We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

butterfly

Why We Can’t Know Why

Various fields of science have taught us that the slightest variation in a sufficiently complex process at one point may cause remarkable variations in that process at another point. The flap of a butterfly wing in one part of the globe can be, under the right conditions, the decisive variable that brings about a hurricane in another part of the globe several months later. (This is called “the butterfly effect.”) To exhaustively explain why a hurricane (or any weather pattern, for that matter) occurs when and where it does, we’d have to know every detail about the past history of the earth—including every flap of every butterfly wing! Of course, we can’t ever approximate this kind of knowledge, which is why weather forecasting will always involve a significant degree of guesswork.

By analogy, this insight may be applied to free decisions. Because love requires choice, humans and angels have the power to affect others for better or worse. Indeed, every decision we make affects other agents in some measure. Sometimes the short-term effects of our choices are apparent, as in the way the decisions of parents immediately affect their children or the way decisions of leaders immediately affect their subjects.

The long-term effects of our decisions are not always obvious, however. They are like ripples created by a rock thrown into a pond. Ripples endure long after the initial splash, and they interact with other ripples (the consequences of other decisions) in ways we could never have anticipated. And in certain circumstances, they may have a “butterfly effect.” They may be the decisive variable that produces significant changes in the pond.

We might think of the overall state of the cosmos at any given moment as the total pattern of ripples made by a constant stream of rocks thrown into a pond. Each ripple interacts with other ripples, creating interference patterns. Every event and every decision of history creates such an interference pattern. This intersection of multitudes of decisions contributes to all subsequent interference patterns.

Each person influences history by using his or her morally responsible say-so, creating ripples that affect other agents. And as the originators and ultimate explanation for their own decisions, individuals bear primary responsibility for the ripples they create. Yet each individual is also influenced by the whole. Decisions others have made affect their lives, and these people were themselves influences by decisions others made.

From this it should be clear that to explain in any exhaustive sense why a particular event took place just the way it did, we would have to know the entire history of the universe. Had any agent, angelic or human, made a different decision, the world would be a different place. But we can never know more than an infinitesimally small fraction of these previous decisions, let alone why these agents chose the way they did.

The question of “Why did this happen to me?” is unanswerable. It’s a mystery. But this mystery is not about God’s will or character (as I argued here); it’s a mystery about the vastness and complexity of creation. Every particular thing we think we understand in creation is engulfed in an infinite sea of mystery we can’t understand. Anything we know about a particular aspect of any particular event that happens the way it does is immersed in endless human decisions, angelic decisions, and various “flaps of butterfly wings” that are too vast and complex to get our minds around.

This is the case not because we are fallen. It’s simply because we are finite. This is why our first and foremost job description involves very little knowing but a great deal of loving. Our limited domain of responsibility is primarily to love God and others as we are filled with God’s love.

—Adapted from Is God to Blame? pages 96-104.

Photo credit: Noah Silliman via Unsplash

Related Reading

Lord Willing? Part 1

Greg sat down with Jessica Kelley recently to talk with her about her book Lord Willing?. We’re posting their conversation in three parts. Today, in part 1, Jessica shares the story of when her son Henry was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor at age 4. You can find part 2 of the interview here, and part…

When Did You Let Go of Your Calvinist Beliefs? (Podcast)

Greg talks about his unusual transformation out of Calvinism. Episode 471 The Interview: http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0471.mp3 Photo by Paola Franco on Unsplash.com

What is the significance of Jeremiah 38:17–18, 20–21, 23?

The Lord prophesies to Zedekiah, “If you will only surrender to the officials of the king of Babylon” the city and his family would be spared, but “if you do not surrender” the city and his family would be destroyed. He then reiterates, “But if you are determined not to surrender” even Zedekiah himself would…

Topics:

If God Can’t Control, How Can I Trust Him?

Question: If God can’t always answer our prayers for healing, for example (and I completely understand why—free will etc), then HOW can he promise to bring good out of the bad things that happen? Surely he is powerless to do that too? And if he can bring good why can’t he therefore heal in the…

What is the significance of Genesis 22:12 ?

Abraham passed God’s “test” (vs. 1) by being willing to sacrifice his son. The Lord says “…now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son…” If the classical understanding of foreknowledge is true, God’s statement “now I know” seems disingenuous. The meaning of God’s explanation for this knowledge — “since…

Topics:

How do you respond to John 13:18–19; 17:12?

“I am not speaking of you all; I know whom I have chosen. But it is to fulfill the scripture, ‘The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ I tell you this now, before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am he.’” Jesus prays…