Free Will?

I saw The Adjustment Bureau in the theater a while back.  It wasn't what I was expecting.  Honestly, I don't know that I knew what it was about beforehand.  I knew Matt Damon was in it, and I'm entertained by just about anything.
Cased closed.  :-)

I'm pretty sure its intent was to raise questions.  The biggest of which centered around Fate vs. Free Will.  The movie's website states:  Your life is made up of defining moments - random encounters, split-second decisions and unique connections that have led you to where you are today.  And it questions:  Are these events in your life predetermined by fate, or are they the result of your own free will?

There's one main scene where David Norris (Matt Damon's character) unknowingly discovers the behind the scenes workings of "the Adjustment Bureau", and Thompson (a head "angel" of sorts) has to step in and offer an explanation for what they're doing, which completely frustrates Norris, and results in the following conversation...

David Norris: Whatever happened to free will?
Thompson: We actually tried free will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman empire, we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the dark ages for five centuries until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman {aka God} thought that maybe we just needed to do a better job with teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you raised hopes, enlightenment, scientific revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason. Then in nineteen ten, we stepped back. Within fifty years you'd brought us world war one, the depression, fascism, the holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuba missile crisis. At that point the decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix. 

Yep.  I know this is Hollywood's take on it, but it really comes back to that age old question.  In Christian circles, it's the debate of predestination vs. free will.

Thompson: You don't have free will, David. You have the appearance of free will.
David Norris: You expect me to believe that? I make decisions everyday.
Thompson: You have free will over which toothpaste you use, or which beverage to order at lunch. But humanity just isn't mature enough to control the important things.
David Norris: So you handle the important things? Well, the last time I checked the world's a pretty screwed up place.
Thompson: It's still here. If we'd left things in your hands it wouldn't be.

Kind of makes you think, huh?  I used to be completely sold on one side of this coin, but over the last several years, I wonder if it's completely one way or the other.  Honestly, I think it's that I've come to the point where I don't know if it's worth the argument.  Sure, it's definitely worth thinking through, but I don't know if it's worth division within the church body.  I don't know if it's worth debating details if we're losing focus on the big picture in the process.

The one thing I have total trust in is that God is in complete control of everything that happens in this world and in my life.  Hands down, my God is bigger, stronger, wiser, greater, and more powerful than anything that comes into our lives, and He loves us and works everything for our good...even when we don't understand it. 

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.