More free will... this time with special guest, Jonah!

After the previous post about free will, I started thinking about stories of prophets from the Bible. Lucky for me, they also happen to be mentioned in the Quran so it makes it that much easier to converse with both sides. Initially, I began by recalling the story of Jonah (Yunus in Islam.)

Although God had given Jonah free will, He still had a plan for him. God wanted Jonah to go to Ninevah, a large city that was full of sin and sinners, and warn them against their wrong deeds. Jonah didn't want to do this and attempted to escape his God-given responsibilities. He tries to run away and sail to another country when the ship he had hired hit a great storm. Once the sailors realize that Jonah is the cause of the storm and there's no other escape, they throw him overboard and the waters calm. Jonah is then swallowed by a great fish where he is stranded for three days and eventually repents and asks for God's forgiveness. The fish then spits Jonah onto the shore where he fulfills his duty and prophesies to Ninevah (there's a little more to the story but it doesn't apply to this conversation.)

In this story we see that God has chosen Jonah for a particular role. However, Jonah, being a man, has the gift of free will. His will just happens to oppose God's will, as is evidenced by his attempted escape. However, Jonah's will is feeble compared to God's will and Jonah's greatest attempt to avoid God's calling is a joke compared to God's overarching dominion of the universe. God didn't impose on Jonah's will by simply changing his desire to avoid his responsibility. Jonah's will remained intact and God simply reminded him that God knows best and man doesn't.

It actually kind of reminds me of a parent-child relationship. The parent knows best but the child sometimes rebels. When the parent makes a child eat vegetables, the child's will remains unchanged but even the strongest, most stubborn child will give in given enough time and coercion. God has a plan for each of us; we can make decisions to resist that plan and rebel but given enough time and coercion, we'll bend and accept God's will.

Obviously, many people are more than happy to accept God's will from the beginning. Our free will still gets in the way and we rebel from time to time but when one's will aligns with God's will, your spiritual life should go smoothly even though you might have to occasionally withstand the slings and arrows of a cruel, secular world.

This brings up a related question, though. If we all eventually give in to God's overpowering will, why wouldn't everyone eventually go to Heaven? I think that God's always pushing and prying us to follow Him, which provides the coercion, so eventually everyone would come to the truth. However, since man has only a finite lifespan, those who are stubborn enough can make it through their whole life without listening to God's constant call. To go back to the parent-child analogy, if the child is stubborn enough, eventually the evening has passed and it's bedtime. If the vegetables are still sitting on the plate and the kid's still sitting at the table, you've got to give up, accept defeat, and send the kid to bed.

However, this theory somewhat contradicts "whomever Allah guides, there is none who can lead them astray and whomever Allah leads astray, there is none who can guide them." This implies that there are some people whom God completely refuses the prospect of Heaven. This means that God is not calling all people and it's up to each individual person to choose to follow God. This means that some people are called by God and others are turned away. Those who are called are already accepted into Heaven and those who aren't can't ever attain Heaven regardless of their wills. I find this hard to accept.

My frequent (and possibly only) reader Azooz commented on my last post with a story about a smart farmer with 6 sons, the father can "predict" how each one will perform in a situation and thus chose among them - each son would have characteristics and behaviors and from those the father could "guess" fairly well how each would behave, God created it all, the father and his sons, and would know beater than all.

This makes sense to me. God created us all and knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows what we'll think, what we'll say, and how we'll act long before we do. In this case, God's not choosing to guide or lead astray but, rather, He's simply not wasting time on those who won't accept His guidance. He truly wants everyone to follow him but, because He gave man the option not to, He knows many will refuse Him and go their own way.

I can accept this but I still don't think this explanation quite meshes with the "whomever Allah..." phrase. We'll have to think about it some more.

Islam & Free Will?

Everytime I go to the mosque for jumuah, there's one phrase at the very beginning of every khutbah that gets me thinking. "Whomever Allah guides no one can lead astray and whomever He misguides will find none to guide him aright." What worries me are its implications on free will. It sounds like we're predestined to either paradise or damnation; it sounds very Calvinist.

In the Quran, most things seem to mesh fairly well with discussions of free will in Christianity. God is omnipotent and has created the entire universe. Everything in the universe acts according to God's will but God has given mankind the gift of free will. If man chooses to do good then he is rewarded whereas if he chooses evil, he is punished.

However, in both the Bible and the Quran there are places that imply that man is under God's control. The quote with which I opened is an example of this, although I'm not sure if that's from the Quran or from where it comes. In any case, it implies that if your actions are good, it is due to God's guidance, and if they are evil, it is due to God's lack of guidance. Another disturbing ayah is "Whether you warn them or warn them not, they will not believe you. God has placed a seal on their hearts; there is a veil over their ears and their eyes, and a painful torment awaits them." (2:6-7)* According to these, man does not choose to disobey God but rather God chose for them. Thus, at the beginning of time God chose our fates, paradise or damnation, and we have no choice in the matter. If this is the case, God is unfair to reward or punish people even though they have no say in their actions.

However, other ayat such as "We have shown man the path of truth and the path of falsehood; he may choose either the path of guidance and offer the thanks, or choose the path of ingratitude" (76:3))* lay out very clearly that we are given free will and our decisions in life affect our final state in the afterlife.

Like I said, the same free-will versus predestination argument rages in Christianity with Bible verses supporting both sides. However, none of the verses that are used to support predestination seem to be quite as clear-cut as these. It's sometimes an interesting topic to discuss but it can be equally disturbing if you really think about it.