I Don't Know...God Does.

God knows the all-encompased past, present, and future. No devout Christian would try to refute this statement, but many do so without trying. When a belief is accepted as true, one must accept the implications of said belief as true also, lest the logic for the belief become inconsistent, and thus lack a foundation. This is the problem that is present in many Christian's understand of omniscience (complete knowledge). They accept omniscience as true, but deny an attribute called sovereignty. Sovereignty is a word meaning basically "complete control". To put all of this more succinctly, many Christians assert that God knows all (The base belief), but deny that God has planned all (The implication of the base belief). This is a large problem in today's liberal theology that makes God seem weak and impotent. It needs to be addressed.
Let's begin to adress this problem on a base that all Christian's would agree with: humans are individuals with distinct personality's. We all have unique desires and passions that make us who we are. Can we all agree with this? Most unbeliever's would even agree with this truth, it is indispensable. From this basic truth, the Christian must concede that God created us differently; with our personal desires. Seeing as God does not create without a purpose (For his glory), it must be admitted that our personal ambitions, our unique outlooks on life, our different passions, have been put there for a purpose; and if everyone has specific passions, everyone has a purpose; since everyone has a purpose, the world has a purpose. Following? Furthermore, granted omniscience, if the world has a purpose, God knows the purpose for the world; if God knows the purpose for the world, than he has known it from before time began. What follows is this: If God has known the purpose for the world before time began, than he had the ability to fit said purpose to his goal. And in adjusting the purpose for the world, he must adjust personal passions, lifestyles, and desires. In doing so, he has inevitably planned for a world that follows his outline and will meet his goal. We have fallen into sin because it is in God's plan; we have crucified our Lord because it was God's way of showing us his amazing grace; we have suffered because God wants us to understand what Christ went through for us. Everything happens because God has ordained it to.
In denying that God has planned out personal lives, one can see now that they are denying complete omniscience; and accepting "partial-omniscience", that is, they believe God knows, but deny he has known from eternity. It is wrong for us to simply accept what is being taught in many churches and to not investigate it ourselves, if we do so, we fall into a inconsistent belief, such as this, that makes God appear as a being who puts us humans above himself; with all due respect, that is not the God I follow.

Reducing God

"God is not great". Have you heard this before? Perhaps from a close friend, from an enemy, or from Christopher Hitchens 2007 book god is not Great. This is not usually thought to be an empty solution to a contradiction in God's attribute without any backing, but that is what it inevitably reduces to. "Ah!" you say, "but God has shown he is not good, look at all the evil in the world! Does not a similar cause produce a similar effect?" Oh how quick we are to point fingers, to push the guilt off of ourself, to find another to blame. That is not my argument, but it's a valid point. My argument is this: if given the oppurtunity to do evil, and we do, is that evil? Of course! If given the oppurtunity to do good, and we do not, are we evil? No! In the book of Job, Satan comes up to God and tells him that the only reason Job is following God's word is because God has blessed his sock's off! And God says essentially, go ahead and take away my blessings and see what Job does! Do you get it yet? Is it not true that christianity believes that God has not so much said "yes" to evil as he has said occasionally "no" to blessings bestowed on us: Health, wealth, and family? Have we made the monumental mistake of reducing God to not only to the natural, but to an even lower unhuman standard? How crucial a mistake! For we consider ourselves justified when we say "no" to giving a homeless man money, and we see God as not being justified for saying "no" to that man's blessings. I suggest that we think of God not even merely from a natural perspective, but a supernatural one.