Dear Editor,

First, I would like to express my enjoyment of reading Mark Lucashu’s article in the 2-8 issue of The Cracked Pot, “The Future of Middle Earth.” It was thought-provoking, inspiring, and enlightening. But there are a few things in the article that I would like to comment on.

In explaining why we, as humans, fear the future, Mark Lucashu said, “Perhaps it is our natural desire to be God and know the future that creates that fear of the unknown in us.” But I believe that this explanation misses a crucial point, the crucial point being that we take what we have learned from past and present events in our lives and transpose those things onto our future. Because our past and present disappoint us in not being what we ultimately want and need, we are made uneasy by the uncertainty of the future and the disappointments it undoubtedly holds in store for us. And so it is not that we want to be God and that from this desire, we develop a fear of the unknown future, but rather that it is this fear in us of our unknown future that gives us the desire to be God in all his omniscience and power.

Mark Luchasu further explains that our desire to know the future essentially reveals a lack of trust in God, when he says that “God, like Illuvitar in The Lord of the Rings, doesn’t want us to live our lives trying to decipher our future, which is part of the reason he forbids such things as palm-reading and why Ouija boards are evil—they take away our trust in God.” But I must differ strongly here. If God forbade the pagan practices of fortune-telling in Canaan which, in modern-day terms may be equated to palm-reading or perhaps even Ouija boards, then why did God provide prophets for the very purpose of revealing the future or even the Urim and Thummim, which were deliberately given by God for the purpose of asking Him what would happen in the future? I believe God forbade these pagan practices of divination because they involved the association with evil spirits, demons, or forces, not because knowing the future is the same thing as not trusting in God.

Other than these few points, I thought the article was an incredible read. Well-written throughout, the message of the article that we must trust God in the hard times to see us through remains a strong and powerful exhortation.