... is never a good idea. It came up sort of randomly. I was standing with two co-workers, one who I knew to be deeply religious (here-after referred to as D) and another whom which I knew not their religious views (now referred to as T). T mentions out of nowhere, that she is thinking about turning her life over to God, but she simply knows that it would be pointless, because she is already going to hell. D spends a lengthy time discussing with her that she can still be saved. Eventually T confesses another thing that bothered her about God, and it was that he lets so many bad things happen. How can he know everything, and still let these things happen. D again went into a lengthy discussion.

This entire time I stayed completely out of it, pretended not to be listening, until D did something unexpected. She turned to me, and said, "Do you agree with me?" Now, any sane person might have politely declined the invitation to join the conversation, but I'm not sane, nor polite, so I simply said, "No."

This startled her a little bit, which wasn't so surprising to me. She naturally followed up with, "Why not?"

I said, "I refuse to attempt to rationalize a loving God against the evil in the world, but instead simply disregard the premise it's built on. I don't believe that there is a God. This solves your dilemma simply, and to me, satisfyingly."

I don't think D took me as seriously as I had intended to be, because she said something along the lines of, "Oh you" and continued her discussion with T. They went on for a good while longer, until she said something that I just could not let slide.

They were discussing free-will, and D said something along the lines of, "We all make our own decisions, God just knows them in advance." If you had been inside my brain at the time she had said that you would have thought World War III was about to happen. Red alerts, sirens, flags, bombs exploding, my brain had just been assaulted by a nuclear anti-logic weapon, and I had to interject. "Uh, what?"

"Every decision that we make is our choice."

"I mostly agree, but how can it be a choice if God already knows?"

"He makes it your choice, him knowing doesn't make it less of a choice for you."

"You're saying that free will can exist in the face of predetermined destiny. You do realize those two things are INHERENTLY mutually exclusive, right?"

"No, not at all. You can have free will. Hold on, I don't think I'm explaining this right."

This is when I got uncomfortable, because she pulled out her phone and began a conversation with somebody. She repeated what she had said a few more times, after earning the approval of whoever was on the line, but I still felt like we were misunderstanding each other.

So she handed me the phone.

I was curious, "Hello?"

"Hi there. What is your question?"

I rephrased my question slightly, "How do you rationalize God's omniscience and still maintain that we have free will?"

We went back and forth, and I felt like neither of us were understanding, or listening to the other person, until finally she said, "God gives us the ability to chose, by not acting. You cannot say God is doing anything, and therefore it's still /YOUR/ choice."

"I respectfully disagree. Simply by that information EXISTING it invalidates your decision. It revokes its right to be called a choice, whether the information is accessible to you or not, is completely irrelevant."

"Child," she said, which raised my suspicion, " you cannot bring God to the human level to attempt to understand him. He is unexplainable."

This frustrated me. I responded, "That does nothing to further the discussion then. We can simply end the conversation on that note, and have gotten nowhere."

"There are many things that cannot be discussed, or understood by us, you must simply have faith."

At this point, I was just ready to get off of the phone. I said politely, "I see what you're saying. I appreciate your time. I'm going to give the phone back to D now, thank you again for taking the time to talk to me."

"You're welcome."

She hung up before I handed the phone back to D.

[Call Ended: Pastor Jill (Not real name.)]

I became flush. I had spent the last thirty minutes arguing with a Pastor and it hadn't even occurred to me. I thought she was just one of D's friends. Despite my embarrassment at not knowing, I beamed with pride. I felt like we had a cordial, albeit fruitless, debate.

The moral of the story? I don't know. The moment she brought faith into it I was no longer able to continue the discussion. I just thought I would share my amusing experience at work today. It's the first time I have ever been able to discuss theology with somebody who wasn't going to throw insults or become easily flustered, and it was a lot of fun.