“God as Author” Falls Apart… On Free Will, Evil, and the Story We Co-Write with God

[0:00] let me tell you a story a man's listening to a sermon one day and then he hears God is the author of your life he thinks to himself oh that's so comforting until of course tragedy strengths he gets into a brutal argument with his wife who then resolves to draft up the divorce papers finally and they finally get the test results back from the doctor in the mail saying their daughter has cancer naturally it begs the question if God wrote this why does it hurt so much why did God seem to write my sin and then why did he seem to write my innocent daughter suffering it genuinely does get worse if God writes every chapter of your life are you really free does he write the mistakes that you make does he write all of the suffering that you endure all of it that view of God as author raises questions and for many of us doubts the truth is that if you're nothing more than a

[0:47] three-dimensional character in some Grand novel then well the author controls every thought every action and every choice that you make your life feels purposeful but is it really your life now let's imagine a difference scenario you are part of an epic and collaborative story where your Dynamic choices and those of all the people around you actually matter for shaping the plot actions have consequences decisions need to be made in the moment and sometimes you make the wrong one and as a result the plot and the narrative goes in a very different direction so what if we've been using the wrong analogy all along what if God isn't an author pulling the strings and writing out exactly what his characters do what if he's more like a dungeon master guiding and resp responding and creating alongside us as he invites us into a collaborative story where we get to

[1:36] shape the outcome stick with me because this idea will reshape how you see your life and your relationship with God and it may set you free of some of the faulty thinking that leads to us writing out the author analogy let's Jump Right In to get us a little bit further along into the author analogy I actually wanted to bring up one of its own proponents to talk about it a bit this was a debate between Steve Greg who is on my personal theological Mount Rushmore and I'll make a video about him eventually and Doug Wilson now Doug Wilson is a really well-known sort of a reformed calvinist pastor and this was a debate that took place decades ago now at this point the whole thing is quite interesting I recommend it highly but what I've done is I've actually queued up Doug Wilson's part in this debate to talk about his opening argument so let's see what he has to say God who uh governs all things and in whom we live

[2:23] and move and have our being and of course we're talking about what exactly that means what is involved in that when we say we live and move and have our being in him this first debate is on the sovereignty of God and of course every Christian says well how can Christians debate the sovereignty of God well what we're debating is the definition of the word sovereignty not I have to pause him there exactly right so often in Christian discussion and circles we have sort of the same vocabulary but a very different dictionary when the concept of sovereignty comes up in any other context what you find is that the definition is really going to be more something like the ability to govern and Rule as one pleases or the highest authority to which one can appeal so for example a king who is Sovereign over his nation has the right to decide what the laws and rules are for his kingdom as well as the punishments and rewards for those who obey and disobey the laws of

[3:12] that Kingdom it's well within his rights as the ruler as the king of that Kingdom in the same way that God as king of kings and Lord of lords has the right to call all other wouldbe rulers and powers and authorities to account to his will and his way and his rules in neither case do you have a puppet Master micromanaging every tiny decision made by the other people in fact a king has citizens who are propagate who are disobedient who go against his will as the king and what he wants to be the decree which is why there are punishments in place similarly God has Kings under him and then all the human beings in the entire world who disobey his will all the time that's apparently a controversial thing for me to say but that's just the meaning of the word sovereignty I'm going to let Doug continue the reality of sovereignty both u i and my opponent would agree that God

[3:59] is sovereign over all things but where we differ is what is entailed in that sovereignty in order to make clear what I'm arguing for I want to maintain what I call the exhaustive sovereignty of God that is God is Sovereign at the macro level God is Sovereign at the micro level nothing happens outside of his all determining decree and this decree does not create a fatalistic machine that grinds us up like so much hamburger this decree creates freedom for us okay you're going to have to forgive me for that one cuz that's that's a Humdinger I'm not proud of the faces I was just making but I'm going to let him finish more Shakespeare writes the more Sovereign he is and the Freer HL gets Hamlet has freedom because Shakespeare wres Hamlet is freedom is not displaced by Shakespeare's Freedom it is created by shakes Freedom so I want to I want to argue for the exhaustive sovereignty of God okay I think that's enough I'm going to have to come back and see if I can figure out what Doug is saying here because that didn't really make sense the more Shakespeare writes the more

[4:47] Hamlet is free to speak that still doesn't quite sound right let's give it another shot the more the Puppeteer moves his hands the more free the puppet is to dance ah it still doesn't feel right hold on the more the gunman threatens and coerces is the cashier at gunpoint the more free the cashier is to start shoveling the money into the bag what nah I don't think I'm getting this Freedom thing the way Doug Wilson talks about it regardless the ultimate problem here is that God being the author makes God the author of everything including evil you can't call being determined to do something being free to do it that would be like saying a dog getting dragged by its leash behind a driving car is free to resist the car it's not there are other problems that arise now that I'm thinking about it such as the character of God is also written into the story as a character for the people to interact with but then the way that

[5:34] the god in the story acts is different from the way that the god the author is writing things the god in the story seems to be really upset when people disobey him then the God who is writing the story is making the people disobey him and then the people who are interacting with the god in the story think they're interacting with the god who's writing the thing and it kind of ends up feeling like you have two Gods yeah I'm really not a fan of this author idea so when I mentioned dungeon master earlier maybe some of you were kind of freaked out cuz you're not into D andd you think it's the stuff of demons hit pause I understand I grew up in a sort of a Moral Majority sort of a household where it was very frowned upon to do anything with d andd it was right in the middle of the satanic Panic D and D is basically at its base interactive Lord of the Rings or interactive Chronicles of Narnia with maybe a little bit more scary monsters but it's just swords and sorcery fantasy the same kind that

[6:21] Christians have been enjoying for decades now but it's really the kind of story that you want to tell makes the difference in what dd feels like some people sure want to go in the direction of some really creepy stuff with it most people just want to have a cool heroic fantasy that feels like Lord of the Rings you're casting spells you got swords you're doing stuff to make a story happen and every person who plays DD there's people who play it as players meaning they have a player character that they control and they have responsibility over and then there's a special person at the table who's called the dungeon master the dungeon master handles everything else the dungeon master sets up the rules of the world and what the logic is and how does the magic system system work and how do we decide what rules govern which things and are we going to keep track of this or are we going to ignore that part of the game because it kind of slows it down and it makes it not fun the dungeon

[7:08] master controls all of the bad guys all of the other good guys in the world he makes decisions about what's happening in the rest of the world while the players are doing their thing he writes cool dialogue for the characters that are not played by the player characters and so you get 99% of the same stuff that you get from the author analogy but the players have freedom so let's imagine God is a dungeon master in some Grand Cosmic Adventure he sets the stage he introduces challenges and he works dynamically with the players at his table as the story unfolds and wonder of Wonders that's exactly what you see on the pages of scripture he sets the moral laws he offers roles for us to play he sustains the universe itself every second he responds dynamically to our choices in real time it's all over the scriptures God changes his plans he

[7:56] relents and he partners with Humanity he's not just writing your life for you he's inviting you into a cosmic story and the question is how are you going to respond did you know that the Bible says that God changes his plans it's possible that you are new to my channel and you don't know kind of what I am known for talking about but just think back to the Book of Jonah in Jonah God spares Nineveh after they repent it's a response to their choices in Exodus he relents from judgment after Moses intercedes and in fact there's this whole back and forth planning session where they have to talk through the plan that they're going to put into place and follow through when Moses is going to go and talk to pharaoh and broker a deal to get the people freed eventually Aaron gets roped in on this thing too and then the whole plan goes differently that's not an author following a rigid script it's a god a dynamic being who is relational to his creation and who is

[8:45] responding in the moment to changing circumstances think about it if your prayers and your actions can in any way get God's attention influence him in any way you're not dealing with an author who somehow wrote you to affect him no you're dealing with with a real being in a real Adventure in a real world where choices have real consequences doesn't that make life more meaningful God's not just the author of your life he's the dungeon master inviting you to co-create a story with him and your choices matter and the stakes are real as he guides a story the direction he wants it to go now I planning on doing more videos on things like this but I wanted to Simply introduce this idea because I think that it has all of the strengths that someone wants from the author analogy with two key things that keep the author analogy from accurately reflecting the biblical record and the dungeon master analogy

[9:33] solves these two things in such a way that I think it's my new favorite way of describing in a nutshell God's relationship to his creation and that's what we do with free will good and bad and then of course following along after that what we do with evil now I've spent a few years being a dungeon master for a local group of people that are all believers who love the Lord and are interested in playing a fun game together in fact I've gotten more of what the Bible calls the church EXP experience from this group of people sharing love enjoying relationship with one another bearing one another's burdens serving one another through a meal and then enjoying this awesome experience that we all give gratitude to God for in our D and D nights than I often have from church services but that's an entirely different discussion the point is that I've been the DM I know what it's like to sit behind the game table and keep all these things juggling and my finite memory my finite

[10:21] mind has a hard time handling this but if God is infinitely intelligent and infinitely wise this is not something that spreads him thin at all his table so to speak could be filled with all kinds of players humans and Spiritual Beings and all sorts of other forces at work in the world that God is managing that God is directing and I have seen my own players at my table do some really wonderful amazing heroic Noble good things that led the story in a really beautiful Direction and some of my players have chosen some really boneheaded things and maybe even some morally questionable things because it's what their character would do anybody that's played D andd knows what I'm talking about on the one hand I have a player who's gone off in his wizard character and he nobly sacrifices himself by taking the attention of all of the monsters on himself so that the

[11:09] team could Escape when they were in their darest moment of need Noble good right beautiful then boneheaded things happened another character pulls a lever that he thought was going to open the door but actually it opened a choot that dropped all the players down into a lava pit and then a third character threatened another person in the world with violence to try to get something that the team needed rather than doing the more diplomatic route because he was in a rush interestingly all three of those characters are played by the same player fascinating character study but there we have it Noble acts of sacrifice boneheaded mistakes that don't go the way that we thought and then even things that are some morally questionable so notice that evil comes from the choices of the players not from the DM's design but the DM has a plan to be able to redeem the mess when they got down into the lava pool again it's a game this is not realistic there was another

[11:57] character nearby who had some ice abilities that could cause the the lava to freeze over or to cool into a rock pad before the people got down to the bottom of the choot in the same way the Bible shows God taking our broken choices even our foolish choices and weaving them into something beautiful and I mean that's the kind of story that I want to be a part of I certainly don't want to be made to do something stupid and if I do something stupid I don't want God to get the blame for it that was on me but I still want the assurance that God has the wisdom and the power and the ability to turn even my foolishness into to something Redemptive and beautiful and so my Free Will and even the evil choices that I and others make are contextualized but also the dungeon master if he has someone really evil at his table we call them in dungeon in Dungeons and Dragons we call them things like murder hobo it's a

[12:44] whole cultural thing sorry that's the kind of player who rather than talking just runs around with swords out slashing and killing people randomly I don't have any of those at my table but again if you have a game table where that sort of decision- making is possible then every once in a while you get decision- making like that and if that's the kind of action that people take at the table guess what DM does not long tolerate that I as a dungeon master if I had a player like that at my table would either kick them out or I would severely punish that kind of behavior in game to curtail that sort of thing happening so in terms of free will the DM allows real agency within the framework of the story and then in terms of evil sin arises from the player's choices but the DM Works those things to either redeem them for good if he can he puts up barriers and curtails that through his own own acts of Justice or ultimately he'll remove that evil from

[13:32] the game entirely so what does this mean for you ultimately I would say that it comes down to three things the first is just the way that you view your faith in action you are a collaborator with God not just a spectator the choices that you make take the story in a different direction there are people whose lives hang in the balance of your willingness to obey or disobey god with what he's calling you to do with your life there are people who will only accept the gospel if you take up the call and that's real it can be a little bit scary but reality is a little bit scary you have a calling on your life that you need to take up the second area is that it helps you to live with purpose mercifully this also imbus everything that you do with meaning every decision that you make can be made in partnership with God to co-create God's Masterpiece

[14:20] of Storytelling and then interestingly the third one is prayer prayer isn't just a ritual it's certainly not something that was scripted for you by God before you even thought to do it it's a way that you can interact with the dungeon master himself it's a way that you can interact with him as a as a character in the story and it's a way that you can get his insight and influence the choices that you make and call down the power of a dungeon master to help you make better choices and to help bathe everything that you do with meaning that comes from the intention of the one who is the one who is guiding the story so that's it that's my case for Why God isn't like an author writing everything down meticulously that will happen in his world he's more like a dungeon master inviting you into an adventure with him where your choices your creativity your own noble character or your faulty character matter deeply

[15:09] to the Direction The Story Goes so the question is what kind of a player do you want to be do you want to be a murder hobo and just chalk it up to well God made me that way do you want to be like the character I described earlier who sacrificed himself whether that was a moment of him giving up his life and death or whether it would be the more mundane things of giving up his life in service to others more generally sounds an awful lot like the of character I want to be like in fact it sounds a lot like the one to whom we are supposed to give an account it sounds an awful lot like the one who himself died to rescue us so what story are you going to co-write with God today are you going to collaborate with him in the sort of story that he wants to tell taking your agency seriously and playing the game the right way are you going to get more passive and choose a way of life that disempowers you from following him ultimately if I'm right the choice is yours