Date Posted: 07/08/2001 8:47 PM
Posted By: CurtP
Some of the members on this list have been asking for more "meat" in their spiritual diets. Here's a thought provoking story and a few follow up questions that I hope will help to serve that purpose. Enjoy!
THE STORY OF OSMO
Let us suppose that God has revealed a particular set of facts to a chosen scribe who, believing (correctly) that they came from God, wrote them all down. The facts in question then turned out to be all of the more or less significant episodes in the life of some perfectly ordinary man named Osmo. Osmo was entirely unknown to the scribe, and in fact to just about everyone, but there was no doubt concerning whom all these facts were about, for the very first thing received by the scribe from God, was: “He of whom I speak is called Osmo.” When the revelations reached a fairly voluminous bulk and appeared to be completed, the scribe arranged them in chronological order and assembled them into a book. He first gave it the title “The Life of Osmo, as Given by God,” but thinking that people would take this to be some sort of joke, he dropped the reference to God.
The book was published but attracted no attention whatsoever, because it appeared to be nothing more than the record of the dull life of a very plain man named Osmo. The scribe wondered, in fact, why God had chosen to convey such a mass of seemingly pointless trivia.
The book eventually found its way into various libraries, where it gathered dust until one day a high school teacher in Indiana, who rejoiced under the name of Osmo, saw a copy on the shelf. The title caught his eye. Curiously picking it up and blowing off the dust, he was thunderstruck by the first sentence: “Osmo is born in Mercy Hospital in Auburn, Indiana, on June 6, 1942, of Finnish parentage, and after nearly losing his life from pneumonia at the age of five, he is enrolled in St. James school there.” Osmo turned pale. The book nearly fell from his hands. He thumbed back in excitement to discover who had written it. Nothing was given of its authorship nor, for that matter, of its publisher. His questions of the librarian produced no further information, he being as ignorant as Osmo of how the book came to be there.
So Osmo, with the book pressed tightly under his arm, dashed across the street for some coffee, thinking to compose himself and then examine this book with care. Meanwhile he glanced at a few more of its opening remarks, at the things said there about the difficulties with his younger sister, how he was slow in learning to read, of the summer at Mackinac Island, and so on. His emotions now somewhat quieted, Osmo began a close reading. He noticed that everything was expressed in the present tense, the way newspaper headlines are written. For example, the text read, “Osmo is born in Mercy Hospital” instead of saying he was born there, and it recorded that he quarrels with his sister, is a slow student, is fitted with dental braces at age eight, and so on, all in the journalistic present tense. But the text itself made quite clear approximately when all these various things happened, for everything was in chronological order, and in any case each year of its subject’s life constituted a separate chapter and was so titled - “Osmo’s seventh Year,” “Osmo’s Eighth Year,” and so on through the book.
Osmo became absolutely engrossed, to the extent that he forgot his original astonishment, bordering on panic, and for a while even lost his curiosity concerning authorship. He sat drinking coffee and reliving his childhood, much of which he had all but forgotten until memories were revived by the book now before him. He had almost forgotten about the kitten, for example, and had entirely forgotten its name, until he read, in the chapter called “Osmo’s Seventh Year,” this observation: “Sobbing, Osmo takes Fluffy, now quite dead, to the garden, and buries her next to the rose bush.” Ah yes, and then there was Louise, who sat next to him in eighth grade - it was all right there. And how he got caught smoking one day. And how he felt when his father died. On and on. Osmo became so absorbed that he quite forgot the business of the day, until it occurred to him to turn to chapter 26, to see what might be said there, he having just recently turned 26. He had no sooner done so than his panic returned, for lo! What the book said was true! That it rains on his birthday for example, that his wife fails to give him the binoculars he had hinted he would like, that he receives a raise in salary shortly thereafter, and so on. Now how in the world, Osmo pondered, could anyone know that apparently before it happened? For these were quite recent events, and the book had dust on it. Quickly moving on, Osmo came to this: “Sitting and reading in the coffee shop across form the library, Osmo, perspiring copiously, entirely forgets, until it is too late, that he is supposed to collect his wife at the hairdresser’s at four.” Oh my gosh! He had forgotten all about that. Yanking out his watch, Osmo discovered that it was nearly five o’clock - too late. She would be on her way home by now, and in a very sour mood.
Osmo’s anguish at this discovery was nothing, though, compared with what the rest of the day held for him. He poured more coffee, and now it occurred to him to check the number of chapters in this amazing book: only 29! But surely, he thought, that doesn’t mean anything. How anyone could have gotten all this stuff down so far was puzzling enough, to be sure, but no one on God’s earth could possibly know in advance how long this or that person is going to live. (Only God could know that sort of thing, Osmo reflected.) So he read along; though not without considerable uneasiness and even depression, for the remaining three chapters were on the whole discouraging. He thought he had gotten that ulcer under control, for example. And he didn’t see any reason to supposed that his job was going to turn out that badly, or that he was really going to break a leg skiing; after all, he could just give up skiing. But then the book ended on a terribly dismal note. It said, “And Osmo, having taken Northwest flight 569 from O’Hare, perishes when the aircraft crashes on the runway at Fort Wayne, with considerable loss of life, a tragedy the more calamitous by the fact that Osmo had neglected to renew his life insurance before the expiration of the grace period.” And that was all. That was the end of the book.
So that’s why it only had 29 chapters. Some idiot thought he was going to get killed in a plane crash. But, Osmo thought, he just wouldn’t get on that plane. And this would also remind him to keep his life insurance in force.
(About three years later our hero, having boarded a flight for St. Paul, went berserk when the pilot announced they were going to land at Fort Wayne instead. According to one of the flight attendants, he tried to hijack the aircraft and divert it to another airfield. The Civil Aeronautics Board cited the resulting disruption as contributing to the crash that followed as the plane tried to land.)
SOME BASIC QUESTIONS:
1) Does “knowledge” always imply truth? Can you know something that is not true or does that demote it to mere belief?
2) Did God really “know” what would happen to Osmo in the future? Does He know what will happen to you in the future?
3) Was Osmo free to choose anything other than what God knew would happen? Are you?
4) If Osmo could have chosen anything else, then did God really “know” what would happen or did He merely “believe” what might happen?
5) As far as your freedom to choose is concerned, does it make any difference what causes you to make a given choice (God or something else)? Is your freedom to choose eliminated by something (anything) that caused you to choose a certain way, which God knew about? Does God’s foreknowledge of your life indicate that you are not free to choose, regardless of what causes you to make take a given course?
6) How does Mormon theology differ from pretty much all other Christian theologies with regards to dealing with this apparent contradiction?
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