About 25 years ago, I had a conversation with a Presbyterian seminary student, and in the conversation we ended up talking about “Predestination”.   At the time I was really opposed to this idea of predestination because it went against my deeply held belief in “free-will”.    So, being young and not as skilled in “diplomaticness” and “good word-using” as I am now, I blurted out how stupid the whole notion of predestination sounded to me!    In my youthful inexperience and naiveté, I didn’t know that Presbyterians are the theological inheritors of Calvin’s notion of Predestination… the idea that God had pre-destined some to salvation, and others to damnation.    So, even though I didn’t agree with this doctrine, for me to just blurt out how stupid it sounded was not very respectful of his belief – and even if this wasn’t his personal belief, it certainly was the belief of his tradition.    He responded very curtly, explaining that Calvin came up with this belief because he (Calvin) saw enough evidence of this idea of pre-determinism in the biblical witness that he just couldn’t ignore it.   And you know what… it’s true, it is there.   

When Moses is called by God to convince the Pharaoh to let his people go, the text says God had already “hardened his [Pharaoh’s] heart”… meaning, it really didn’t matter what Moses could have said to Pharaoh to convince him to let the Israelites go, the Pharaoh would not have released the people anyway!    Pharaoh’s actions were, well… pre-determined.  The game was rigged from the get-go.       

Paul seems to have had a notion of “the elect” as elect because God made them that way…  Romans chapter 8, verses 28 to 30:  “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord, to those who are called according to his purpose.  For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.   Furthermore, whoever he predestined, he also called; who he called, he also justified; and who he justified, he also glorified.”     Sounds like God made them that way.   Rigged again.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says when the son of man returns, he “will gather the elect”.    Possibly meaning those who are already chosen.    The word “elect” is used more than a few times in biblical texts.   Calvin took these to mean those that are pre-chosen.    Predestined.     And what about the whole Jesus thing?   The Gospel of John makes it pretty clear who Jesus was… from the beginning of time, from before he was born here on earth as a human being.     And he came to earth to fulfill a pre-determined role assigned to him by God the Father, and that was to live and die as he did…. to fulfill God’s mission for him, to include his violent death.     So there’s this whole idea of predetermined destiny.

Have you ever gone to Vegas to gamble?   Remember this, the house always wins!        

Call it the deeper meanings of life… call it destiny…   one’s life mission, life-purpose….    not sure what to call it…    I’ve been bumping up against this recently.   And where does God fit into this?  

And yet I still believe in free will.   When Adam and Eve were there in the Garden of Eden… frolicking about, eating only the permissible fruit and what-not… did they really worship God?     Well, they were “worshipping”, sure.   I mean, they didn’t “worship” like how we do here in America in the 21^st century.    But as the story goes, they were there in the presence of God all the time – I have to believe that was in some form “worship”.     But the question is, was it genuine?    A case could be made that no it was not genuine, since they really didn’t know they had the choice not to worship God.  

It’s like in the old days when children went to church with their parents.   They went because that’s what their families did together.    Did the kids really worship?    I’m sure some did indeed.   But imagine later on, when the kids grew up and had the choice not to go, but went anyway… I have to believe a freely chosen act is worth more than one imposed on you, no matter how impactful it might be.     

John the Baptist is another example of a pre-destined life.    A whole slew of predictions of his importance, of his role in their world, presaged his actual birth.    While serving is obligation in the temple, his father Zechariah is visited by an angel saying he would have a son, a special son… to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus.  Now, Zechariah was old, and he says as much to the angel… which connects this to the Abraham story where Abraham, after being told he would be the father of a great nation, questions God since he and his wife were beyond child bearing ages.    So the angel assured Zechariah he would indeed have this child as a son, but since he doubted, he would be mute until his son was born.    His tongue is released once he announces through writing that his sons name would be John.     

His name is John!   And his mission is already clear!   His mission has been written in the cosmos!      

This kind of predicted clarity of purpose appears in many stories of mythic characters across all cultures and time.   Would that it applied to us normal people.     Or does it?    A quote attributed to Mark Twain:   “The two most important days in your life are the day you’re born, and the day you find out why.”

Why are we here?   We assume there’s a purpose to all this, but maybe not.   Here’s an excerpt of the speech actor Alan Alda gave at his daughter’s college graduation in 1980: 

“Let me go back to when I was in college. There were words that had power for me then - maybe they will for you now. I had forgotten how much this idea meant to me - how much I wrote about it and thought about it. It was the essence of a philosophy that was very popular at the time and it's one of the most helpful and cheerful ideas I've ever heard.

It's this: Life is absurd and meaningless and full of nothingness. Possibly this doesn't strike you as helpful and cheerful, but I think it is, because it's honest and because it goads you on.

I had a teacher in those days who saw me with a book by Jean Paul Sartre under my arm and he said to me, "Be careful, if you read too much of that you'll start walking around dressed in black, looking wan, doing nothing for the rest of your life." Well, I read the book anyway and as it turned out, I'm tanned and lovely, I'm rich and productive and I'm happy like nobody's business.

Maybe it was my natural optimism at work, but what I saw and warmed to in the existentialist writings was that life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; that it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.

I was very taken at the time by a Catholic existentialist called Gabriel Marcel who spoke about fidelity as essential to existence. Fidelity had a special meaning for him - it meant presence - being there with the people around you. None of this seemed dour to me. Existentialism was supposed to be the philosophy of despair. But not to me - because it faced the cold hard stone you hit when you touch rock bottom and I saw in it a way to bound back up again. No matter how loving or loved we are, it eventually occurs to most of us - that deep, deep down inside there, we're all alone. I'm not telling you this to depress you or to turn your eyes away from the soft flutter of blossoms on a day in spring. But I know that winter's coming and when the moment comes for you to wrestle with that cold loneliness which is every person's private monster, I want you to face the damn thing. I want you to see it for what it is and win.”

One has to wonder… if life is so full of purpose, and there is inherent meaning in our existences, then how could such a philosophy as existentialism bubble up in the first place?    If life does have inherent meaning – as many of us belief – then how come Alda brings up the idea that deep down, in those honest quiet moments, we all seem to recognize we’re really all alone?    Is life really that meaningless, and are we all really that alone?    Plus, it begs the question, if Alan Alda had never been exposed to such writings as Existentialism, then would he have ended up just as happy?     

Indeed two very different views of life and its meaning; The mythic character and story – heard throughout the world – of John the Baptist and others… for whom the creation witnessed to these personages deep and cosmically important purposes.   Contrast that with Alda’s and the existentialist’s view of life’s essential meaninglessness, and our deep and pervasive aloneness.   

“Yes, but you just said the former is example is ‘mythic’”.   True but “mythic” doesn’t equal “made-up” at best or “lies” at worst.  Even though many use the word “Myth” in this way – I use it in the classical sense…“Mythic” speaks to the deeper and ancient part of what it means to be human.  Mythic stories are mythic because they can stand the test  of time… because they touch on what we humans through time are really like, what we humans hold as valuable, as cosmically (or intrinsically) important to our souls – irrespective of culture or religion.        

Andy and I met in Santiago, Chile.   He was my 8^th grade Social Studies teacher.  Over the years, Andy and my parents became friends, and he came over to the house on a number of occasions for dinners and lunches on the weekends, etc.   And he became a friend of mine too.   We eventually left Chile, and life moved on for us all.  But on occasions I would look for Andy to re-connect and catch-up again.   The last time I saw him was in 2006, when I went to stay with him and his wife and kids for a few nights.   

We spent that first night together in his living room catching up, two adults now, talking about life and our life experiences.   Since we’d left Chile, he filled some gaps in his personal time-line.   After leaving Chile, in the early to mid 1980’s, he moved to become a teacher in San Salvador, El Salvador.  This was during the Salvadoran civil war, and just after the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero – who spoke out very strongly against government injustice and oppression of the poor.   people were dying; poor people, who had little to no voice in government.  At the time the official US government position was in support of the Salvadoran government.    

Safely ensconced in the “safer” area, with the other American teachers, he would read the underground reports of the abuse and violence perpetrated on the populace outside the bigger cities.    He would hear the stories.   And he felt he had to do something.  Now to be fair, Andy certainly had socialist and revolutionary tendencies.  In this context, Andy said, he had a chance to meet some of the rebel leaders.  Over time the leaders and Andy led to mutual trust and friendship.  If I understood correctly, they ultimately invited him to stay with them in El Salvador to join in the struggle against government oppression. I’m not sure if “joining” meant taking up arms, but for sure it meant being part of the political struggle. 

Turns out his heart was most definitely there with the struggle!   As this request grew on him, as this seed took hold of his spirit, he knew more and more this was indeed the right thing to do.   In spite of that, the other side of the ledger had its own tally; “You’re American, you need to return home; you’re a school teacher in an International School in San Salvador; why are you making this your fight?   So reluctantly, he told them no, he would not join them.    

And there in his living room, many years after the fact, he relived this regret.  And he told me, “if there’s a hell, I’ll be in it.”   He had had a chance to really put his ideals on the line… he’d had a chance to follow his for-real life path (or so he believed at the time) and he turned from that path.    Now, he wasn’t a bad man at all –– in fact, he was a highly ethical, moral, and honorable man.    He feel he was going to hell for not having fulfilled and lived out his true calling, his destiny, his purpose – a purpose he saw more and more clearly in retrospect.    

Andy died in 2008 of a heart attack while he was out winter camping with his son’s Boy Scout Troop.  I would love to believe he is not in the hell of his own making, that he has ultimately – over time – chosen the path of Light in the next world. 

I have thought about him often; his idea of destiny lived-out, of uncovering and living a life of meaning.  Not of being forced towards that destiny, like a guard pushing a shackled prisoner into a cell –- but of the puzzle pieces of life falling into place.  Destiny… as an ultimate fulfillment of our greater meaning.   

But I’ve also experienced and seen the positive side of Alan Alda’s existentialism too!   Not a life void of any meaning, but of life seen as a clean canvas, open and ready to be painted on with the colors of the choices of our existence… free to do this every day.    Although I know some people who knew what they wanted to do with their lives from early childhood -- who could see their path of meaning and purpose clearly from the beginning, I know more people who either discerned deeper meaning in life after many years of living and learning, or who never became aware of their life’s destiny at all, and instead lived life with as much meaning and purpose as they could muster.       

I’m not sure if life is pre-ordained or not, whether we each have a destiny that is supposed to be lived out.   But I want to believe life has a deeper meaning to it.    And yet, I do believe in free-will… free like a painter paining on a blank canvas.    Maybe it’s a little of both.          

But still… I have to believe the mythic stories are mythic for a reason.   They ring true in our inner most parts.     Two mythic stories:   

The story is still told today of a child born around 2,500 years ago, to a very powerful ruler of a very powerful kingdom.  This was the ruler’s first child – a son.  When this child was born, the ruler celebrated for days.   As was the custom for those in positions of authority, the king took his newly born son to a spiritual leader for a blessing.  In the midst of one such celebration, the spiritual leader received the child, and surrounded by well-wishers, family and court attendants, he said something very profound, disturbing and encouraging at the same time.  “This child will grow to be either one or the other:  He will be a strong king and general!  But if the suffering of the world touches him… he will be its savior.” 

The king forbade any semblance of pain, sorrow, or death in his courts and palace grounds while the boy was growing up.  And the boy did grow, in strength and wisdom.  But he lacked any experience with suffering.  He also lacked any experience with the world outside the palace grounds.  His curiosity of what lay on the other side of the walls grew and grew until one day, as a young man, he escaped the grounds and wandered in the capital city for days. 

What he saw broke his heart.  Certainly he’d seen some of this before… people walking around, going about their lives.  This was not new.  But he’d never seen beggars; old people and children begging for food.  He had never seen homeless people living where-ever they could find to shelter themselves from the rain, or the hot sun.  He saw a funeral for the first time- the body was being cremated, while the family and friends of the deceased cried in sorrow.   His heart broke!  Such suffering in this world- he thought.   How can I help these people, this world? 

He returned to the palace grounds a change man.  He was so profoundly struck by this that he deeply felt called to do something to help the people of his father’s kingdom.   There was a deep disquietude in him, a deep turmoil.  His mind and heart were not at peace.  In fact he realized they never had been at peace, but he hadn’t known that until now.  He needed to find peace, a peace he could not find in the palace.  There came a day where he decided he should follow this path, not knowing even where it would lead.  He expressed his love to his family, bade them farewell, and left his father’s palace behind forever. 

He wandered in the woods for years, living off the grace of others as he begged for food, learning the deeper methods of meditation known at the time.  He practiced very harsh ascetic exercises, including long periods of fasting, and meditated for hours, even days at a time.   But these harsh practices did not bring peace to him.  One day he had a sudden realization that it was balance that would bring him this peace he sought.  So he began to eat, but not over-do it.  He began to sleep, but not be lazy.  He meditated to the point that seemed right, but not beyond.   It was the balance of joining the pain of the world, but not being overcome by it.  The balance of alleviating the suffering in the world, but not being crushed by the burden of it.  And one day, he found the peace he had been seeking.   As the story goes, under the Bodhi tree Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha.  It was there he learned that suffering can teach compassion for all beings, and this brings the desire to alleviate suffering, to lift people and souls from the long and tedious cycles of birth and re-birth and find the ultimate rest every souls longs for.      

It was here he found that entering into the world of suffering, for the sake of its alleviation, can bring the best in us out.  And he began to teach these practices.  It was said that after his death he forsook nirvana in order to continue teaching the path of enlightenment for the alleviation of suffering for all sentient beings. 

Why is this story told still after 2,500 years?   Why does it still ring true?    Because the irony is, we have to carry a cross in order to notice its weight, not only for ourselves, but for others.  It’s only in carrying a cross that we know what carrying a cross can do!   It’s in experiencing some of the hardships of life that we can learn compassion and grace for those who are also carrying crosses.   

I remember the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance”.  It came out back in the late ‘90’s I think.    I’d gone to the theater to watch a whole other movie, but either I missed the time, or it was sold out.   So I had to pick another movie.   I remember looking up at the list of movies above the head of the ticket window person.   “One for Bagger Vance then” I said.   Even though it had already started, it had only been by a few minutes, so I wasn’t too late.   The movie was about a WWI veteran from the south that ends up using golf as a way to find meaning and purpose again after the war.    Bagger Vance is the “mystical” wise-person who comes into the main characters life at the very rightest time.   The whole movie is a keeper!

And there’s a line there that really struck me:    “Inside each and every one of us is our one true authentic swing… somethin’ we was born with… somethin’ that’s ours and ours alone.  Somethin’ that can’t be taught to you… or learned…  Somethin’ that’s got to be remembered.  Over time the world can rob us of that swing – it gets buried inside us under all our wouldas and couldas and shouldas.    Some folk even forget what their swing was like.”

I’m a person of faith.   I believe there is a God, and that God is real and alive.   And that – yes there is something deeper than us.   And this God calls us to live a life of faith – and live out our faith – in the real world, in a real way.   And that there’s more to life than just us, and our whims and selfish desires.   And the fact that we have whims and selfish desires means we have choice.   We have choices all along the way. 

But I also can’t shake the idea that sometimes…  in those rare moments when the planets are lined up, and the veil that separates the world of matter and the world of Spirit thins out just a little… we see a little more clearly that there is something deeper, something holier, some grander intelligence.  And we see a hand that guides, that encourages, that cajoles maybe… and the wiser part of us already knows the answer.