The Olympic Dream
In my dream, there were Olympic type events being held. The character I was watching was participating in one event and only planned on doing that one event. Yet after her event she looked over to see her arch nemesis had just finished her event and realized that in this competition, if she didn't do all of the events, she would be disqualified from everything and even though she had done very well in the event she had just completed, she would lose everything if she didn't get over to the other venue and compete.
So she went over and tried her best at the new event, basically just trying to complete it. When she completed, her arch nemesis gave her a wicked smile thinking she was going to lose it all because she wasn't prepared. But the competitor continued on, doing her best in event after event in the total competition.
When it was apparent that the arch nemesis might not win, she started shooting darts at the competing team and coaching staff trying to put them to sleep so they would miss events, but the other team kept on, helping their stumbling team mates who had been shot to make it through their event somehow. Eventually when the coach was shot, he was able to hold up the dart to show everyone that there were nefarious acts going on before he too succumbed and fell down to the sleeping potion.
Thoughts About The Dream
I give you this dream to say this. We're all in an event that affects us and the world around us. Many don't know they are participating. Many think they are doing one event really well, but don't realize that they are also in other events that are just as important that they participate in to win. The enemy isn't fighting fair. He's trying to put those on the winning team to sleep so that they can't participate or don't want to participate in the event. Why does the enemy frequently seem to get the upper hand? Why doesn't everyone see his work and the difference between the world the enemy wants and the world God wants? What do we think about the state of the arena?
Many are mad at God who they don't think is making good decisions because of the state of the world today. The state of the arena is His fault and the events shouldn't be as difficult as they are.
The free will that He gave us is seen as a bad thing, that should have had at least some limits put on as to how bad a decisions our free will could make. The events wouldn't be as hard and the arena would somehow be in better shape if there were limits on the ways people could negatively impact one or all. After all, the Olympics have rules. It's hard to argue that there are just some things that are happening in the world today and in the past that we all wish could have been limited from happening.
But that isn't the world we live in. Those aren't the conditions we have. Keep in mind that most of the really good things that people do in the world don't get recorded in history. But even so, there are always some in every generation who make a difference for good.
Even on the good team, there are some who make mistakes, intentionally or otherwise, that hurt the reputation of the good team as a whole. To continue the Olympics analogy, there are those who cheat or take performance enhancing drugs to try to win at any cost, not seeing the cost to themselves or the rest of the team when they are caught.
About That Free Will
But free will is just that. It is free. If it had limits, it wouldn't really be free, would it.
We won't know until we get to heaven why God decided to set things up the way He did. For all we know, there are millions of other civilizations He set up throughout this universe that He is also monitoring and interacting with and we are only one test run. Perhaps He even has billions of parallel universes with an Earth like ours where every possible scenario where a person's choice to do good or evil at a particular crucial place in human history is examined. One parallel universe plays out with the good choice made and one universe plays out with the evil choice taken. We just don't know and won't know until we get to heaven (and might not even know then).
Whether we like the scenario we are in or not, it is the scenario we have and we don't get to change the game play rules and regulations in it at all. The struggle between a good God and the angel who has wanted to usurp His throne, Lucifer or Satan as he is known, is our scenario. It's our reality. We don't get to pick a different one. We must live out this one.
Adam and Eve - The First Big Free Will Decision
The garden of Eden presented Adam and Eve who had free will with a good/evil choice that they had to make regarding whether or not to break God's commandment about eating the apple. Whether the fruit itself provided something that opened their eyes, or whether the fact that they broke God's command opened their eyes, we don't know.
We do know that God's adversary made the fruit to appear to give them much more than it was (you will be as gods Genesis 3:4-5), that they listened to him, and they broke God's law. All the goodness they had which had existed for how ever many years they lived before they decided to break His command was stripped away, and they moved on to the next event. Just like the Olympics. The human race has been playing out in event after event since.
But here's the thing. God is good. His hope was for man to continually choose right over wrong, obedience over disobedience. It was mankind's choice to take the fork in the path they chose. It is true that they didn't have any idea what taking that path would end up looking like for humanity. They didn't know all of the suffering that was to come. But God had made clear that death for them was going to be the result of making the bad choice. If that outcome wasn't enough to set them straight, then it's certain that seeing the future for humanity probably wouldn't have either.
Lucifer / Satan will never reveal those sorts of details about what taking the wrong path will bring any time he shows us a new fork in our road. Satan just wants all of mankind destroyed to join his eventual fate. God makes clear what not choosing to accept Jesus as Savior will bring as an eternal result. He hasn't hidden anything.
While Adam and Eve's death wasn't immediate, they were cut off from the garden of Eden and the tree of life. While it isn't clear what that tree was, even in the millennial period God will supply life giving trees to heal disease during the period. So by being cut off from that tree, they ended the dispensation of innocence. The Bible doesn't let us know how long that lasted. But without access to the life giving tree in the garden, they did end up dying a death God hadn't wanted them to suffer, along with being cut off from the immediacy of His presence.
After the death of Christ, God poured out the Holy Spirit to give us that sense of His presence again. In some ways it's better than what Adam and Eve had, because He could potentially spend time with every one of the billions of people through the Spirit where He could only interact with Adam and Even when He came to visit. But the path they chose still wasn't His plan for humanity.
Forks in Human History
Has God stepped in and checked the evil in a heavy handed way at times? Sure. But that evil that He was forced to intervene with was there because some angel or group of angels, human or group of humans made the free will decision to begin down a path that would eventually lead to a place where God needed to intervene. It wasn't God's will that they take that course or make those free will choices.
At Noah's flood, a group of Satan aligned angels had decided to take human wives and have offspring with the women in the area, hoping to pollute the blood line from Adam to Christ. Noah wasn't chosen to be saved because he was necessarily the most upright human, but because his bloodline was perfect in his generations (Genesis 6:1-9). So God eliminated those who had intermixed. I'm not of the opinion that this affected the entire world - just those in the chosen path from Adam to Christ in the area in which the fallen angels were active. It allowed those a reset. If you prefer to think it was a planetary event, I won't argue. But I think it was local - probably the filling of the Black Sea.
If the dating doesn't line up with where you think that should be, remember that it is possible that the way people describe genealogies in that area today might have also been true when the Bible was recorded. In the Middle East today, someone may be described as the son or daughter of a particular person who was of note, skipping several intervening generations of people who didn't make the cut. If similar gaps occurred in recording the early genealogy, it is hard to say just how far back Adam and Eve really lived. It doesn't affect the bloodlines from Adam to Christ.
Was the destruction of the tribes that occupied Canaan before the Israelites something God should have done? Well, He kept the Israelites in Egypt, even in slavery, for an extended period of time giving the Canaanites a chance to change, but after the allotted time, they did not and they were purged. Their religions practiced infanticide, to say nothing of worshiping gods propagated by God's enemy Lucifer. From Adam on, they should have all known better, just as we should have. They made the free will decision to follow the enemy, doing equally horrific things to those some condemn the Israelites for.
What About Us?
We may not like the Olympic games that we are in. It may be filled with events that are no fun to complete or maybe are horrible to endure. For some, maybe the events are remarkably easy and they go through in their appointed time with no muss or fuss. One thing is certain. We are all faced with choices every day to do the good and right thing or do the bad and wrong thing.
So too is every part of human history. There is a path that could have been more beautiful and a path that has more weeds and where the ground takes much work to bring forth a crop. For each individual, maybe the future of humanity doesn't look much different based on the choices that we make. But for some pivotal people the future for humanity diverges drastically based on their choices.
Maybe the effect is just for an area. Maybe the effect is world wide. God still tries to prompt us to take the good path at every cross-road in our life. Maybe that good path is just a good path for you. Maybe it is a good path for humanity as a whole. Maybe it isn't a particularly pleasant path for you, but ends up being a good path for those you love or for humanity as a whole. That's what the Holy Spirit is trying to do every moment of our lives. We just need to listen.
And it is important to realize that the Holy Spirit is trying to affect the good and bad decisions of everyone and not just Christians. A good decision isn't based on whether or not you are saved. It may be more likely that the unsaved will ignore the Holy Spirit's prompting. But even for sinners, the Holy Spirit is trying to work to make the best path forward for everyone and for them to choose Jesus as the best ultimate path for them.
What About God?
Was the presence of the fruit in the garden all part of some contest between Lucifer / Satan and God? Maybe it was. Maybe we're all in some game between powers that are so far beyond us that we can't even imagine them. Consider Job 1-2. But even if that is true, it is the essence of our reality.
It was never God's plan that mankind take the fork in the road that Adam and Eve did. Yes, He can probably predict all the results of all of the possible free will choices that His creation could have made. Just because we are living out the path that Adam and Eve made for us doesn't mean that there weren't many more beautiful paths that could have unfolded if Adam and Eve had chosen differently.
It is impossible to truly understand the totality of God. He is unfathomable to our minds. But when trying to do so, remember this important thing. Jesus Christ put aside His divinity, came down from heaven, was born of Mary being fully human, and played out His event perfectly. He got the gold medal by completing His course to the very difficult end.
If you think your path is hard, remember the path of Jesus. A lot of His path didn't seem difficult, yet He had people trying to kill Him many times during His ministry, and they finally succeeded with the help of Rome. He forecast that end to Nicodemus at the very start of His ministry, so He knew what would happen from that point in time if not from earlier (John 3:1-21). Remember He was demonstrating His knowledge of the scriptures from an early age (Luke 2:42-49).
When asked about the nature of God, Jesus was able to say that if we wanted to know what God was like, just look at His own life (John 14:9-21). If you read the gospels, it is clear that by looking at Jesus' life, God ultimately wants good for His creation. He is full of love and compassion toward those who come to Him. He had a contingency plan, right from the fall of mankind, to bring mankind back to a right relationship with Him. He is good. We need to live our lives so that people can know the nature of God by looking at us as well.
God's arch enemy has thrown everything He can at the team that is going to win. He's put false gods in their minds. He's started false religions. He's brought pain and suffering on individual and global levels because he is trying to win. But the Bible declares that in the end, Satan's team loses. God's team wins.
Whether or not you think the Olympics are fair -- whether or not you like to compete -- whether or not you are tired of the competition -- whether or not you think the whole planet in this instance of Earth (at least if you believe in parallel universes) should have been set up under different constraints than it is, this Earth is the one we have. The battle between Lucifer and God is going on all around us.
We may not like it, but it is still the world we must participate in. Don't forget that God is doing His part all around us to make our world a better place. You may not hear of the gifts and fruit of the Spirit at work in the blackness painting by the news, but God is still active. If you attend church and join with other Christians, you'll be more likely to hear about what He is doing in people's lives today.
Someday, there will be a medal ceremony for each of us (1 Corinthians 3:11-15) and a closing ceremony for mankind as a whole where every knee shall bow to Christ (Isaiah 45:23; Romans 14:11; Revelation 20). Be sure you're on the winning team.