Is each person's existence part of God's plan or are some just adopted?

[Jonatello]

I was always taught since childhood that each and every person started as a thought in God’s mind and it was His desire that he/she (the person) exist.

How do I reconcile this belief (which I’ve always held dear to my heart) with the countless instances of conception through sinful acts?

Adultery/Rape/PremaritalSex: was it secretly God’s will that these acts were to take place so that He could enact His eternal plan for little Jimmy? If so, wouldn’t that mean the existence of a pregnancy would render the need for reconciliation in that instance void, since the parties were in fact fulfilling God’s will?

David + Bathsheba ( - Psalm 51) = Solomon?

Where do research embryos, clones, etc fit in all this, and if they truly are people blessed with the sanctity of life, then wouldn’t that mean God has wanted each of them to exist? Then why protest their creation?

Is it more like each of our souls have been planned but the actual time/place of our earthly manifestation is a bit of a variable? Pure luck? How unlucky can you be to end up getting your number called only to find out you’ve been chosen as the soul to fill a frozen embryo?

I don’t know exactly where I stand on all this, so please don’t approach me like a heretic or someone trying to start a fight, I’m really not trying to make any definitive statements. These are just honest cognitive conflicts I’m having.

 

[Brendan]

So your main difficulty is accepting that God is powerful enough to bring good ( a new potential saint) out of an evil act ( fornication, rape?)

Or that God could desire to bring good out of such a situation?

 

[Jonatello]

So your main difficulty is accepting that God is powerful enough to bring good ( a new potential saint) out of an evil act ( fornication, rape?)

Or that God could desire to bring good out of such a situation?

niether. His ability and desire to improvise and make a good situation out of a bad one is very easy for me to understand.

But -if- many lives are just a case of God taking a bad situation (conception against His will) and making it good (accepting the new person as His own) then that seems to suggest every life wasn’t actually in God’s plans, but since they happened, He adopted them. And that is where my conflict lies.

The existence of life created via breaking God’s will seems to mean that it’s breaking God’s will to have created that life, unless it WAS God’s will to create that life, in which case no life-creating act is breaking God’s will, but rather fulfilling it.

If a person was created against His will but mercifully adopted, then that’s simply not the same thing as being imagined, desired, and then created BY God according to His desires and plans.

 

[Brendan]

niether. His ability and desire to improvise and make a good situation out of a bad one is very easy for me to understand.

But -if- many lives are just a case of God taking a bad situation (conception against His will) and making it good (accepting the new person as His own) then that seems to suggest every life wasn’t actually in God’s plans, but since they happened, He adopted them. And that is where my conflict lies.

Every life HAS to be the result of God’s plan. God is omniscient, that means that He knows all that is, was and will be. God, therefore, knows all that will be and has known all that will be since, well, the begininng. Nothing can ever happen that God did not know would happen.

The existence of life created via breaking God’s will seems to mean that it’s breaking God’s will to have created that life,

The flaw in your logic is that you seem to assume that it is the human act that creates the life. All an human act can do is to co-operate with the creation of life, to lay the groundword, so to speak. It is God that creates the new life, and God alone. No act of humans can force God’s hand in this matter.

unless it WAS God’s will to create that life, in which case no life-creating act is breaking God’s will, but rather fulfilling it.

No, it is not the fulfillment of God’s Will, only that God used the circumstances to make His Will known.

If a person was created against His will …

No one can be created against God’s Will, because we do not do the creating, God does.

humans may unite the matter, but only God can create a soul, and it is the soul ( by defintion) that gives life to the matter, or more specifically animated the matter.

 

[Jonatello]

Every life HAS to be the result of God’s plan. God is omniscient, that means that He knows all that is, was and will be. God, therefore, knows all that will be and has known all that will be since, well, the begininng. Nothing can ever happen that God did not know would happen.

i know its going to get colder next month, but its not a result of my plans, wishes, or desires. i always knew its going to happen, but that doesn’t mean i always wanted it to.

The flaw in your logic is that you seem to assume that it is the human act that creates the life. All an human act can do is to co-operate with the creation of life, to lay the groundword, so to speak. It is God that creates the new life, and God alone. No act of humans can force God’s hand in this matter.

i’m not assuming that at all. i’m asking “if, then what” coupled with “if not, then what.”

No one can be created against God’s Will, because we do not do the creating, God does.

humans may unite the matter, but only God can create a soul, and it is the soul ( by defintion) that gives life to the matter, or more specifically animated the matter.

i’m really sorry, please don’t take this in a bad tone, but i just don’t know right now how to rephrase my question in a way that would be more clear than how i’ve already described but this really is only repeating the factors i myself already put on the table here.

i have to step away for a while, but i’ll come back and reply again once i can muster the energy to rephrase in other words.

 

[Brendan]

No problem, take what ever time you need, clarity is good

I’m not taking anything in a bad tone at all

 

[Jonatello]

No problem, take what ever time you need, clarity is good

I’m not taking anything in a bad tone at all

well, its been a couple days now, and i’ve just been caught up in other things, but basically i’ll try to rephrase this whole thing so maybe you can better catch my conundrum:

if a life is created by people doing something God didn’t want them to, then even though God will love the new life, wouldn’t that mean that the life wasn’t part of God’s ideal will?

but on the other hand

if every life in existence IS from God’s planning, doesn’t that make every act that has played a role in creating a life (from adultery to fertility clinics to embryonic cloning) also part of God’s will?

example: David was terribly sorry for his affair with Bathsheba, and had to reconcile with God, and yet if it wasn’t for that affair, Solomon would have never existed, right? So, if God was not pleased with David’s affair, then it must have meant that, under God’s perfect scenario, any child that came from that affair would never have been. God ultimately chose to love Solomon, but wished the circumstance necessary for his existence would have never happened in the first place. Or…God ultimately DID want David and Bathsheba to hook up, because He had a plan to create Solomon, which made the affair necessary to God’s will.

or is there another way to reconcile each supposed sin being legitimately regrettable and each soul/life that came from those sins still being a part of God’s ideal plan?

 

[Jonatello]

oops…accidental reply here.

 

[Brendan]

OK look back to before the beginning of Time, when God was planning His creation.

He saw all that would be, every human act. Some of which, like David and Bethsheba, involved evil.

God could do to a number of things with it.

He could deny David Free Will, but that would preclude David from loving God, so that was out.

He could choose not to create new life out of the act, that is one valid option.

He could choose to create life out of the act and let the child live a regular life

He could choose to create life out of the act and use the child in His Plan of Salvation.

Obviously He chose, through omniscience, that the latter option would create the greatest good in that particular circumstance.

It is clear to us now, it showed that even in the deep (name removed by moderator)erfection of man, God may still bring about perfection.

So it is not so much about God adopting a “Plan B”, there was only ever one Plan, a plan that God has know since the world was created that involves each and every one of us. In that Plan God foresaw all the evil and chose the most perfect way of bringing about perfect Love.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

Since God exists outside of time He does not do things sequentially. When He thinks it happens. That is, His thought of us and His creation of us is one act.