Thoughts on Omniscience

My friend posited that relationship is predicated on the unknown.  Specifically in the context of the Bible, why would God be so emotional unless he didn’t know if we were going to choose him or not?  Therefore, God must, at certain points choose to not know something.

I thought about it in the context of our humanity.  We have this desire to fully know.  The very questioning of this argument comes from this desire to understand all things.  Why would God give us that desire if it wasn’t a Divine attribute?

I think the triune God embodies the highest form of relationship.  As such he demonstrates that he fully knows.  The Bible says, “For now we see through a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been known” (I Cor 13:12).  I think what he is talking about here is not just being known relationally but also knowing what will happen.

Saying you can’t have relationship without the unknown is like saying that you can’t have good without sin.  The knowing came first.  We created the unknowing by separation.  It was not his un-knowing but our own.  We were always meant to operate in knowledge.  Knowledge is intimacy with him, the perfect all knowing one.  The Bible says that knowledge is intimacy.  It literally says when Adam had sex with Eve that he knew her.

The question remains: how can God know [all the evil, all the suffering] and not do something?  Also, if God knows what is going to happen, why does he get emotional?

I see foreknowledge more like string theory in that there are multiple possibilities and outcomes as there are multiple dimensions and somehow God sees the interplay of all of them.  He knows what we will choose.

He gives us a choice but he wants us to listen to him to choose wisely.  Twice in my life I heard almost an audible voice from God warning me that the decisions I was about to make would cause me harm.

The first time I had locked my sisters out of the house because I was angry with them.  An argument ensued resulting in glass window crashing down on us and blood pouring from my arm.  But as I was locking the door before this happened I heard God say in this gentle but pleading tone, “Don’t do this.”

The second time I was about to date a guy I shouldn’t have been dating.  God spoke to me so clearly that it was not the right choice.  I did it anyway.  It caused me great emotional pain.

Yet even though I had not chosen his best in these situations.  Even when I disobeyed his voice, he did not leave me.  He was constantly drawing me to himself.  I remember interestingly when I was with the guy I shouldn’t be with I couldn’t feel God’s presence but when I was not physically present with him I would feel God’s presence again.  It was so bizarre but it showed me God loved me but he was not in the center of the relationship.

I believe the answer then is that he is doing something.  He’s speaking.  He’s always moving on our behalf even when we don’t know it.  He is our judge and advocate and he will make the wrong things right (Isa 35:4, Isa 63:4, Isa 59:15-18).

The very beauty of God I believe is his emotional response to his creation.  He knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead but yet he pauses to weep for the living ones.  He fights darkness but as long as his children can choose evil, darkness must remain.  So he waits and he weeps.  Remember that Ishmael’s mother called him “the God who sees.”  He shows his emotions to draw us after himself.

How many of you want to be in a relationship with someone long term who hasn’t said, “I love you”?  You want a guy or girl who has cried over you and told you that.  You want someone who says you’re worth the risk of me opening everything to you.  God lifting the veil of Heaven so we can see his anger, his joy, and his tears reveals his heart for us.