Isn’t it? What is more important than…destiny?
IF so, and I think you may be right, then why are we here? To discover our destiny, to create our destiny, to aid in the destiny of others?
I don’t think that we “create” our destiny. Rather, we can “recieve” it!
For years, we have had the following hanging in our dining room:
Sow a thought, and you reap an act.
Sow an act, and you reap a habit.
Sow a habit, and you reap a character.
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
Love and justice.
Seeing as how one’s acceptance or refusal of Fair-Togetherness Himself, contributes to one’s destiny–but not so much as Fair-Togetherness Himself contributes to one’s destiny!
When destiny depends on X, and X does not depend on destiny, then destiny (though important) is not as important.
I think C.S. Lewis was mistaken when he said that “free will is the modus operandi of destiny.” One of the primary reasons that I think Jesus came into this world was so that we might discover our destiny in him. When Jesus “tasted death for everyone” and then rose from the dead as Lord of all, God was essentially revealing the destiny of every person who would ever live. Mankind has, I believe, always had “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [us].” This is the “grace” that God “gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” This destiny will, I believe, be realized on the “last day” when everyone who was given to Jesus by the Father (i.e., every human person) is raised up by him to “bear the image of the man of heaven,” and God becomes “all in all.”
There is only one possible destiny when the One who loved us enough to die for us has all authority in heaven and on earth. If the gospel we proclaim does not reveal a destiny of universal salvation, it is, I think, terribly deficient.