Pre-destination

A few months ago I had a conversation with a few others about pre-desnination on "Hold Fast". I thought it was interesting, but becasue of school we never had a chance to finish up. But school is over (yay) so I want to see if I can start it up again.

It seemed that from the conversation two main points were brought up.

In favor of pre-destination: how can God not predestine all things if He is all powerful??

Against pre-destination: How can God cause evil to happen if He is good??

I understand the point of those who beleive in pre-destination, but I fall in the camp of those who don't agree with this belief. I beleive that when the Bible says that God gave reign of the Earth to men, He allowed us free will to govern it as we chose. We decided to give the world over to Satan and therefore sin rules in this present world right now. Now God still has control, but there is a difference between having control and making every decision. I think that God has so much respect for our free will becasue He is a God who desires covenant relationship with His people. This cannot take place, however, unless the other party has total control to decide if they will enter into the relationship or not. God doesn't want an army of worshiping robots, He desires the love of His children as He said to the city of Jerusalm "how many times I have desired to gather you beneath my wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks". But the nation of Israel refused to follow God. This verse shows that though God desires all to come to Him, He will force nobody. The chicks chose not to come and it greived God's heart. How then can God desire for all to be saved and then send some to Hell? It is not consistant with His nature. God desires that all would come to salvation, Jesus died for all men. That is clear in the Bible. If God chose ahead of time who would be saved and who would not be, then why would He not save all men? That would be consistant with His nature, but pre-destination says that God sends some men to heaven and some men to hell. It is Satan that sends people to hell, not God. God's desire is to save, Satan's desire is to destroy. I beleive that God knows what will happen, but He does not cause the evil in the world to take place. He is allowing it for a time, because we chose to let the world fall into darkness. He is fixing our mistake and allowing us to help Him bring it back into light. And as for salvation, the Holy Spirit speaks to us all, but only we can decide if we will listen. If God made us go to heaven, no matter what we did, then we would be worshipping robots and not his close friends.

However, the fact that the Bible aslo says God controls all things is important and a valid argument. I believe that God's control, however, is not dependant on pre-destination. First, it is not necessary to make every decision to control something.

So I'd love to hear what you all think (and even if you were not a part of the previous conversation, please feel free to add your opinion. The more the merrier!!).