My daughter asked me a question this week that was extremely thought provoking and thoughtful. She asked, “if God is truly infinite and all-knowing, firstly, how do we as humans have freedom of choice? Secondly, and let’s assume we can answer question one— if we are a sum of our experiences, surroundings, and external influences, how then do we even have choice? Aren’t we destined to behave in the manner in which we were educated?”

Firstly, I was honored that she brought that question to me, and more importantly, I love that I raised a child willing to challenge the very core of her beliefs without the need to specifically change anything.

So, I ask you, my readers, to please offer your opinion here. What are your answers to these truly poignant questions?

My thoughts regarding question number one are, we as humans operate in time; we have a twenty-four-hour clock, therefore we can’t see the future, only our experiences of the past. God is above time, so for God, everything is happening at the same time, which gives us as humans the ability to make a choice in time.

Question number two is a little more difficult for me. My thought is: we are made up of our soul, which isn’t affected by our experiences, and then we have our ego, which is completely affected by our experiences. I believe that is the challenge in life; do we pay attention to ego, do we allow ourselves to be only shaped by our experiences, or do we listen to our soul which transcends experience? This is ultimately where choice happens. In simpler terms, we don’t have a choice of what happens to us; we have a choice in how we respond, how we repair, how we recover, and ultimately how we grow. We all make mistakes and we all occasionally fail, the question is, do we learn from the failures or do we repeat them?

This week, let’s take a walk in nature, and ask ourselves gently, if we didn’t care what the world thought of us, what would be our choices?

Accountability, Community, Unconditional Love

Asher

I want to remind all of you that you can hear more on my podcast, Showing Up. We have lots of amazing shows with interesting guests on a variety of personal development topics. It would be great if you could also rate 5 stars, review and subscribe to the show. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/showing-up-with-asher-gottesman/id1489856285y

Posted in Thought of the Week