164 - What is Casting Lots?

I showed you this and you were here, but in my right hand, I am holding my favorite coin that I've ever had ever. Do you remember which one that is? Yes. Um, no.

It's old. I tell you a lot about it. It's old. I tell you about a lot of coins, man.

I can't believe it. It's really old. That'd be like, that'd be like you ask me. What do you think my favorite rocket is?

I'm going, oh, no, no, no. Did you just make a southern accent by saying ma instead of my ma ma my favorite rocket? Stick of it. I didn't mean to.

What's your favorite coin, man? I got this ploppa silver that was made by Alexander the Great. Oh, the ploppa silver. That's a guy who.

Yeah, the ploppa silver. How many ploppa silver is a loaf of bread cost? Oh, well, I can figure that out. Now, tell me how much the ploppa silver is.

We get it done. This one is, it's just awesome. It's got Alexander the Great's base on it. This is the coolest thing.

I think probably Aristotle, his tutor helped him think through what his currency ought to look like. Listen, there's a goddess or something on the back of this. And what I want to do is flip this coin. Yeah.

And if it comes up heads, then I think we should probably talk about coin flips in this conversation. Okay. But if it comes up tails, I think we should just turn off the microphones and let everybody wonder if we're actually as committed as we are to saying we were going to do what we were going to do. That sounds great.

We just don't have the episode at all. That sounds great. Cool. Yeah.

I'm going to flip this now. I kind of feel like this is predetermined. Do you feel like that has already? I mean, I almost feel like we've already recorded the episode and we're going back and we're like time travelers coming back and re recording this coin flip to give us a good intro is where I feel like crazy.

Here's what I happen to know about this coin. Every time I flip it ever, it comes up the exact same way. It's not even weight. So I kind of know.

I kind of know what's going to happen. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it was heads.

Oh, great. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's do it.

It happens to spend a lot of heads. I've just been sitting here doing that. I think we probably ought to do it. How about I flip this thing and if it's heads again, we'll have Tina play that little banjo sound of music.

We do all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The mandolin else. It was it was heads. It was good.

Good. Thunk. Do you ever use coin flips paper? Oh, I know what it is like that to make decisions.

I know where this is going. Are you going to talk about casting lots? What? Casting lots.

What do you mean by that? Yeah. So yeah, because we talk about this one in the Bible, when people don't know what to do, they did this thing called casting lots. And I have no idea how you do that.

I always imagined. I don't know. You have these things in your mind's eye and I always imagined somebody with a bag full of sticks or something like the game pickup sticks. Do you remember that game?

Yeah. I always imagined somebody had a bunch of sticks and they threw them on the ground and somehow they read the sticks and they're like, oh, it says we should sail to Carthage or something. I don't know. And so I've always wondered what that meant, what casting lots meant.

And we had talked about this a little bit. So when you flip the coin, I thought about that. I was like, OK, it doesn't matter which one we do, but we're just going to leave it up to chance because it doesn't really matter. We seem to make a decision.

I am wildly interested in this topic and I would like to know what your research has told you. Oh, bummer. I didn't make you mad at all. No, no, it's not like you like uncomfortable or something.

I'm like, why don't I just hear something? We're going to talk about it. OK, no, that's awesome. What my research has told me is that first of all, there are a ton of different ways that people across all cultures for all the time have tried to get unstuck in a decision or figure out what they ought to do.

For some people, that is a matter of, well, I've narrowed it down to a couple of the good options and I just cannot decide they both work. The only decision that doesn't work is inaction. So we're just going to all agree to operate with whatever the outcome is. We're going to flip this Alexander the Great Coin and this time it's the goddess on the back.

Which I guess we're calling in tails. So there we go. We're moving forward. Now we are unstuck.

There's no appeal to deity or a higher power in the situation that I just described. It's just, you know, you're just getting unstuck, right? It's just you're trying to access something that's chancy and it's random. But then there are other times where people throughout history have gone for something more complex, almost something sacrificial to try to tap into some higher power of a deity or some personal notion of fate or the cosmos or whatever.

And that's where you get into divining, like taking a bunch of chicken guts and all the guts sort of maybe mean something. Different, some kind of soothsayer or diviner can scoop through that in a bowl and be like, we are to go and fight the Persians and sends that kind of message. Or the pickup sticks, I think comes a little closer to that because that's a very multifaceted scenario you were thrown out there. That would be more like, I got no idea what to do next.

I haven't really narrowed down the choices. Let's just start doing this in a way, maybe a Ouija board falls into that category as well. Theoretically, I don't believe that Ouija boards work or do anything. But the idea of that sort of practice of spiritism is she asked a question, very open ended ones are fine.

And they can even spell out an answer for you. So that would be a version of divining as well. Well, here's what's interesting. The Bible strictly forbids God's chosen people.

The people who come up in the Bible, the Old Testament, especially from doing any kind of divination. They're not supposed to consult the spirits to make decisions or figure things out, but they are allowed to cast lots. I mean, it happens all over the Bible. There's tons of casting lots and it's never condemned.

At worst, it's treated as value neutral. At best, it's treated as having yielded to a good result. So my question for you would be, what would be the difference in your level of comfort with a Ouija board? Or consulting the guts of a bird versus flipping a coin or rolling a dice?

Oh, wow, that's a great question. A Ouija board spelled O-U-J. How do you spell that? A Ouija board?

I don't know how to spell it. Dang it. Oh, wait. Yeah, there's a weird you in there.

It's like a place mat, right? And there's a bunch of letters on the place mat and a bunch of people put their hands on this thing, this like little shuttle that moves around and it goes and selects different words or letters. And so I've always looked at that and thought I could totally manipulate that. Like if my hands are on that, I could totally be like, oh, I want it to say a certain thing.

I've often wondered what was going on with that. Also, I don't think that's real casting of lots, so to speak, where you use a statistically even probability thing like turbulence. So turbulence is very, very susceptible to its first boundary conditions. So think about this, a coin, you flip it in theory.

If it's a perfectly weighted coin, it's 50, 50, one way or the other. That's a beautiful decision making thing. But the amount of effort that you put into the thumb flip and which side it's on when you start thumping it, so to speak, we're flipping it, all those things will affect the ultimate outcome and even the balance at the bottom, that'll affect it. But that first thump and then it flies in the air when it hits and starts bouncing around, there's a lot of chaos there.

So that chaos kind of evens out the statistical probability of a head or a tail, which I think is fascinating. Much like turbulence, turbulence is I'm imagining an experiment by the guy that came up with the Reynolds number. It's like a tube of glass and he has a little ink that he's putting into a very slow flowing liquid. And it'll be smooth at first and then it'll go chaotic and it'll start whipping like a tail.

Those first inputs, like maybe even the pulse of the guy holding the tube, those little bit of inputs can have huge ramifications downstream. And so with something like a Ouija board, I feel like people have control over the outcome. But with something like a coin flip, I feel like you have less control over the outcome. Did you guys have in junior high?

Did you ever flip dollars? Did you ever have the bad kids in the bathroom flipping dollars? You know what that is? No, I have no idea what that means.

OK, so when I was in junior high, they were these kids, they were, I mean, you'll go drop dollars or flip dollars, I forget what they called it. And they had two guys just imagine two seventh graders and they would spread out and then they would, they would be like a big space in between them and they'd each be holding a dollar. And then they would say, all right, man, you call it. And he go, evens.

And then they would both drop their dollars and then if they both came up heads, then it was evens. But if one was a head, it's not a silver dollar. This is a dollar bill, a paper piece of currency. OK, so they would drop it.

And if he said evens and one came up with George Washington's head and whatever's on the back, what is on the back of a dollar bill? Do you know? It doesn't have like a pyramids and eagles and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. And so if the one eye pyramid comes up on the bottom side or whatever, then, then that would be odds. And so if a guy called evens and they came up odds, then the other kid wins and he gets to keep the dollar. They would have like $10 bills and they'd go drop dollars in the bathroom, which was like a form of gambling.

However, the really bad kids knew how to drop their dollars. I can still remember this one kid. I can't see his face, but I can see his hands. He would curl the dollar in a certain way so that when it fell, it would flip.

It would spin, but it would more often than not land concave up. Does that make sense? Yes. So he would increase even if he could tilt the probability of the outcome by 10 percent.

That would be good for him. So he'd be 64 over a long period of time. That's going to get it done. Yeah, exactly.

And so when you're talking about casting lots or making decisions and things like this, anything that's truly chaotic and you can't predict if it's a one or a zero, so to speak, I think that is a good way to make a decision. So for example, if you and I had to do something like who gets the front seat, who has to sit in the backseat, I could see us doing paper rock scissors. I could see that. Another form of casting lots.

Paper rock scissors is just lots. What does it mean when we say casting lots? Is that a noun? Lots or what is that?

It's the root word that we get lottery from really or to say his lot in life. That's all from the same term. I think it refers to a whole variety of techniques and practices that involve an attempt at randomization, that turbulence, that chaos that you're talking about. To me, that is how you would separate what's called claro mancy from the ancient Greek word klaros, which is also interestingly where we get the term cleric.

And so it's kind of crazy that this attempt to determine the will of the divine or of fate using chance is what ultimately ended up lending itself to the clergy in a while. Things that would count as claro mancy, I think are all an attempt to tap in to that turbulence ironically in a way to find order. If you're doing something that does not have a specific outcome from a turbulent event, but one that requires interpretation, well, that point you're getting into divination, which I think is another category because 10 different people could theoretically split open a chicken and look at the exact same 10 sets of guts and arrive at 10 completely random conclusions aren't binding in any way. At that point, you're not really putting your hope and fate that you're going to get an answer that is reliable.

You're putting your hope in the interpretation of that priest that person goes through guts. So to me, that would be the two different categories. That makes sense. Yeah, that doesn't make sense.

But like looking at the intrails of a chicken, is that a thing that people would do to get answers? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And as I understand it, that is forbidden.

I don't know. Is it specific or not? I do a Bible thing every day. So even when we're recording, I sell the Bible sitting right here, Leviticus 19.

Is it actually Leviticus 19? I think it is that is a very dangerous chapter of the Bible for me to go poking around at my microphone. Why is that really? You want to know?

To talk about, okay, it has a what? What? No, say it. What do you got?

Does it talk about sexual misconduct or something like that? Yeah, it does. All of this chunk of Leviticus does. It's all about Leviticus 18 and 19 are real spicy.

It's all about life for this group of slaves who had just been set free under very miraculous looking circumstances. And now they're wandering around in the desert. So it's like one big burning man tour for 40 years. And I can't imagine the amount of disease and gonorrhea that gets passed around at Burning Man in just like a week.

You just went there. 40 years of that. You just think they're going to get bad if you don't have a lot of rules. They want to be just straight because of that.

There you just live in the camp. What's that? You didn't prepare anybody. You just said it.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, hey, there it is.

So phrases like clean and unclean discharges appear a lot here in Leviticus 18. That's right. That's why I kind of giggle this I was turning over here. But Leviticus 19 20, I'm almost there 26.

Do not practice divination or sorcery. That's it. Yeah, that's it. Everything else around it.

It doesn't give you specifications. Uh, don't degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute. Don't cut your bodies for the dead. Okay.

Yeah, there's a lot of do not turn to mediums or seek out spirits for you will be defiled by them. That's Leviticus 19 31 rise in the presence of the aged show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the Lord. Does this kind of feel like the particle is fantastically bit that we did about the 12 tables of Roman law?

It does. Yeah, it absolutely does. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. When the alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native born. Love him as you love yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt.

Don't use dishonored standards for weight and measures. Yeah. It looks like the stuff I read you is most of what deals with that. Oh, I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them and I will cut him off from the people.

So it really is kind of a rapid fire thing dealing with seriously, like adolescent nighttime emissions stuff ranging from that to cutting your body and pagan practices to try to connect with the dead to casting a lot and spiritism and things like that. So it seems that in the Bible, the division is that if you're going to someone who does the interpreting and they're not a prophet of God or anything like that, you are on really shaky ground according to the instructions God gives there in Leviticus. But then there's a ton of other stuff where we just need to cast lots. We got to get unstuck.

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Stamps.com use the promo code NDQ after clicking the little microphone. What is the situation where you would want to make a decision on the fly and you don't know which one to do? I guess you only do this if it doesn't matter. I think of gambling as you're putting up something and you're at risk of losing or gaining something.

But I think of just casting lots as well. These are two options and it doesn't matter which one we do. The opportunity cost is the same either way. Yeah.

I think that's the line between gambling and just leaving something to chance. That's my definition. I would say. Yeah.

Okay. And of course some sort of casting of lots or even clairomancy could be used in the service of gambling and you could easily use dice to determine, you know, to figure out who fate decided we'd get that $10 bill set on the table. Yeah. No, one, two, three, shoot.

Ha, scissors wins. I get the 10 bucks. So you're using casting of lots to determine gambling outcomes, but those are separate categories and then it looks like divination, the pagan practice of trying to connect with a deity or with faith through an interpretive means it looks like that's another very different category. So what I'm hearing is you're not going to do divination.

That hasn't been a part of your life. That doesn't seem like a great way to make decisions. Is that fair? That is fair.

Yeah. I don't. I don't often divine spirits when trying to figure. Can you imagine live in your life?

Like, oh, man, do I want, you know, waiter, you're right. The pecan crusted tilapia does sound great, but that man, that beef tartar. Man, that sounds interesting as well. You know what?

One second. You just turn around. It's usually like, you know, I've decided to go with tilapia. So that would be rough.

Yeah. That would also be stupid. So something's just, you know, consequential. They don't matter.

And I think it's okay. One thing that's interesting to me in the Bible is when Jonah, are we talking about the Bible too much? I don't know. I don't think so because it's one of the most robust records of how people did this in the ancient world that people are likely to have a point of reference for.

And then I think it's okay. It's a fair game example. One of the things I think is interesting is when Jonah was on the boat and the storm came up and everybody's freaking out and they like cast lots to figure out who was the baddie. Am I remembering this correctly?

And then they were like, it's Jonah. Yeah. And you're like, what? So that kind of indicates that God, like what?

He was like, yeah, I knew it was going to be me. So that indicates that God had something to do with the outcome of the casting of lots. Right. So that was almost divination, divination, how do you say it of Israel's God?

But not really because divination would have involved a different means of consulting God. It would have required a certain degree of interpretation, but where things in the Bible seem to be put to, is it this way or is it that? Should we do this or should we do that? That seems to be treated differently than rifling through the guts or using some sort of spiritual medium to get the answers.

But how do you physically cast lots? Is it like pick up sticks and you drop the lots in their point in a certain direction or something? Yeah. Yes.

That is one of the ways. But my understanding is if you do that pick up sticks technique, which I think is one of the techniques that the Norse used for casting lots, a picture of being popular there that are being six that correspond to certain runes etched on a mat or in the dirt. So you wouldn't just throw the sticks for no reason. The sticks would have certain markings that mean certain things.

And then you would have certain runes that would mean certain things. So for me, that's getting right to the edge of Clareomancy, the casting of lots and getting right up toward divination, depending on the level of specificity of the question that you're asking, you know, a simpler version of the pick up sticks version would be just drawing straws, right? I mean, that's Clareomancy. Have you ever done that?

So Clareomancy is, okay, it is what now straws? So you do something straws? Yeah. It's, I mean, Clareomancy is your turbulent chaos, randomizer.

Clareomancy is using a dice. It's casting lots. It's anything where you are coming with a specific question and you are letting fate determine between pre-existing options that you're putting forward. Okay.

Divination could be completely open ended. What would be interesting is to go on a road trip, I just went on a, we called it the dad venture. I just went on a big trip with basically me versus 13 kids and we went and I let them decide what we're going to do that day. All right.

Here we are. What are we going to do? You have to all unanimously decide. You can't just all shout what you want.

You have to decide together. And the point of the trip was to get the kids to solidify their friend group from childhood. That's what I'm trying to do. I want them to have an experience together where they're all together.

They remember that time that so and so did this and you know, they did just building memories. And one of the things I did is I said, okay, we're here. What are we going to do? And I made them decide and sometimes they couldn't decide.

And so they were trying to figure out what to do and ultimately they were able to figure it out. But I could see how the more influential vocal people could outweigh the other ones easily and make the decisions. And so if you were to bake in something like this on a road trip where you say, Hey, we're going to go on a road trip and at every major interstate interchange, we're going to cast lots and we're going to see where it takes us. That would be fun, wouldn't it?

That would be fun. I did something like that once. Really? I had a group of college students I was going to travel with leaving from Las Vegas.

We were friends. We hung out church contacts. We were going on a trip and we brought all of our stuff backpacks and everything. And on the hood of the car, when we were ready to leave, we spread out a map.

And I didn't know this is what we were doing at the time, but we cast lots to determine where we would go through a series of narrowing it down and me holding up fingers behind my back or even a rod and somebody's back there looking to know if it's even a rod and somebody guesses and that narrows it down and this narrows it down. We flip a coin and that narrows it down. And ultimately we ended up building an entire road trip route using just, I mean, I guess, Clare Mansey, the drawing of lots again. I didn't think about what we were doing when we did it.

We were just having fun and trying to mix it up and randomize it. But there were things that happened on that trip that wouldn't have happened if we had thrown the dice and gone the other way. So fate did kind of intervene then, right? That's interesting.

We had a joke on the trip about there was this one day where I could speak anything into existence. It was the most bizarre thing. We're in North Carolina and we're coming up on the, coming up on, I think it was North Carolina, yeah, we're coming up on the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and I proclaimed to the bus, I heard that they released a herd of elk here and like, would it be cool if we just saw elk? That'd be amazing.

And we rounded the corner and there were a bunch of cars stopped. There was a huge herd of elk. We're like, what? And our minds were blown, you know, like, you just said it.

And then I was like, I know, right? We drove an hour and a half later. Called the elk into existence. Yeah, it's pretty fun.

And so we kept driving and we're leaving Great Smoky Mountain National Parks. This is not long before we got into Gatlinburg. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but we were on our way to Cherokee, North Carolina. And I said, all right, kids, we're heading to Cherokee, North Carolina.

And it's a very interesting place. There's a lot of culture here. But one thing that happens is there's these little tourist shops that pop up and they sell just awful trinkets. What I want to do is I want you guys to, basically what I wanted is to pull into the town and I wanted them to just kind of disperse as groups and just have interactions in this little town together.

I'm building memories, right? That's what I wanted to do. That's okay. So what I want you to do is go find the most expensive trinket that these people are trying to sell, just to get money out of tourists that you think they could actually get away with.

In terms of bang for the butt, find me the worst possible tourist trinket that exists. The little souvenir stuff is dumb. Go find that. And from the back of the bus, I said, Mr.

Destin, are you going to get a dream catcher? And I was like, no, no, a drink catcher. Stupid. No, I'm not going to get a dream catcher.

Unless it was like a really cool dream catcher that had like an eagle painted on it with like lightning bolts behind the eagle. I mean, I would consider that dream catcher, but no, I'm not going to get a dream catcher. So we pulled it. You know where this is going.

We pull up into the first little awful tourist thing and we walk in and the first thing you see, is this giant like two foot across dream catcher with this bald eagle. Like, you know, it is like lightning bolt mine. It's like a shirt Napoleon dynamite where. And I said, you are, you've got to be kidding me.

And they're like, no way. Mr. Destin. I said, I sent you back.

You can speak things into existence. It sent me back nothing. But called dream catchers. Wait, how did they say you back?

Nothing. You bought it. You made a covenant. I did not buy it.

They bought it for me. Oh, how much did it set them back? It said $99 on the dream catcher, but it had been marked down to $59. $59.

And I was like, OK, this is an amazing deal. I was like, this is an incredible amount of money for a. It's like $40 back in your pocket. He's talking about savings are incredible.

Like, this is an incredible amount of money for a stupid thing. So I'm like, OK, I got it. And they're all like, Mr. Destin, you know.

That's OK. I'll go asking. So I was like, hey, man, what do you take? You take 20 bucks for this.

And he's like, oh, no, look at it. I looked at it. I looked back at the guy. I was like, OK, I looked at it.

We take 20 bucks for this. He's like, no, it's hand painted. I looked at it. It's clearly silk screened.

I was like, OK, yeah, but what do you take? No, it was $99 is what he said appealing to just nothing. It's $60. I've already marked it down 40.

Face ordained. It's value at $99. That's what it was. It's so dumb.

I was like, OK, cool. And so I'm taking a bath on this thing already, man. I was like, all right, kids, let's load up. And they're like trying on all these leather jackets and hats.

And they're just having a hoot of the time. And then I was like, all right, kids, we're going across to the street to the actual art museum. And so we're going across the street to the actual art museum. And while I was there, too, the kids snuck out.

They all pulled their money together. And they bought me that dream catcher. And it was hilarious. Where is it now?

It's over a TV where the kids play video games. So pretty funny. That's going to be there for a long time. Oh, it is.

And the funny part is we went back and asked for the sign that said $99 mark down to $60. And we had the sign that he's like, no, I need to use it. And I'm like, no, come on, man. And one of the kids actually was able to talk him out of the sign by just staring at him until he started laughing.

Because he knew what he was doing to this. It was pretty funny. But anyway, I was negotiating skills have come a long way since trying to sell crabs to people on a beach in Costa Rica. I know, right?

I don't know where I was going with that story other than it was a blast. Well, I know where it takes me. Greencatchers. I have a follow up question for you.

Do you believe in do you believe in fate? What does that mean? F-A-T-E fate? Do I believe in fate?

F-A-T-E, do you believe in fate? OK, so the depth of your question is unbelievable. There's this discussion about predestination versus unconditional election. Those are the same thing, right?

Huh? Predestination and election? Roughly, those are the same thing. Or free will and unconditional election.

Free will versus predestination and unconditional election. Forgive me. I'm sorry. What do those two things mean?

So basically, free will is the idea that you get to choose your own story. You get to choose what happens in your life story. And what happens is a function of the choices you make. Predestination or unconditional election is the idea that everything's already determined for you.

It's going to happen the way it's going to happen. You think you have a choice, but you don't actually have a choice. It's already going to happen. The naturalists would say, well, this is just a function of the physics of the universe, like the chemicals in your brain, or going to decide something a certain way.

The spiritual person would say, God knows infinite amounts of things. He transcends time and space. And he's already determined where things are going to end up. It's a very interesting discussion.

And I don't know where you add on the issue. What do you think? On that issue or the question of do I believe in fate? Well, let's start with the equilibrium fate.

I mean, I don't really know what you mean by the word fate. So yeah, that's kind of the rub of the question, right? Normally, that's a kind of question that gets asked in a romantic comedy when people are trying to figure out whether or not they're destined to be together or something like that. I think that's a pretty surfacy view of the question, kind of an astrology level question.

But I mean something, you're right, a lot deeper by it. And that is, yeah, do you think things are determined? Do you think what percentage of things are determined? Who does the determining?

Or, I guess what I'm asking is, is there laminar flow in the flow of time and choices and forks in the road? Or is it all turbulent? Well, okay. I think there's a God, obviously.

I'm not shy about acknowledging that. I think that God is not like Thor or Odin or something like that where it's a God with a lot of flaws, but one that is much more powerful than people. I think when you say the word God, what you are invoking is the notion of the first cause, the ultimate thing, the thing that happened before time, and the thing that initiated existence as we understand existence. So the thing that came before all the other stuff and put all the things in motion, the thing that made the Big Bang happen if the Big Bang is what started motion as we think of motion.

So we're outside Newtonian physics and we're talking about God as I conceive of God to be. We're talking about a being that is entirely other and the Bible conception of God, I think even the philosophical conception of God is this is a being who never learned anything, doesn't change, always knew all the things, everything that has been made was made by this God. So of course humans, we're gonna try to visualize this God like a person, but this God also must necessarily have characteristics that we just can't calculate at all if a truly infinite God actually exists. I think one and only one does.

As though where that gets tricky for me is on the question of that deity's infinitude. The greatest being that can be imagined would be one is infinite, non-limited in every way, which means that deity would not only know everything that as we perceive it has happened, is happening and will happen, but that deity would also know everything that could have happened might be happening now or could happen later. That God in their infinite mind would know every possible permutation of everything, and at least as best as we can tell, he at least actualized the version of reality that we participate in, that we're part of. Takes you to some mind-bending places.

So the thing that has really made me think hard, as I've been thinking about this whole dice thing and fate thing and Clare Mancy thing here for the last couple of weeks, is if God exists and God knows everything, it means that God knew every outcome of every dice roll that has ever happened or ever will happen. It would mean that such a deity was not surprised by any of it, is that the same thing as the deity moving his hand over the dice, like Qui-Gon Jinn did in the negotiation for whatever tattooing, or does that mean that we're just simply talking about such unlimited knowledge that sort of transcends the question of did he make it happen or not? Because he doesn't need to make it happen because he just knows and he's outside of time in Newtonian physics, so we just don't even have the ability to frame up the question the right way to think about how such a being would relate to the reality that he has made. So does it just happen?

I mean, God's like, I knew that was gonna happen. No surprises for me, or surely by the act knowing it was going to happen, does that make it happen? And so when I think about fate, that's kind of the question I'm grappling with. Do you think that makes any sense?

Yeah, it does. My brain's on fire right now, and much like the idea of turbulence where a first little flickering of the wrist can change this in one direction or this conversation is kind of at a point where it can go anywhere. So the conversation can, oh man, we could go into unconditional election, we could go into, I don't know, I've heard a quote often by Einstein, God doesn't play dice with the universe. I don't even understand that quote because he's talking about quantum mechanics.

What an interesting quote though, because it's directly antithetical, well not directly, but it doesn't square neatly with Proverbs 1633, which says the lot is cast into the lab, but it's every decision is from God. I don't know that. I'm not familiar with the context of that verse and context is king whenever you're looking at stuff like that. I know Proverbs is a little different because it'll just give you a bunch of nice one-liners at times.

Yeah, Proverbs is just a one-off, it just happens. Yeah, I don't know. There you go, that's a thought. Yeah, God's not surprised by your dice roll.

He's in control of everything, that seems to be what it's holding out. But maybe Einstein's right, God doesn't play dice, maybe that could be interpreted to mean that Einstein is saying God isn't leaving anything to chance. God is fully in control of and aware of outcomes and nothing happens where God is like, oh, wow, didn't see that coming. Okay, plan B, we can still make this work guys, we can still make this work, it's all anticipated.

I dug in on this specific point in my faith journey for many, many years because of the following. If God has the ability to know everything and he influences whatever happens and he could change that initial condition that which would create the effect. Therefore, he allows evil. And so getting back to why we asked Amy and Daelyn and Lee a long time ago as a joke, why is there suffering?

Why is there evil in the world? I actually had a, you know, when I was forming my brain and I hope I'm still doing that, I got hung up on that exact question for a really, really long time. Then I kind of navigated those waters over time and I arrived at what is the problem of pain? Well, it feels like I'm being refined.

Like I feel like humanity is being refined and that the pain is a part of that refinement process. We were given pain so that we can struggle against something so that we may be made better. I eventually ended up somewhere around there. Another thing that I had a hard time with for a long time is that unconditional election versus free will thing.

I had a really hard time with that for a long time. My wife thought about that for a long time as well. We have many, many discussions. There was actually a verse that kind of broke me out of that cycle.

I just pulled it out real quick. It's make your calling an election sure. Let me see. Second Peter, one, 10.

Are you familiar with this verse? Therefore brothers, it'd be all the more diligent to confirm your calling an election for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. I mean, in the past, you know stuff like that, but make your calling and election sure or confirm your calling and election. I don't know the original Greek.

I can't read Greek. I don't either. But that right there struck me. Make your calling and election sure because unconditional election goes like this.

If God is all knowing and he transcends time and space, then he knows who is going to accept salvation and he knows who's going to become a Christian who's not. Therefore, he is actively choosing that some people do not come to the saving knowledge of Jesus. That's the whole idea behind unconditional election. I am way over my head, Matt.

Way, way, way over. You're doing pretty well, man. So what you described there is a position called double predestination whereby God not only, in this particular theological philosophical position, whereby God not only determines in advance and then makes it happen that some people will be objects of redemption, but he also chooses in advance and then makes it happen that some people will not be. Right.

That's not the universal Christian position. It is not. Protestant traditions and Catholic positions who hold that, people with Protestant traditions and Catholic traditions who do not hold to that. It's obviously a point of debate because it gets to the heart of a really big question, maybe even a problem for the person who thinks there's a God and believes that is the God of Abraham, the God of Christianity, that is, is that God good?

Or is that God part good, but then also responsible somehow for evil? That's a big question. Oh, it's huge. Steve Bateman has a really good way to run through this and maybe we should just have him on and ask him about this sometime.

That'd be interesting. Yeah, that would be fun. And the reason I think it's fun and works for even the fact that we have a very diverse audience of very different opinions. I know there are people in the third chair who are like, no, I'm absolutely just as sure as I am of the pen and the paper in front of me that there is not a God in the universe.

I know there are other people in the third chair listening to this who would say, as sure as I am that I am sitting here, there is a God in the universe. But then even within that, you've got a whole bunch of different conceptions of the power, the limitations are lack thereof of that God. But what brings everybody together on this question is that feeling that there's some purpose or point to life. Maybe it feels like it.

Even if there's not man, it sure feels like there's a point to this. It sure feels like people are special. And it sure feels like fate or forks in the road of our timeline is a real thing. And it's a really big deal.

And that feeling of there's order and there's meaning of there's fate, there forks in the road, becomes even more pronounced as you age and you look back at history, the history of your own life, fateful decisions that you made. And so this is one of those conversations that gets into stuff I really care about, where I feel like it's very, very inviting to everybody because everybody thinks about chance and fate and history and decisions and how that plays out over time. And so yeah, I'd be up for having Steve on. He's a philosopher and a scholar and he would have good ideas on it.

But the question of having Steve on aside, you were in the middle of talking about your journey of wrestling through a difficult question. Where did you land on that? Basically, I got paralyzed for a long time. Okay.

And then that verse broke me out. You can be paralyzed by the thought of why can't control anything here. It says make your calling and election sure, meaning you have agency in the decision making process, make verb, active verb. And then I realized, yeah, an infinite being would understand everything far beyond me, but I certainly seem to have free will in this moment right now.

At the very least it feels like it. Yeah, exactly. And so I saw a thing, it was a meme kind of thing the other day. I have no idea where this deep philosophy fills off a argument came from, but I thought it would be pretty interesting to discuss.

Everybody in the time travel movies are always concerned about going back in time and messing with things and changing the future. They're always like, oh man, if I do the slightest thing, if I move that cup from there to there, I'm worried about the ripple effect that will have through time and it'll change everything. In the time travel movies, you always think about that. But I don't think about that right now.

Like man, if I would just go work out today, that could change everything about my future, you know? Huh. In the time travel movies, the ability to influence the future is so concerning. But we have that ability right now.

Like right now, I have the ability to choose the kind word over the angry word. I have the ability to choose happiness, or at least a positive spirit in the moment. That may be too heady, but because I mean, chemical depression is a thing. But I think I have the ability to influence my surroundings right now, and that will have the same ripple effect through the future in front of me.

Why am I not thinking about that with the same level of gravity as Marty McFly? You know, it's an interesting concept, and I think it's fun to think about. Yeah, it's a very interesting concept. And what you're expressing there though, is a moral understanding or a motivated understanding of the unfolding of time.

You believe that there's a redemptive thing happening. Your narrative, I know this of you, your understanding of the world, is that stuff got broken, and entropy and calamity got introduced into the system. But the one who introduced it is in some big redemptive process, and you have the opportunity to play a role, even if it's a very small one, in that process. I think the pure fatalist would hear what you just said and be like, well, yeah, making the kind decision right now, yeah, that determines fate, but making an angry decision right now could yield good outcomes too, in the random unfolding of fate and time.

But the fatalist isn't really shooting for anything other than what will be, whereas you're trying to nudge the timeline in a certain direction with your energy and your lifetime. You want to be a part of pulling the whole story of existence, even if it's one tiny little poll, and not the most consequential one, towards something that is redemptive, a restoration, if you will, if something that was greater and more beautiful and lasting before it was touched by entropy, calamity, whatever that might be. And so here you say that, it's super interesting to me, because you're not contented to just say, what will be will be, but you're actually thinking in terms of what decisions could I make now, or regrettably, could I have made in the past, that would have more accomplished good outcomes, redemptive outcomes, with the unfolding of time and existence? Yes, and I know you do the same thing, but like for example, right now, if I could reach my hand into the future, which I'm doing as I give the if-then statement, if I could reach my hand into the future, by way of a recorded file being placed on a server somewhere and someone downloads it, and I could say to that person, hey, you're gonna be presented with a choice today, and it's gonna be a hard choice.

I think you should do maybe the more difficult solution that builds up the people around you, and prepares you for your future more, you might wanna lay in bed, but I think you should get up and go do that thing. If I could project that forward, I want to be the guy that does that. That's one of the cool things about being able to do this podcast with you is I do think, to some weird level, we have influence with people's thoughts and decision-making processes, and I do want to put my finger on the scale of good, on the right side of the scale, or the left side of the scale, wherever good is versus bad. I wanna push down a little bit on that, and I want to encourage people to also do the same.

If I could nudge people in the direction of serving others and edifying others and building up others, even if they don't share my faith, I wanna do that, and furthermore, I want those people to do it as well, whenever they have that opportunity. This is deep, man, I was just gonna read some chicken in trails at the beginning of this, to figure out a philosophy or whatever. Yes. Where are you at with all this?

I don't even know where we are in the conversation right now. This is so deep, and this gets to the deep groanings of the soul, what people end up thinking about this. I mean, I was in a tailspin for years, no joke, trying to figure out this stuff, and it took that particular verse to pop me out of it. Yeah, and different things will get us unstuck from different places in our thought journey, philosophy, ethics, theology journey, whatever it is, and I can see how that one would do it, because it seems to indicate some sort of cooperation.

I mean, the way that sounds is, maybe God moves first, but then there's the ability to cooperate, and maybe that's enough to get you to a place of saying, okay, I can't fully understand the balance of how that works and the unfolding of faith and decisions of God and me, but I have something to do. So there we go, maybe that gets it done for somebody. But you were mentioning a second ago that the idea that everything is determined could be paralyzing, and you're right, I've talked with a ton of people who've expressed something very similar, why would I do anything? Why would I take any action if it's all determined?

But I've also talked with a bunch of people who experienced the opposite problem. You mean I could do anything or be anything? That's paralyzing. Catherine Vigolo in her movie, The Hurt Locker, the one that introduced Jeremy Renner to the world.

This guy goes around a juggernaut suit, disarming bonds and a rack, and then he can handle all of the pressures, no problem. There's just a simple outcome. Either the bomb gets disarmed or it doesn't. It's a one or a zero go-deer job.

Then he comes home and he has to pick out cereal from the cereal aisle at the grocery store, and it's just two dang, many choices, and he breaks down and that's when finally it all catches up with him. It was too much free will that broke him. So I think it's really possible to get stuck in either pole or anywhere in between with this question of what typically we call fate or the unfolding of things. I think people like you and me think there's a God behind all of it would maybe use terms like the sovereignty of God or the unfolding of God's creation.

But either way, when you really stop and think about that, the decisions have consequences. The time is, as we perceive it, is always moving forward. It gets pretty weighty. And I can understand why somebody would get to that place, why I would get to that place and be like, I don't know what to do because it is weighty.

And so I'm gonna take the satellite center of the great coin and I'm gonna flip it. And I'm just going to try to somehow tap in to what will be get unstuck and move forward. And that's not what you describe. You went through a very complex wrestling, grappling, spiritual theological process to get unstuck.

But I can think of situations where I just wanted to get unstuck. And so flipping a coin for the level of consequences of what I'm dealing with, that was funny. And I suppose I can even imagine a scenario where I might make a huge decision flipping a coin. If I'd done all the work already and felt like I'd narrowed it to two really great choices.

And I just can't find a way to tip the scales one way or the other. Either of these should be great outcomes, but I can't pick both, so let's pick one. It's interesting to me the way we intuit all of these things as we roll along through life. But when we really stop and think about it, us as finite beings, God or the cosmos, if that's how somebody conceives of it being not really finite and so much bigger than us and time rolling forward, how does all that stuff fit together?

How does it interact? How does it mesh? It's just so difficult to calculate. And I think there's a reason that every people group in the history of time has invented coin flips or dice to try to grapple that through, I suppose.

Yeah, man. Interesting question. I appreciate you bringing that up. Thank you.

Oh, good stuff. Thanks for going all the way down the rabbit hole with me, buddy. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

No, thanks. I'm gonna go stare off and nothing this now because I'm gonna take about half of this. I'm gonna take about half of this.