Who’s really in control here?

January 30, 2009

Today's Reading: Exodus 9-10 and Matthew 19

A lot of people, myself included, have a lot of trouble with the section of Scripture that that describes the Pharaoh’s response to the plagues of Egypt. There are times in the Bible where it says that “God hardens Pharaoh’s heart”, and there are times where Pharaoh seems to harden his heart.

Most people have a problem with the former situation, because it seems to imply that we don’t have any freewill. After all, if God can harden Pharaoh’s heart, than he can do that to any other person. This makes it even harder to believe that a person is evil by their own volition. How do know that the Ted Bundys and Charles Mansons of the world were just product of God doing his freezing job on someone’s heart.

No one seems to have a problem with Pharaoh choosing to harden his own heart. After all, most Christians go with the basic assumption that human beings are choosing, volitional beings that essentially choose their own destiny. A person must accept Jesus plan of salvation, or reject it, and accept the consequences of that choice, pleasant or unpleasant. So eternity is your choice, smoking or non-smoking, and all that evangelistic shtick.

So who is really in control of our life? Do we just go about our day with a heart that God hardens and softens that will make us evil or good. Or is it our own choice that determines our heart’s density and therefore destiny.

The issue is, the Bible doesn’t seem to give us a sure answer. It’s kind of like at the end of Forrest Gump, where Forrest begins to think about his friend’s philosophies of life, as he is not wise enough to come up with one of his own. His friend Lieutenant Dan always believed in destiny, but his friend Jenny seemed to drift on the wind like the feather at the beginning of the film. Forrest’s only conclusion is that life can be a bit of both.

So maybe the density of our heart is both God and us working together. After all, do you honestly think that a fallen human nature would choose God by itself? I believe there are verses saying that God will take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh, which means that God can soften a heart as well as harden it. I mean, look at what happened to Saul. He went from Christian persecutor to Christian in the blink of an eye.

So, who is in control here? Both. Sure, God may have hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but does that mean that Pharaoh could have softened it. Conversely, God may soften our hearts, but we can harden them. I think the point is to soften our hearts as much as we can, and God will do the rest, because he probably helped you get to where you can soften your heart in the first place.