Saturday, January 14, 2006

Why Not Add the Wachowski Brothers?

“Therefore, I find hyper-Calvinism to be gross error at best. In my opinion, it is merely pagan fatalism dressed up in Christian garb. It makes Jehovah/Yahweh no different than Allah, the Greek and Roman gods, the Norse gods, etc.”

In Larry and Andy Wachowski’s movie The Matrix, a story is written about a man named Neo, who attempts to save a place named Zion from certain destruction by the “Machines”. The Machines have invented a place called the Matrix in order to enslave humans as a power source for their world. Humans only live mentally in this Matrix world as they are hooked up through a computer system. So it is simply a computer generated world in which people live.

The problem with this computer-generated world is that the original world made by the machines was a failure. It was too mathematically perfect. The Machines had to make a world full of calamities in order for people to “accept it” as reality. The problem with the second Matrix was that a mathematical anomaly was built into the system. The anomaly had to account for “choice”.

A Machine woman character named the “Oracle” was able to predict many things Neo was going to do. This drove Neo crazy. He hated the idea that everything he was going to do seemed fixed. He wanted true freedom and no one to be in control of his future. In the end, Neo was satisfied that both were true. Though the future was mathematically fixed, he still did what he did, because he “chose” to.

How does this apply to this conversation? It is obvious that many false and man-made religions have recognized that the future must be fixed if it already exists in someone’s mind (mathematically or otherwise). Therefore they sought to suppress that truth as being to an infinite God and giving that power to a human like deity. A deity they could control. There simply is not much of a parallel left when God becomes a pathetic man.

Instead, what we have today is naturalism determining our future. Natural chemicals cause everything we do. Hence those judges, who believe we need not punish but rehabilitate. The problem with naturalism is that you truly have fatalism of the worst kind.

Again, to compare God to some impersonal creation as controlling our fate, or comparing Him to Zeus is simply out of bounds. The God of the Bible is personal. He has created all things for his glory. He is extremely personal. Therefore our choices are real. Even, if He has ordained them all. God is beyond our comprehension. Compatabilism is plainly taught in the Bible. To explain it would be to remove one of the greatest mysteries that even the Wachowski like pagans seek to understand and control.

6 comments:

Jim Fisher said...

The arguement that God has ordained our future,but we still have choice is not logical. I have seen you explain this two times. Once with Shakespear, now with the matrix. Neither explaination was logical. Either we have choice,or we don't and God has decided our fate. The only way to say they are both true is to say there is a mystery that only God understands. That is fine. But when I watched the Matrix, it didn't make sense then and doesn't make sense now. Shakespears characters never made any choices except the ones he wrote, nor could they. Why didn't God just send his son to die for our sins, why did he bother to teach first, if our choices are already ordained by God. What are you actually praying for?

Jim Fisher said...

Why does God test Abraham? Because he already new the result and he just wanted to show his brother?

Howard Fisher said...

I'll answer the second first by asking you a question. Was God testing Abraham because He wasn't sure? What do you think the answer is? When God tests us, it is for our benefit, not God's.

As for the Matrix, I was simply throwing in another reason to reject Calvinism simply because Calvinism had been lobbed in with Roman gods, not because The Matrix had any real value to the conversation Biblically.

I'd like to know what logic you are refering to? Why is it that God ordains all things a contradiction to our choosing to do what we choose to do? The Laws of Logic require that A not equal non-A. When has the Calvinist said God ordains all events to be in the same way humans do?

Yes, there is a mystery, but most bow to the mystery by actually removing the mystery by giving God only Foreknowledge in the philosophical sense. In other words, God only knows the future, He didn't decree it.

So I have to ask, on what basis does God know the future? Some Christians will say that He is simply passive and knows about it.

If this is the case, why should God be glorified for events that take place by themselves?

This leaves the future in the hands of who?

If my wife is raped, what is the purpose of that evil?

I guess we are just left with an impotent God who is glorified for I have no idea why. I guess the cross was just a cosmic accident. I guess everything works out for good to those who love God simply because CHANCE and not God had done it?

If CHANCE becomes the Sovereign one or some other entity, Why do you pray? In other words, if God can't really interfere in history or with man's will, then shouldn't you be praying to the almighty creature?

Howard Fisher said...

"Why didn't God just send his son to die for our sins, why did he bother to teach first, if our choices are already ordained by God."

I have asked you to read John 6 several times. Either you haven't read it, or you have read it and don't accept it, or you have read it and read into it a meaning Jesus won't allow if the text is allowed to speak for itself. Or perhaps some other choice I haven't thought of yet, but one thing is for certain, the words of Christ are plain and contradictory to your above statement.

Jim Fisher said...

Good point about Abraham, it was a bad example for my point.

I guess we are just left with an impotent God who is glorified for I have no idea why. I guess the cross was just a cosmic accident.
I guess everything works out for good to those who love God simply because CHANCE and not God had done it?

To me, only the opposite makes sense, if there is no free will, how is God glorified? isn't he just glorifing himself. We certainly aren't, not by choice anyway.

I'd like to know what logic you are refering to? Why is it that God ordains all things a contradiction to our choosing to do what we choose to do? The Laws of Logic require that A not equal non-A. When has the Calvinist said God ordains all events to be in the same way humans do?

Instead of using the word "ordained", use the words "choosing your future" or "setting what your allowed to do". Are these pretty much the same in meaning or am I way off? Do you still not see a contradiction?

Howard Fisher said...

"To me, only the opposite makes sense, if there is no free will, how is God glorified? isn't he just glorifing himself. We certainly aren't, not by choice anyway."

I can't seem to follow how God is glorified by man's autonomous free-will. If man does what he does apart from God raising him from the dead, then man should be glorified for his willingness to do what he does.

The Bible teaches assumptions that most people do not believe. Therefore I do not accept the presuppositions of free-will as being autonomous. (In other words, I actually believe in "original sin" and Federal headship).

Everything a Christian does is by God's Sovereign Grace. Read Ephesians 1 & 2. Therefore we do actually choose to do what we do, but we do it only because God's grace has come into our lives.


You make an interesting point when you say, "isn't he just glorifing himself." I would say AMEN! God is always glorifying Himself. Read the account of Exodus and see that God is Glorifying His Name in all the Earth through the destruction of Pharoe and the salvation of Israel. Everything God does is in pursuit of His own Name. Otherwise, He would be committing Idolatry.


"Instead of using the word "ordained", use the words "choosing your future" or "setting what your allowed to do". Are these pretty much the same in meaning or am I way off? Do you still not see a contradiction?"

I will attempt to put it in another way. In one event God ordains that event. In another way, we also choose to do that event.

For instance at the cross, God AS Creator ordains that particular event. We as creatures also choose that event to occur. So God does it in one way, AS Creator, we in another way AS creature.

Therefore there is no contradiction.

I realize what I am saying may seem backwards, but learning to think like Jesus often requires us to challenge our assumptions and change our worldview. Hope this helps.

God Bless