Exploring the Mystery of Omnipresence and Free Will
Dear K,
I wanted to chat with you about a really interesting concept that I learned about a while ago and have been thinking about ever since. It’s about ‘omnipresence,’ which is a big word that means being present everywhere at the same time. It’s often used to describe God in many religions, suggesting that God is everywhere, all the time.
But here’s where it gets tricky and really makes you think. If God is omnipresent and knows everything (that’s another big word, ‘omniscient’), then God knows what we’re going to do even before we do it. Now, think about it. If everything we’re going to do is already known, then are we really choosing to do things on our own? This is where some people see a contradiction.
Some argue that if God knows everything we’ll do, it might mean that our lives are kind of like a story that’s already written, and we’re just acting it out. This idea challenges the concept of ‘free will,’ which is about making our own choices. If our choices are already known, then it seems like they’re not really our choices.
How can we be punished for choices we didn’t really make? Most religions also talk about afterlife and judgement for your actions but God.
There is different ways to look at it. Some people say that even though God knows what we’ll do, we still make our own choices. It’s like watching a movie for the second time; you know what will happen, but the characters in the movie are still making their own choices.
This debate has been around for a long time, and smart people have been trying to figure it out for centuries. It’s okay if it feels a bit confusing — it is for most people, including me. The important thing is to ask questions and think about these big ideas. That’s how we learn and grow, by wondering about the world around us and all its mysteries.
With love,
Papa K
If you made it this far, would love to know when did you first think about this contradiction between free will and the definition of God? When and how do you talk to your kids about religion and the idea of God?
