"God has a plan."

I do not believe in destiny. I don’t believe God has a “plan” for everything. I know a lot of people, when something great happens, say “It was God’s plan for this to occur” or when something terrible happens, they say “It’s probably part of God’s plan, he has something better in store for me.” But here’s the thing—if God has a plan for everything and everyone, doesn’t that completely conflict with the idea that God lovingly gave us free will? In Hebrews 10:16 it says, “If we practice sin willfully after having received the accurate knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins left.” Obviously God gave us this warning so that we’d make the right decisions, but if He already planned our life or the events that happen in it, what’s the point of leaving us with any warning or direction? What’s the point of leaving us his Word, the Bible, for us to learn from and to incorporate into our lives if no matter what happens is out of our control? Not to mention 1 John 4:8 says “God is love,” and if people got punished for decisions that were already “planned” by God for them to make, that wouldn’t be loving at all. The point is, free will completely contradicts the idea of destiny, or the idea of God having a plan. Each day we’re faced with decisions and we have to use our own free will to choose which way to go—to do wrong-doing or not, to commit a sin or not, to go to church or not. Now, why in the world would God plan for a person to do an immoral act? Why would He plan for people to die for no reason at all? Why would he plan for certain people to commit crimes, commit murders?

I can go super deep into this, but I’ll stop for now.