The Insanity of Predestination

Those who believe in predestination, or, “God wills everything”, have no theology of personal culpability. Either colossal ignorance or stultifying arrogance seeks to absolve man of responsibility, without the benefit of forgiveness, even when man clearly made the choices to commit a heinous crime. I am appalled at the cowardice and intellectual dishonesty of predestination logic. How easy it must be to blame God for genocide, for terrorist acts, for barbarism, for inhuman abuse of families, women and defenseless children because one believes that God made me do it. If God wired someone to commit acts of atrocity against other human beings, then how can God hold that person accountable to the law or even divine retribution? Listen to this incomprehensible drivel that proponents believe:

 “If we cannot reconcile divine omnipotence and divine goodness, we must choose between them. Islam has chosen divine omnipotence. It may praise God’s goodness and mercy, but because it holds that everything that happens is the direct result of God’s will, it must make God responsible for rape, murder, theft, adultery, deceit, and so on, even blasphemy, and if God is responsible for these evil deeds, then they must not be evil after all. “If God did not want those people to die,” says the mullah, “why did he allow those airliners to crash into the World Trade Center?”’

This piece, of course, spotlights the tragedy of Mumbai in which Jews were targeted. The saddest case was a two-year old Jewish boy who was abused and sent home an orphan. His mother and father were brutally murdered an especially gruesome attack, and an examination of the toddler showed marks on his back consistent with an abusive beating. Why? Oh, yes, we “know” why. Jews are the dung of the earth, the cockroaches who infest society, the cause of all human suffering. The Islamic extremists have a right—even a duty—to kill them whenever and where ever they’re found, and do so in ones, ten, thousands or millions.

 We need to peel back the layers of the tragedy until we arrive at the real truth. Whether Muslim, Christian or Jew, the unthinkable sin is to assign the blame to God for the shameful acts of man. Does God really want sin to happen? Is God really guilty of rape, murder, theft and the like? A thousands times NO! I cannot say that God allows it in the sense that he passively does nothing about it, or he turns a blind eye to it, or that he actually wills it to happen and provides the means to accomplish the task. If he allows it at all, it is because sin lies at the core of human problems. God has an absolute guarantee that he will not violate the free moral agency of man. That does not mean, however, that he will not hold man responsible for his deeds done in the flesh.

 Personal accountability, moral culpability and criminal judgment will fall heavily on those who are guilty of sin. This necessitates a choice. If one has no choice, then it follows that one accrues no moral guilt. Groupthink, class hatred and the acts of terrorism that target individuals in the name of race or ethnicity will not be given a bye. Yes, justice is a moral decision and it is arrived at through the most stringent and torturous processes. I am outraged, however, that it is assumed that perceived oppression that is nothing more than vile hatred, continues to be excused.

 Unless all of Islamists who say they believe in moderation and peaceful coexistence rise up and condemn terrorism, there will be no peace. In fact, there will only be tacit agreement with the aims of the extremists, all the while claiming to be against it. It is a clever saying that no justice, no peace. But, in a larger sense, those who believe that guilt has no price, that predestination is the will of God regardless of the sins the perpetrators commit, that we are as amoral as a rock or a tree caught up in a natural disaster, then we will never have justice or peace. It is a bedrock principle that a man will pay for his sins. If he does not, then he can believe in a savior who forgives sin. But that savior also says, “Go and sin no more.”