I've been thinking about fate and the nature of coincidence. We were at a museum in Gyeonggi, and there was a little room with no English explanations on the displays, so I grew more interested in the floor. Hah. Well, the floor was really cool. It was transparent and had little specks of colored light scattered randomly so that it looked like stars in the universe. As I looked, I saw that it was actually made of several layers of glass, each containing specks of light, which created the illusion of depth. And as I looked more, I realized that every layer had the exact same pattern of lights, but the distribution appeared random unless you looked directly down on the layers. Then you could see a straight line of lights in the layers. Hmm, I feel like I'm describing this really badly and that some floundering hand gestures would help my representation.
Basically, I saw that there appeared to be a random distribution of stars in this universe, but if you looked at the right angle, there was order. Things fell into place. The stars were aligned. And it was like that all along, but you had to be in the right place to see it.
Perhaps fate, coincidences, and the like work the same way. An order is laid out, but it is a rare occasion when we see the mechanism or purpose behind that order. We are merely in a seemingly random, coincidental universe, but our view is limited.
At the same time, I've never quite known what to think of fate, since I believe that God gave us free will because otherwise we would just be puppets. We wouldn't have a real kind of life that God would delight in. It always seemed to me that fate would diminish free will to some degree, but maybe I'm thinking about it wrong. Maybe fate and free will are not mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, I have a tough time thinking too much about free will because it seems too centered on what we can do, and that sounds like a dangerous idea according to my Lutheran upbringing. I don't know, I haven't thought much about fate and free will before, perhaps for this exact reason--I haven't known how to think about them. So all of these ideas are in the development process. In thinking about fate and coincidence, I also have to think about the nature of time, which brings in a whole other unexplored realm.
What do I think right now? Well. I'm thinking that if a person is true to her calling, to who she is, then she will find a path where there are no coincidences, only what is meant to be because it could be no other way. But it can't be so selfishly centered--I think a person needs to be in tune to her place in a greater context than her own life. I think that may be the area where fate and free will collide. I suppose that fate may be just another way of looking at a person's purpose in life.
I might look at this later and think it's way off track. I'll keep thinking about it. I've got 16 hours on the plane to do that. Hooray! Hopefully I can get something else done besides just thinking, though. I'm often too easily distracted by my own thoughts.
4 comments:
"Basically, I saw that there appeared to be a random distribution of stars in this universe, but if you looked at the right angle, there was order. Things fell into place. The stars were aligned. And it was like that all along, but you had to be in the right place to see it."
I love that.
In C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, the question (paraphrased) "how can I have free will if God knows what's going to happen to me?" is posed. C.S. Lewis talks about how our perception of time is so feeble in comparison to God's perception of time. We view things linearly, whereas God, an eternal and omnipotent being, perceives past, present and future all as if it were constantly occurring before Him. So while God knows what our "fates" and futures are, we are not puppets that God manipulates, but rather, somehow, he has the sensation of seeing what we're up to now, and knowing what is happening in the future. It's very Star-Trekesque, actually. It reminds me of the final episode of Star Trek and just about every episode with Q. But God isn't an asshat like Q is. :D
It won't let me delete and rewrite, so, a better way of putting is is, "but rather, God has the ability to watch events unfold in front of His eyes, just as he is seeing the future for them as well."
Ah, right. I read The Screwtape Letters this summer, but I forgot about that. And I remember that making a lot of sense to me.
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