely agree with what Geisler mentions here, God knows everything and He knows who will be saved, but I think we have the choice to follow the right or wrong path. I do not believe that we should not witness to people because of predestination; I think it is important to tell others about Christ so that they can experience this all-knowing and all-powerful Christ like we get to experience.

Personally, I think that Christians should not spend so much time arguing about if predestination is right or wrong, or if free will is the correct route, but instead use that time to preach the Gospel and tell others about Christ because in the end of is not about who is right or wrong but it is about choosing the creator over all. God loves each and every one of us, even those who do not know Him. I do like how Geisler brought up this topic though, because it helped me to look deeper into predestination and helped me to understand both sides of the view better. God could not allow us to all become saved and love Him because than it would not be like we truly love Him. It would be like we were robots and truly did not have a choice to follow Him. He therefore, gave us the choice to follow Him, but He also knew beforehand who would follow Him in the end, and this is how the argument of predestination and free will came about. I think that we can decide if we want to follow Him and it is the most important decision we will ever have to make.

Another subject that impacted me was on pages 31 to 50. It talks about why God being all powerful and in control allows sin to be in the world. This is a question that most people ponder and never end up finding out. My grandmother once asked me this question, and I sadly was not able to tell her the answer. That was about 3 years ago and until this day I always thought about it and wished I would have given her the correct answer. On page 44 it explains how, God allows sin because we have the free choice to pick and choose what path we want to go down. Through free will we choose to sin. God loves us and wants us to love Him back and if we choose Him over the world, it brings joy to the Lord. When we choose evil and sin, it helps us realize how much we need Christ in our life. By making foolish choices, we can learn to correct them and in the end it will help us to be more like Christ. It is not that God chooses for us to sin, for He has not part in us sinning but he gave us the choice of free will. We have the choice to sin, God does not place sin in us, it is completely our choice, and we need to make drastic decisions everyday: to follow Him or the World.