On Tragedy, Death, and God, III

In Islam, a ubiquitous phrase that one hears in the Muslim world is “Insha’Allah” – which means “Allah willing” or “If it is the will of Allah.”  Latin has a similar phrase, “Deo Valente” that means “God Willing.”  I’ve studied some Arabic under a Lebanese-born, but naturalized US citizen and traveled to the middle east and several Muslim countries.  Any American with extensive time in the middle east can tell of the frustrations of making an appointment at some future time with a Muslim who will reply with “Insha’Allah” – leaving a good bit of doubt as to whether the discussed promise will be fulfilled or appointment kept.  My Arabic instructor – a Muslim himself, raised in the Levant – expressed his own frustration with Muslims who say this.  “What is Insha’Allah?  I asked you to come back and pick me up at 5 o’clock.  Are you coming or not?  What do you mean Insha’Allah?  Who’s driving the cab – you or God?”  Taken to its extreme, this view is simply that whatever happens is the will of Allah – and therefore outside of the control of the everyday schmuck.

The Bible contains a LOT of references – both in the New and Old Testaments – to predestination.  “For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10, NKJ).  “Grace” was the term used to describe God’s blessing upon his “chosen people” – and the rest of your schlubs are screwed, no matter how good you are or how hard you try.
“‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.” (Romans 9:15-18, NIV)
“For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.” (Act. 4:27-28, NASB)

So, is Pontious Pilate or Judas Iscariot really to blame?  Or were they just the necessary foils for Christ – God had predetermined that Pilate would be “hardened” or that Iscariot would sell Christ for 30 pieces of silver?

All of these philosophies – or metaphysics – leave out something that we, logically, think might be important: free will and/or its attendant moral responsibility.  Under the Oedipus/Islam/Christian views I’ve noted above (and I’ve obviously stripped these books and philosophies down to almost nothing for purposes of brevity) utterly lacking is any free will or choice on the part of Man – and therefore any moral responsibility for his actions.  If it’s all predestined, then I can simply walk out my door and start shooting people and know that it’s not my fault; it was all foretold and previously decided by the (a) Oracle at Delphi, (b) Allah, (c) God the Father.  The most recent re-work of a Philip K. Dick story – the movie “The Adjustment Bureau” – deals with this theme wonderfully.  As another aside, Philip K. Dick was a national treasure.  His short Sci-Fi stories have been turned into Blade Runner (“Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?”), Total Recall (“We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”), Screamers (“Second Variety”), Minority Report (same name), Impostor (same), Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, and others, either directly or as an inspiration.

Renaissance thinkers (and others) came to see this (predestination, not Philip K. Dick stories) as a bit troubling.  Our codes of law and determinations about legal responsibility, either criminal or civil, depend almost entirely upon an assessment of one’s “mens rea” – or “state of mind” – at the time an act is performed.  If you were grooming your horse and it suddenly bolted and your chariot ran over some people and killed them it hardly seems fair under any philosophy to treat you the same as the guy who waits to see his business rival come out of a store and runs him down with his chariot “with malice aforethought.”  And we’re certainly not going to let that guy say, “It was God’s will, dude.  Predestination.  Don’t look at me.  Blame the big Guy upstairs.”

So what does all of this have to do with tragedy, or even success, in our everyday lives?  Final post coming…