Omniscience

Time and time again I hear people say that the Judeo-Christian God is like some big puppet-master in the sky, using all the puny humans on Earth as His playthings and controlling what they do. Or at least, they say, that's what He would be like if He existed. Which He doesn't. Everyone knows that God and unicorns don't exist.

That's what the logix say. And the logix are all the rage right now.

Personally, I think God is a lot more like an author.

I've heard it said that when you're a good writer, you don't start with a plot. You start with interesting characters.

In my experience, interesting characters aren't contrived so much as discovered. Yeah, you have to reach for them, but once you land on them and start digging into the recesses of their souls, they're so much more than anything you could have deliberately constructed. It's like they've existed forever--they've just been waiting for someone to give them form.

This relationship between the author and the characters parallels the relationship between God and His children. The spirits of us humans aka the children of God have always existed in some manifestation or another, and we have always borne the special characteristics and traits that make each of us who we are. We existed forever--we just waited for someone to give us form. God "organized" us into our present form as spirits, and then gave us bodies that allowed us to come to Earth.

Through the process of giving form to the characters, the author learns who they are. Their desires, fears, patterns of reaction--she knows those things. And once she does, all she has to do is set the characters loose on the page.

Such a writer has no need to stomp all over her story, twisting every event to her will. Rather she lets things happen. She knows what those things will be because she knows the characters, but she forces nothing. She lets the characters be what they are and do what they do, and they create more genuine and interesting conflict, tragedy, and comedy than she could pre-construct.

Of course, the characters can't do everything for themselves. That is why the author exists. She's there to give direction where it's needed, to provide the circumstances to struggle as well as the circumstances to overcome. But she does this with a light and organic touch of a finger rather than ham-fisted blows.

Our Heavenly Father is the author, and we are the characters. He guides us, He places us in challenging situations and with challenging people, He gives us what we need to grow. But in the end, we, the characters, are the ones who determine what we do.

We determine how our story goes.