Fatalism Or Faith Series

All that is was ever bound to be,

Since grim eternal laws our beings bind;

And both the riddle and the answer find,

Both the pain and the peace decree

For, playing within the Book of Destiny,

Is written all the journey of mankind

Inexorably to the end, and blind

And helpless puppets playing parts are we.

As helpless puppets the fatalists just wait to see what will happen. They do not bother to try and

change anything, for it is futile. Paul meets this fatalism head on with the message of faith. Faith is

the opposite of fatalism. Faith says that freedom is real and that the future is not all determined. We

can make choices that altar what will be. Paul says that God commands all people to repent. That

is a call to change, and by changing their attitude toward God they can change their destiny. God

has set a day for judgment, and He will hold men accountable for their response to His good news in

Christ. He gave them proof by raising Jesus from the dead. By faith in the risen Christ all of life an

eternity can be changed.

If Paul did no have faith to believe, in the midst of all the idolatry of Athens, that men could still be

persuaded to have faith in Christ, he never would have bothered to open his mouth. But Paul was a

man of faith, and he believed that truth can bear fruit in any setting. He knew he could present the

truth of the Gospel in a convincing enough way to persuade some, and that is what he did. Faith

does not say I can get anything and everything I want, but it does say, "I have the freedom to make a

difference."

Many today are taking the concept of faith to the opposite extreme of fatalism. Fatalism says

you cannot change anything, but the fanatical faith people say that you can change everything and

get everything by faith. Just believe and you can be in charge of life and control circumstances and

your future. You can get the best of everything if you just have faith. This is just as far fetched as

fatalism, and it leads people to delusions of grandeur, and the kind of pride that goes before a fall.

When it is biblical and balanced faith simply says that God invited man to cooperate with His will

for the future. We are free to say yes and see His will fulfilled, or to resist it and see His will

hindered. We are not in charge, but we can cooperate or not do so. That is the point of the prayer,

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." It is prayer of saying that I want to cooperate and

make the future what God wills it to be in His priority will, for what He wants is what is best.

The fatalist does not pray, "Thy will be done," because it cannot not be done. Everything has to

be God's will, and whatever is cannot be different than what it is. The Christian says that this is not

so. The future can be radically different if we choose to cooperate with God in doing His will. Take

earthquakes as an example. In nations where fatalism is the philosophy of life they say there is

nothing you can do about them and their destructive results. And so they do nothing but rebuild the