The World Needs to Know Podcast | Episode 2 | Fate, Destiny, and Taylor Swift w/ Aleena Kresnik
What's the difference between Fate and Destiny, and what does Taylor Swift say about looking within ourselves for the answers to these deep questions?
My daughter has been taking Apologetics for two years as part of our Christian Classical school curriculum. This class, among the others she has taken, has forced her to reckon with her faith as well as ideas shared by those who don't adhere to the Christian faith. She asked me to help her with an assignment, so why not come on the podcast and share what she's been learning?
I hope you enjoy listening to the sprouting thoughts of a high schooler and of a dad who finds himself challenged by the deep thoughts of his young adult children.
Want to listen to more episodes or even support this podcast? Go to www.anchordeepomaha.com/theworldneedstoknow
TRANSCRIPT
(upbeat music) - Hey everyone, you're listening to the World Needs to Know podcast.
I'm your host, Mike Kresnik.
And with every episode, I look forward to introducing the world to my friends and their views on faith, art, media, and whatever the heck we decide to talk about.
Today is episode number two.
And I am here with a special guest, Aleena Kresnik. - Hi. - My lovely daughter.
We're talking about the difference between fate and destiny.
Elina, why are we talking about that today? - Yeah, so for an apologetics school project, I had to take a topic that we talked about this year, and that was fate and how the world sees it and how the Bible or the Christian sees it.
And so today we're just gonna discuss the difference between fate and destiny and- - Can you define those?
I'm so used to thinking about them as being the same thing.
And I think the world talks about them as if they're the same thing.
And I say the world, I mean, just normal people.
So can you help define those?
How are they different? - Yeah, so fate often refers to the idea that certain events are out of our control or they're already planned and there's something that cannot be changed.
And there are some people who believe that fate also implies a higher power.
In mythology, you hear about the three fates.
There is a higher power that control those things.
We cannot.
And destiny implies that there is a sense of purpose or direction in someone's life.
There is a goal they are trying to get to. - Often with thinking about destiny, fate is something that we can't control.
Destiny is something that we can control or at least play a part of. - Yeah, destiny is something that we can change our direction or the path that we take to get to the certain destiny that we want.
We have control over how our destiny plays out, but fate is something that is out of our control. - In your apologetic class talking about fate and destiny, did the topic of free will come up at all? - Yeah, yeah, it came up a lot.
In how if like we as a people, we as a human race were given free will, does that mean we have control over our fate and our destiny?
And why if we were given free will, as like from the Christian's point of view, Jesus and God gave us free will, why would we then not have control over our fate and destiny if we have, if Jesus already has a perfect plan for us? - Right, can we do anything to veer off of God's perfect plan?
Has he predetermined every single detail of our lives or is there some agency that we have in God's bigger plan? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, okay, well, where do you wanna take the conversation from here?
We kind of have our definitions laid out.
Fate is something that we can't control.
Destiny is something that we have some personal free will and agency in getting to a destination, a destiny, something that we're going towards.
Where do you wanna go from here? - Yeah, so the first thing that kind of popped into my head when I was thinking about this was where do you specifically see fate and destiny being mixed up in the world or how do you see them just defined, how does the world define fate and destiny? - So when I was just kind of reading about fate, my mind was playing this weird word association game and I immediately thought of the movie, Meet Me in St.
Louis, where Judy Garland is singing, Have Yourself, Merry Little Christmas.
♪ We all will be together ♪ ♪ If the fates allow ♪ - And so she sings, if the fates allow, oh, there's this higher power that may or may not allow for us to be together again at Christmas time.
It's this kind of like depressing, fatalistic, who knows if it's ever gonna happen.
We can't do anything to change it.
You just kind of get that kind of depressing feeling.
And then obviously when I was reading about destiny, we were joking about the clip from Back to the Future, where McFly goes to the girl at the diner and says, - Lorraine, my density has popped me to you. - What? - Oh, what I meant to say was, - Wait a minute, don't I know you from somewhere? - Yes, yes, I'm George, George McFly, I'm your density, I mean, your destiny. - And so he just saw her as the fulfillment of, you know, his purpose in life.
And he was, essentially the movie is Marty and his father from the past changing history to make sure that they stay together, that his mom and dad stay together at the end of the movie.
Spoiler alert, sorry, the movie from the eighties.
You've had your chance to see it, people.
So, yeah, those are the two things that stuck out to me, just like, oh, these are two different ways the world sees, at least in pop culture, as I've seen them, how fate and destiny kind of play in our daily lives. - Yeah, and kind of going into this next question, you see in Back to the Future that McFly was doing, was gonna do whatever it took to make sure he was with this girl.
And there was nothing that was gonna stop him.
And it makes me think, why as human beings, why is our future so important to us?
Why is that something we fear as a people? - Yeah, I think, you know, just on a basic human level, the future is scary because it's unknown.
And if we can do whatever we can to control the outcome, that brings us a sense of peace.
But if you've lived life any amount of time, even a young child knows, yeah, things aren't gonna go your way.
When you guys were little kids, you'd often ask like, hey, what's the day look like?
What are we gonna do next?
What are we gonna do an hour from now?
And sometimes me and your mom would say, we don't know, 'cause literally we don't know.
And if we live with this sense of, I have control over every single detail of my life, we end up becoming little gods.
And I think as a Christian, that should cause us to pause.
But I think a lot of what we see in just fearing the future is, we're kind of struck with the sense of like, oh, I don't have a lot of say over how my life plays out, but there's something deep inside of me that wants to.
And I'm gonna do whatever I can to make sure that my life ends up in a decent place.
Yeah, and then you see like that side of people, but then you also see the side of like the, you do you and chase your dreams and follow your heart.
And that, I mean, like as a teenage girl, living in the world today where kids are always on their phones or always talking to someone or following this influencer or something like that, it's really hard to get, like not to get swept up into that.
Like I gotta follow my dreams, I gotta take control.
I am gonna do me and people are gonna like me for me.
And I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna make it my own.
And it seems like, I don't know, for some people, like that works.
But then like on the outside, they seem like they're fine on the inside, they're really not.
And it's really easy to get swept up into that feel of like, I gotta make this my own.
Yeah, I mean, there was a time when, if you grew up in a family of farmers, you were a farmer.
Or if you were a daughter, you were probably going to marry another farmer or something like that.
Or you were hoping and praying, you would meet somebody who would take you off the farm or something like that.
Now, you guys, me, you, your generation, you have so many options made available to you of the things that you could do.
You have, in a way, you have so many ways to make your destiny happen, whatever your destiny is.
And that, I imagine that can feel pretty overwhelming, having all of the options laid out to you.
And so there's, I wonder if there's a part of you or your generation that's like, can someone just tell me what to do?
Can someone be like a fate in some ways and just like determine some things for me?
Because I'm kind of tired of having to make all of these decisions that seem so overwhelming.
For me to be me, to do you, for me to be my own person and to lay out my life and kind of feel overwhelming sometimes, especially as a 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 year old, right? - Yeah. - And so I actually think it's an opportunity to actually long for somebody like God to say like, hey, I've got you, I have a plan and purpose for you.
And I'm also gonna give you a lot of freedom to enjoy the world around you.
That is gonna be a lot different than if you were just to go on your own and make up your own decisions, make up your own destiny. - What would you say to a teenager, someone either me or one of my brothers or one of my friends, someone my age who came to you and was like, hey, I am feeling overwhelmed.
I'm feeling this anxiety, but of like how I'm trying to get to this point, but it's not going my way and I'm starting to feel overwhelmed.
How do I know if this Jesus dude is really gonna, really has a good plan for me?
What would you say to a skeptic who's feeling the weight of, I wanna do this for myself, but I also don't know how? - Yeah, I would say something that the philosopher Taylor Swift once said. - I'm so happy that Taylor Swift has made it into this podcast. - I was sitting down with one of my own children or a teenager who trusted me, I would say, hey, we need to look, we do need to look into ourselves, but not because we have the answers, but because we are actually the source of our problem.
Like nothing, the scriptures tell us that nothing good is in us apart from Christ.
And so Christ actually takes our fate.
Our fate is we are determined that we are going to be separated from God, that we are dead in our sins.
Ephesians 2 says we're dead in our sins and our trespasses.
But it says, but God.
So God intervenes and changes our fate, if you will, to being on a destiny towards life, towards purpose, towards significance, towards wholeness in Christ.
Makes us alive with Christ.
And so I would say Jesus is worth following.
It's worth coming and seeing who Jesus is all about because Jesus is actually the way towards the good life.
He's the way, the truth and the life, John 14, six says.
And so coming and seeing who Jesus is and what he has done, I believe you will actually begin to see like, oh, where he wants to take you, where he wants to take the world is actually a world that's revolving around him.
If we're just all trying to either fight for our own destiny or just succumb to the fates, whatever the fates allow, we're landing in a world that just revolves around us or maybe revolves around our fears and what may or may not be.
Christ actually comes and resolves us of our fears.
He relieves us of our fears.
And so, yeah, that's what I would initially say.
What other questions do you have around that? - Yeah, I think kind of leaning into the, like kind of like the anxiety and the overwhelming, but there's also a part of it, like a slice that's like suffering almost.
And what like, if Jesus, you know, Jesus has a plan for us and his dying on the cross for our sins changed our destiny when our fate was we deserved death and we were going to go to hell and there's no changing that.
But then Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
Now our destiny has changed and we get eternal life with Christ. - Yes. - But because if we have a perfect ending with Jesus, why would we have to suffer along the way to get to there? - I think what anybody, when no matter what your worldview is, you have to admit that there's some sort of suffering in the world.
There's some sort of evil experienced in the world.
There can be some sort of evil out there.
We say war and genocide.
It could be drugs and violence in your own neighborhood.
It could be evil within your own house.
That's the reality, right?
People's lives are messy and there's evil all over.
Again, Taylor Swift is kind of a joke, but like there's evil in our own hearts.
We have bad thoughts about people.
And so we all have to acknowledge, no matter where we're at, when it comes to spirituality, that evil is real.
The thing with Christ though, is that he changes the trajectory and for those who have faith in him are still going to experience suffering.
But the thing that's different is that we are no longer separated from the love of God.
And I see this in Romans eight.
It says, "If God is for us, who should be against us?"
This is verse 31 of Romans eight.
"He who did not spare his own son, but gave himself up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?
It is God who justifies.
Who is to condemn?
Christ is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Child tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sore?"
Paul says in verse 37, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him, through Jesus, who loved us.
For I'm sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus our Lord."
And so a life without Christ, you don't have the love of God.
You don't have the love of Christ.
You don't have the cross.
You don't have the resurrection.
You don't have hope.
With Christ, you're gonna still experience life.
You're not immediately sucked out of all the bad things in the world.
You still have to experience life, but you don't experience it without hope.
You don't experience suffering without hope.
Or a bad day at school, or losing a job, or economic hardship, or whatever.
You experience all those things being held together and sustained by Christ rather than alone, left to fate.
Or whatever destiny you're trying to make up on your own strength.
And so, yeah, the person and work of Jesus in him, we find that we're actually relieved from having to do the work, but that the work is done by him and we just get to act out of the love that we've received and obey out of the love that we have received. - Do you have any questions for me as we kind of wrap up our discussion on fate and destiny? - What's been the biggest takeaway from your time in your apologetics class?
I know that's been, you guys have addressed a lot of topics and big questions along the way throughout this year.
What's the one takeaway, whether it's a specific subject or just like this big idea that you're like, man, I'm gonna carry that with me for the rest of my life. - Yeah, that's a good question.
It's hard to think about 'cause this is my second year of apologetics.
I'm currently in apologetics too.
Last year was a lot of the how to prove that God exists and how to go through all those arguments and all those things and now we're going through on how to apply those arguments to the world.
And so I think just the biggest takeaway from me would probably be the topic of fate and destiny 'cause I'm 17, I'll be in my senior year of high school in the fall and after that comes college and what I wanna do for the rest of my life.
And so it's been on my heart and my mind a lot of what that's gonna look like.
And a lot of what we talked about in class with fate and how the world sees it and how Christians see it or the Bible sees it is like what we talked about tonight and how we are not alone in the uncertainty and the confusion in what we don't know what our future is gonna be like and that's okay. - What I hear you saying there is that to go back to the very beginning about fate sometimes being connected to these mythical figures, these deities, like the thing that's unique about walking with Jesus is that we don't walk with a distant aloof God, but we worship a God who actually came down into human experience, into human suffering to suffer with us and to bring us life out of that suffering, to bring us glory out of that suffering.
And that's a person, that's the person of Jesus versus some deity in the sky.
And I think that, yeah, that's what sets those two worldviews apart and is appealing. - Yeah. - Well, Nina, thanks for sharing this with the world today. - Thanks, dad.
Thank you for having me. - You got it.
The world needs to know podcast is a value for value podcast.
So that means we don't advertise.
We don't have special subscriptions.
It just means that I make the podcast and you're invited to listen and to contribute whatever.
So if you wanna contribute something to this podcast, go to anchordeepomaha.com/theworldneedstoknow for more information.
Or if you listen on one of the modern podcast apps, you can donate value through one of those.
So until next time, thanks for joining us on the World Needs to Know. - This podcast is a production of Anchoredeep Creative Media.