The End From the Beginning

It says is the scriptures that God knows the end from the beginning, and I know some people struggle to reconcile this with agency. If God knows what you are going to choose, if the end it set, are you really free to choose? Yes. I like to think of it this way. Imagine I have a marble and I prop up a book on a table. If I put the marble at the top of the book and let go, what's going to happen? It's going to roll down. You know the outcome before I do it. You know the end from the beginning because you understand the physics of a rolling object near Earth's surface. Or imagine you ask your best friend what flavor ice cream they want. You know they are going to say chocolate, or strawberry, or cookie dough, or whatever before they say it. You still ask, but you know the answer because you know your friend and understand their likes and dislikes. So in both cases, you can predict, or know, what is going to happen in the future because you have an understanding of the present state. 

Lets go back to our physics model. If I roll a marble down a book, you know what is going to happen: it's going to roll down smoothly. If I roll a big, bouncy ball down a hill, you know it will go down, but you don't know it's exact trajectory or final resting place. Now imagine if I take my marble and put a ramp at the end of the book. Now you know the marble will roll and then jump off the ramp. What if I tilt the ramp to the left? The marble will roll down, go off the ramp and turn to the left. What if I put a little obstacle on the book, like a block? When the marble hits it it will be diverted, but you can still predict with some accuracy where the marble will go. We can imagine that if we make the ramp and obstacle smaller, and add more of them and make the book bigger, we cam extrapolate up to the size of a hill, with bumps and divots and trees all acting like ramps and obstacles. There is now so much going on, that you cannot predict where the ball will go, there is no way for you to see or hold all the information necessary. But if you could see and comprehend all the information, you could know where the ball would go before I dropped it. 

This is what Heavenly Father can do. He has a perfect understanding of all things. He can see and comprehend all the minute details, and he understands perfectly the laws that govern the universe. He knows us perfectly, so He knows what we are going to choose. This does not mean that He forces us to choose, or that we have no choice. I was telling my dad about this, and I really like how he put it: "Heavenly Father is far less concerned about what you choose than who you are. He knows what you are going to pick, but that's not the point. The point is you gaining the experience of picking it."

I watched a movie recently where one character can see the future, and she experiences it as dreams and memories. So even though those events happen at a future date, she is able to act and make decissions as if they had already happened. Most of those future "memories" allowed her to move forward in the story and save the world, but with some, the knowledge caused her pain. Sometimes she had to allow bad things to happen so greater things could come. Sound familiar? 

We on Earth in our mortal experience live in the present. The past is gone and only remembered and the future is yet to come; unknowable. But God who knows all things lives in one eternal now. He knows the end from the beginning, He sees all things, He knows all things. He gives to man the gift of agency that we may choose, and gain experience and so become like Him. He has a plan for you. He knows and loves you perfectly. He won't leave you to flounder. He is your Father, and He loves you.