Life Game Video

Does life resemble a scripted full length movie in which you are merely an actor reciting your lines and doing precisely those things specified by the film writer/director?  Or is life more like an interactive video game in which the game designer allows you, as actor/player, to make free will decisions which change the outcome?  Consider that video game designers know the consequences of all possible choices but don’t really care what choices you make; it’s just a game.  But what if the creator of the life-game video did care?  What if He encouraged you to make the right decisions and grieved when you did not?  What if He became so concerned as He watched you on a path to destruction that He inserted Himself into the game, absorbing the consequences of your bad choices, nudging you to a different path and trying to help you avoid ultimate disaster?  Which God is more powerful, more praiseworthy, more majestic and more sovereign: (1) the scripted movie writer/director making you say your lines, hit your marks and even die forever, if that is the role of your character, or (2) the “interactive life-game” creator who wants you to win?

Some believe life is merely a scripted video with you playing the part you were predestined to play.  Others believe life is an interactive video in which God allows you, as both character and player, to make free will decisions that change the outcome.  In other words, your free will choices impact the fate of your soul.  But how can God create something He does not meticulously control?  If God chooses to limit Himself by allowing events to occur outside of His exhaustive control, would not all of creation be on the brink of chaos?  Surely we could no longer trust any Biblical promise.  A poster boy for the “Young, Restless and Reformed,” who are the Storm Troopers of the Calvinist revolution, once said, “If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled…Maybe that one molecule will be the thing that prevents Christ from returning.”  Fortunately, our one true God is infinitely more powerful, praiseworthy, majestic and sovereign than the God of predestination.  The infinitude of this one true God permits Him to instantly track all possible histories and futures of the universe with no more difficulty than for you to count the wheels on a bicycle.  Comprehending the cumulative consequences, of all contingent first-cause, human free will decisions on subsequent events, is trivial for God.  As the “interactive life-game” designer, God knows all possible paths your life can take from birth to death.  God not only knows all contingencies but He has inserted Himself into the game as your advocate and He wants you to win.