Fate vs. Free Will

Is it written in the stars?

This is absurd,
the mortals blame the gods! They say we cause
their suffering, but they themselves increase it
by folly.

Homer, The Odyssey

Warning: Before you read this blogpost, I urge you to throw away all rationality. Forget everything you think you know. Immerse yourself in mysticism, the divine, the unknown, become abstract. You are about to face ideas that the mind cannot comprehend, you are about to experience the way I think and process everyday living. This is sacred to me, so I urge you to come from the soul and the heart. Not the mind.

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It is 9:16 pm…

I am sitting down on my yellow couch — no, not yellow. Mustard. Mustard couch. Lucy, my dog, is beside me. I am in my apartment on a Friday night writing this post. How did I end up here? This is a question I have asked myself repeatedly, at almost every stage in my life. How did I end up here? I like to sit down and think about the major and minor things that have led me to the present. I moved to the states about two months ago. A pandemic happened two years ago. In between is a blur of mundane living. But looking back, even those everyday mundane things seem… significant. They led me to where I am now.

I frequently get asked how much control we have over our life. How much of it is decided by God and how much of it is decided by us? Can fate exist alongside free will? Can destiny exist alongside agency? Are we cursed to live out a life that is predetermined? Or are we blessed with the ability to choose our own fate? In order for me to answer this question effectively, we first need to talk about God.

Understanding God

In almost every major religion, God is omniscient. Now, I will try to explain this in the simplest way possible. What does it mean to be omniscient? In Islam, one of God’s names is “All-Knowing.” So, to be omniscient means to be all-knowing. God does not exist within time and space like human beings do. Our time and movement are strictly linear. We can only process time in one direction. We experience events as they occur, and we cannot know more than what is revealed to us during the present. We can’t fast forward and we can’t rewind. These are the limitations of the human body, mind, and soul.

Try to think of a time before you were born. Can you remember? No, it’s pitch black. Try to remember your childhood. Can you? Try to remember what you did yesterday in detail. The human memory is far from perfect. Do you ever wish you could go back to a simpler time? Do you ever sit down and think about what will happen in the future? Doesn’t it terrify you to not know what will happen once we leave here? When will you close your eyes and never open them again? What will happen afterwards? What will happen tomorrow? We simply do not know and can never know.

We are chained to the present. God, on the other hand, is capable of existing in the past, the present, and the future — simultaneously. He has seen it all. He has seen the end and the beginning before it came to be. It is not simply that God has predetermined things, it is that he is walking alongside us, and also one step ahead of us. This is confusing so bear with me — God knows what we will do before we know it. In fact, for God, destiny isn’t something that unfolds step by step like it is for humans. He is already aware of everything. But does this mean that we are chained to a certain fate? If God already knows what’s in our minds and in our hearts, if he already knows our choices before we know them, does that mean that we have no agency? Not necessarily. To explain further, we need to talk about decree.

Understanding Decree

Decree in its simplest form means God’s will. Nothing in this world can happen without God’s will. The world itself would not be if God had not willed it. There are some events that have been set in motion since the beginning of time simply because God decreed them. They are out of control, and nothing that we can do can stop them. An example of this, on the macro scale, is the end of the world. On a micro scale, there are many things that are decreed for us that are out of our control — our birth, our death, the family we are born into. Now again — this is going to be confusing to understand if you don’t make your thinking very abstract. You can view decree as simply the consequences of actions. Consequences that occur depending on choices that you, or others make. Your birth is the effect of a decision that two other people made. That decision is the cause of your birth. Do you follow? Decree doesn’t mean that all reasoning ceases to exist. Decree is simply the effects of actions that God has already set in stone. That is what makes this world logical enough for human beings to understand. However, none of these actions can occur without God’s will. Decree is what leads us to our destiny. Now I know this is getting very confusing, so I am going to give an example.

Scenario: you are applying for a job. Now, you have two inescapable destinies in front of you. You will either get the job or you won’t. You can prepare for the interview as best as you can, or you can just wing it. Both of these possibilities have been decreed for you. You can’t escape the possibility of getting the job or not getting the job, the outcome is not yours to decide. It’s out of your control. But what you do in between, is in your control. We have control over the choices we make even though they have fixed outcomes. When we say that God has decreed something, that isn’t to say that his will can’t change. What it simply means is that nothing escapes God’s view. Everything occurs because he allows it. Whether you study hard for the interview or not, he is watching over you, and through his will your destiny is unfolding. That being said, you can pray, you can talk to God, you can ask him to guide you to what is best for you.

Since God does not exist within time or space, rather he exists outside of it, he is also capable of seeing the bigger picture. Perhaps you study hard for the interview, and still don’t receive the job. It was written in your destiny to not receive it. A possibility you could not escape even through your actions. You become hopeless, because you are incapable of seeing how not receiving the job could benefit you. Yet God sees ahead. He sees the hundred other actions that occurred during this time that will eventually lead you to something better. Perhaps while you were walking out of the job interview, you meet someone. Maybe someone who becomes a lifelong partner or friend. In this way you can think that perhaps applying to the job and being rejected from it was not the point at all. Perhaps the God’s decree was for you to meet that person and having to apply for the job was just how God was leading you to them.

Furthermore, even applying for the job was something that you could have easily chosen not to do, effectively reshaping your destiny entirely. You would have never gotten the rejection, and you would have never met your lifelong friend. Life is like a set of strings. God has willed multiple outcomes from every action we take. But the actions we take are still dependent on us and others. Destiny is fixed. Destiny is the outcome which God has predetermined, and there are multiple outcomes determined by our behavior, so the route we take to reach that outcome is heavily dependent on us. Perhaps we rely on God every step of the way, we pray to him to give us a good life, we accept calamities and hope for better. God sees all of this.

Sometimes God’s will for us has nothing to do with our actions. Sometimes he has predetermined things for us to teach us a lesson. Like I said previously, there are many things in this life that are simply out of our control. More often than not, his will is directly related to our actions. Our sins lead to perish, and our good deeds lead to his provision. In every set of circumstances, you are faced with a multitude of possible actions you can take. You can do things that can harm you and the people around you willingly, or you can do things that you know are good for you.

I reiterate that God is all-knowing, existing outside of time and space, so he knows what you will do before you know it. He knows whether you will walk down the path of good or evil. He knows the consequences that will come about from each action, good and bad, years down the line, while you do not even know what will happen in the next hour. This is why it is important to always act in good faith regardless of whether you believe something is predestined for you or not. You have a choice. Destiny is solidified as we take actions. When you act out of bad faith, you are solidifying a destiny of anguish for yourself. Imagine that you are on a road that leads to multiple pathways. You have a choice in which path you take, but once you take that path… there is no going back. You have solidified the outcome… meaning the destiny of that road.

Understanding Free Will

I really don’t enjoy longform writing. And this is getting very long. But I cannot end this post without explaining agency, or in other words, free will. I will do this through explaining the works of Shakespeare. I remember falling in love with the theme of inescapable tragedy in his work. Although Shakespeare sets up his plays to seem as if each character is predestined to experience bad luck and misfortune, he purposely gives his characters the traits of lust, greed, and bad judgement which makes the readers question whether his plays are more about the role humans play in their own demise rather than life being as simple and as cruel as simply “meant to be.”

“Star-crossed” is what Shakespeare called it in Romeo and Juliet. Two lovers from opposing households, whose parents will not let them get married due to an ancient grudge. The fact that Romeo and Juliet were born into these opposing families was simply out of their control. However, throughout the play, we see the role that naivety, cowardice, unforgiveness, and miscommunication play in their demise. At every step of the way before Romeo and Juliet die, each character has the potential to make a different, wiser decision. Like I said, destiny is simply the road that we choose to take, and once we choose our road, we solidify our fate. Does that mean that we are destined to take one road over the other? Not at all. God has willed for there to be multiple opportunities in front of us every step of the way. If Romeo and Juliet, or any adult in their life had chosen to behave differently, perhaps things could have turned out for the better. But the fact that they never did is what solidified their tragic ending. We will never know what could have been different, because they never took the road that could have led to it. In this way, their destiny was to die.

This concept is much better represented in Macbeth.

If chance will have me king, why, chance may
   crown me,
Without my stir. (1.3.157-159)

Macbeth is destined to be king. This is revealed to him by the witches he encounters. However, they never reveal to him the road he will take to fulfill that destiny. In the quote above, Macbeth’s initial reaction is to let fate run its course. He decides to trust that if his destiny is to be king, then it will become a reality without him needing to meddle. As the play progresses, and Macbeth hears that King Duncan may crown his son king instead, Macbeth lets doubt, greed and envy take hold of him — leading him to murder the King. Eventually his wife, who helped him plot the murder, goes insane. Macbeth also continues lying and committing more murder to keep the throne. The witches present Macbeth with many prophesies that they affirm are fated to be true. Such as the fact that no man born of woman will kill Macbeth, or that Macbeth will not die until the Great Birnam forest comes to his castle. Since Macbeth believes these prophesies as they are, and that fate is set in stone, he believes that he will never die and get to keep the throne.

This is where the concept of ours’ and other’s actions influencing our destiny comes to play. The person who ends up killing Macbeth, Macduff, is not naturally born of a woman, but rather of a c-section. Macduff’s soldiers also cut down trees and carry them to Macbeth’s castle as a way to disguise himself. Therefore, both of the witches’ prophecies fail to account for free will.

So was Macbeth fated to kill Duncan, since his fate was to become king? Maybe not. Our destiny unfolds as a direct consequence of our actions. Maybe Macbeth’s best interest was to never have listened to the prophesies of the witches, since in religion, trying to determine our destiny is sin. No one can give us an exact timeline of what will occur in our life and trying to determine it through cheating can easily make us act out impatience, fear, and doubt — which is what happens to Macbeth, leading to his demise.

Perhaps it is in our best interest to simply make it a point to act according to God’s law every single day — to do good deeds, to avoid sin, to avoid things that will cause pain to ourselves and others. When we do this, yet things still do not turn out exactly how we want them to, we can rest assured that there is a greater plan for us. And we can be confident that in trying to avoid God’s will, to avoid not obtaining what we desperately want, to avoid experiencing pain and disappointment, we did not sacrifice our soul like Macbeth.

If someone came to you today, and said you are destined for absolute greatness in the future — would you kill? Would you cheat? Would you lie and steal? Would you bring pain to others to achieve your destiny? Would you act out of impatience and stumble over yourself to grasp your greatness? Or would you be content in living out your life the best way you know how every single day, trusting that if greatness is meant for you, that it will be a consequence of your good works and God’s will? Which road would you take? Perhaps this is the big question.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
(All's Well that Ends Well, 1.1.209), Helena