If God knows how our lives will play out

[brickwall]

then isn’t He just “going through the motions” when He interacts with us in the physical world? If, for example, He knows that someone is going to hell (even through His attempts to save that person), why would He even make an attempt?

P.S. I don’t mean to sound sacreligious in any way, I’m just curious.

 

[tonyrey]

When you love a person you do your best for that person regardless of what has happened in the past and will happen in the future. Your attention is focused on what he or she needs now. The value of the present is not cancelled out by something that happens later. This point was made graphically by the English poet John Keats who said if he spent the night writing a fine sonnet and it was destroyed in the morning he wouldn’t have wasted his time. Every moment of life - and creativity - is precious.

Obviously God doesn’t want anyone to go to hell but He respects our freedom. He doesn’t cease to love us if we cease to love Him. Jesus told us the Father sends rain and sunshine on the just and unjust alike…

 

[stephe1987]

Because He still wants us to choose Him, and because we still have free will and do not know our own fates.

Also, there are different ideas about this “predestination” stuff:

1. Only some people are predestined, others choose their path.
2. God is able to see the future, but that doesn’t mean he has to.
3. The destination that God sees is our destination if we continue on this path, but we can change our path at any time, and of course God can intervene.
4. etc.

 

[PatrickSebast]

It isn’t really so much going through the motions as it is God being God. God created time thus can’t be limited by it, for him everything that will ever happen in our universe has yet to occur, is currently occurring, and has already occurred. So what God does for us isn’t some active effort to change our future, but simply Him applying Himself to our lives.