what should be will be
I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker this evening as we recapped today's momentous events. I reflected that what happened today could not have happened if George W. Bush had not been reelected. I said, "I'm not sure if this is fatalism, but Obama's election happened because of Bush."
She asked me if I'm Buddhist.
Apparently, I have Buddhist tendencies. In November, I was having a debate with an Indian-American about the validity of the caste system of his first country. I had argued that it was not up to me, a non-Indian, to judge the merits of a traditional Indian system. "You're a Buddhist," he said. "Buddhists favor peace over ideology."
From my limited perspective, I had always assumed that there was a near paradoxical tension in Protestantism between fatalism and free will. My co-worker (who is not Protestant) told me that no, Protestantism is all about free will. Fatalism is Buddhist.
Okay. Maybe that's why I'm struggling with my own Christianity. I have confused my Christian faith with Buddhist beliefs. Or maybe, the boundary between beliefs is not as distinct as one would like to think.
In other news, today was a good day. A very good day.
1 comment:
We INFP/J's are very universalist thinkers, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that we're like minded on this. I've always rejected the classical Christian dichotemy of free will vs. predestination. Why can't it be both? Is God not bigger than time and space? If he can live outside of time, which we consider to be a reality, a finite thing in our world, why can he not also exist outside of our human understanding of events? Can I not have some form of free will (opposite of being a puppet) while at the same time being predestined to make the choices I do? For some reason, this just isn't a problem for me. I can live with the contradictions and the illogical conclusions. I find God to be so much bigger than it all.
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