Webster's New World Dictionary defines Predestination:  The doctrine that God foreordained everything that would happen. And, God predestines certain souls to salvation and others to damnation.

     Recently, during a break at work, a few of us was talking about our deceased parents and how they died.  One lady became uneasy as the talk turned to the possibility of afterlife.  She finally told us that shortly after her mother died, a longtime  family "friend" informed her that her mother wouldn't be going to heaven because she hadn't been "saved" before she died.

     All of us thought the friend was out of line in telling this young woman that her mother wasn't worthy of heaven because she supposedly hadn't been saved.  This is not the first time I've heard of this.  One woman I know has told her siblings that their parents didn't go to heaven because they hadn't been saved.  She pretty much insulted the rest of the family as the parents were Christians all of their lives although they didn't buy into the "being saved" philosophy.

     While we agreed on the bad taste of the above story we seemed to have different takes on religion.  The one fundamentalist in the group did believe you had to be saved to get into heaven.  Two middle of the roaders believed in God and the existence of heaven and hell and that you got to which ever one by your deeds, not by whether you decided to be saved or not.  One believed that the universe is God and we are a part of the whole and there is no heaven or hell, just a universal energy of life.

     During the conversation, the fundamentalist stated that God has laid out our lives before we are born and that everything that happens is "God's will"; that we are predestined for whatever befalls us.  That caused everyone else to sort of gang up on her and open another discussion about free will.  

     No one could really come up with a real good argument to support the position on predestination except the fundamentalist who kept saying it was in the Bible.  The rest of us argued that if all is predetermined in advance, why would we have Hitler's, and Stalin's, and serial killers, child killers, and all the killing and maiming that has gone on since the dawn of man.  Why would God preordain such madness?  For some mystical answer that, "It's God's will"?  No thanks.

     Chaos reins.  We are born.  We live.  We die.  In between we do things, we are exposed to things, we create lots of avenues for the future, and possibly many futures.  There is some luck and circumstance involved. Things happen in China that will affect us sometimes down the road.  It has something to do with theory that we are only six people away from knowing everyone in the world.  It is known as "Six Degrees of Separation".  Every action that you take or don't take has consequences for everyone else.

     There are negative and positive energies in the universe just as there are good and bad people.  They may be one and the same.  We can change some things and some things change us.  You have to do the best you can and leave a positive imprint on the world. 

     If life were a script, how could there be heaven or hell?  The future would be fixed and all the good and bad things would be controlled by the script.  If God wrote the script and we did his bidding, we would all have to go to heaven.  Doesn't make sense.  Or does it?  Maybe we are all following the script.

What to you think?  Write:  Pete Jefferson

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