Opus 2025-431: I Knew That

God knows everything. That’s such a simple statement, but it is so complicated in its application that it loses it meaning.  One of the philosophical statements is that God knows every possible outcome of every possible decision down to eternity.  That is mind-boggling and totally useless.

I was wondering in one of my flights of fantasy if God ever read any of my posts and nodded his head saying, “I never thought of that.”  What an absurd question.  I’m sure that in a sense God knew what I was going to write before it even entered my mind, but then we enter into the issue of free will, and that statement that we were created in the image of God, how does all that work out?

In trying to understand how God can know everything and not just be mental mush I’m afraid I have to go to the human predicament.  If I said to you, there are 26 letters in the alphabet, you would probably answer, “I knew that.”  That answer becomes relatively humorous in certain stories because the person obviously didn’t know that and wasn’t thinking about it.

I believe that you probably knew there were 26 letters in the alphabet.  My next question would be when was the last time you thought about that?  That question doesn’t apply to people who have preschoolers or young children who are trying to learn their alphabet.  For you, this would be a daily occurrence.  For most of us it’s tucked away in a file cabinet of our mind readily accessible, foundational, and something that we actually have embraced.  We still don’t think about it on a regular basis.  We don’t ponder on the mystery of, “Why 26 letters?”  Other alphabets have different numbers of letters.  We don’t glory in those differences or try to figure out the philosophical reasons for it.  We just file away the knowledge and read our books based upon that truth.

I think it must be with God in the same way.  Yes He knows everything.  But He has much of it filed away in places He can access if He needs it, but it’s not really cluttering up His day.

I am sure that God knows everything.  I would qualify that by saying that He knows everything that He wants to know.  I would qualify that by saying all of it is not at the front of His mind.  Sure, He has a glorious filing system and perfect, instant recall.  That’s why He can look at something we say or do and nod His head and say, “Interesting thought.”  Of course He may just shake His head and wonder if we had a bad pizza last night.  But then He knows that too.

homo unius libri