On Knowing the Future

People sometimes ask impatiently: “Why can’t we know more about the future?” “Why shouldn’t we know the future?” One part of a possible answer to this problem, so far as our individual acts are concerned, is that ofttimes we can’t know the future because ofttimes the pattern of the future isn’t yet fixed. By this we mean that many things that will happen in the future will depend upon what we do and upon what others do, and since in the use of our free agency we and other men have left many decisions unmade concerning future matters, the results that are to follow those decisions may not now be known. Another reason, and an all-sufficient one for many, is that it is part of the plan and purpose of Providence that we should not know in detail what the future will bring in our own individual lives. For those who would like further answer, suppose we ask ourselves what life would be like if we did know everything that was going to happen to us. Actually a detailed foreknowledge of trials and tragedies to come might well destroy much of the happiness that is. Also in knowing the future, there would be less of the joy of discovery and less of the growth that comes with faith and effort. Imagine the monotony of a life in which each hour, each day, each year, everyone knew everything he was going to do, everything that was going to happen−nothing of the unexpected, nothing of the unforeseen, no pleasant surprises, no unlooked-for joys, no merciful concealing of sorrows. This, of course, is carrying speculation to absurdity, but it does invite attention to the wisdom of things as they are. And even if there were some means of acquiring a knowledge of the events to come in our own lives, it still wouldn’t bring us happiness. We must learn to live by faith from day to day, shaping the future as best we can with every earnest effort, and trusting the mercy and the wisdom and justice of God as the future unfolds before us.