The Destiny Question
And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14b NASB
Who knows – Yesterday we noticed that Mordecai’s remark implies alternative pathways to divine fulfillment. Life is not cast in stone. Our choices alter the direction and outcome of the universe. Things change. Today we see that Mordecai’s conclusion forces us to reconsider all those twists and turns that have brought us to exactly the place where we are. Who knows if this place, this confusing, chaotic, calamitous circumstance, isn’t exactly what we need in order to make the decision God wants? In fact, every choice is a “Who knows?” question, precisely because we don’t know—we can’t know—the real result of our decisions. Destiny is not a truly human term. We make our future. It doesn’t lie ahead of us, waiting to be filled in like a coloring book. Rather, our future lies behind us, placing us in the exact spot where the next choice changes the path. We are the sum of all those prior branches in the road. We have arrived at this place because of all those turns in the road, and our next choice will simply move us away from some options and toward others. There is no script, at least not phenomenologically, because who knows what will happen next.
Does this make you uncomfortable? It might. It’s so much more snuggly to think that your destiny is fixed, that God has a wonderful plan for your life and all you have to do is follow it. It’s so much more relieving to imagine that your arrival in Heaven is guaranteed, that your choices are all secured, that God will make it all work out. In particular, that you are somehow removed from the burden of uncertainty. It’s all taken care of in the divine plan.
But experience and the text don’t seem to support this kind of destiny. Bad things happen to good people all the time. Terribly bad things happen to completely innocent people all the time. And we all experience some degree of this kind of chaos. We’ve all cried out for a divine explanation. We’ve all felt crushed under the wheel. We’ve all lost. We’ve all hurt. Pain is life’s universal language. Destiny cheats at cards. Mordecai’s comment helps us remember that knowing isn’t a real option. We do the best we can, hoping that our choices bring good results—but they often don’t, not because we made bad choices but because we just didn’t know.
Mordecai’s question is more than a tip of the hat to the human predicament. It also implies a problem with divine understanding. If you answer, “God knows,” then you are immediately involved in an ethical paradox. If God knows, then why does He let it happen? How can a good God know about all this evil and do nothing? But, of course, if Mordecai’s question forces us to answer, “No one knows,” then what does that say about God? Fortunately, the Bible doesn’t give us an answer to either one of these problems. Unfortunately, theology attempts to. Perhaps we need to be a bit more like Mordecai and simply throw up our hands in rhetorical relief, “Who knows?” mî yôdeaʿ End of story.
Topical Index: yādaʿ, to know, destiny, contingency, who knows, Esther 4:14b
But Skip, the biblical perspective isn’t that of simply throwing up the hands and proclaiming, “Who knows?” God plans the outcome he desires— his intentions for mankind and mankind’s purpose on earth. Yet man lives in this earthly realm as only a part of God’s divine family— in this place where God’s Sovereign intentions for his Edenic vision will play out through the obedience of his loyal imagers, who are his hands and feet “on the ground” now.
(And while at the present time heaven and earth are separate but connected realms, there are “loyal imagers”— both in the heavens and on earth— who persist by loyal obedience in resisting the opposition in this now long war against God’s original Edenic intention and God’s kingdom rule.)
God has decreed the end. The rebellion will be ravaged and destroyed by “a King after God’s own heart.” Yes, we may not know the outcome of all our choices, but the end is sovereignly ordained; and the means to that end may or may not be.
“But the ones having insight will shine like the brightness of the expanse, and the ones providing justice for the many will be like the stars forever and ever.” (Daniel 12:3)