God and Randomness

I happened to be reading Joshua 18 this morning, and a thought occurred to me that might answer a question I've had for some time. In this chapter I read that Joshua drew lots to determine God's will regarding how to assign land to the tribes of Israel. It's not the first place I've encountered in scripture where Israel employed what we regard as a game of chance to determine God's will. In the high priest's ephod, for instance, were two mysterious items called the Urim and Thummim, which some scholars think were some sort of dice. These were used to help determine God's will in certain cases.

The thought that came to me after reading Joshua 18:6 is this: To Israel, nothing was random; Even dice were guided by God. By contrast, to a modern atheist, nothing is divine, all is random.

This raises a radically different way to view life: What if nothing is random?

As a Christian, I believe all things happen for a purpose, but do I really believe this? I can't imagine having the faith to believe that God would reveal His will through dice. Einstein insisted, "God does not play dice with the universe." But are dice really a random, completely impartial decision-maker? How can God not know how the dice will land?

Randomness is a myth, and Joshua must have known this. With Moses gone, there was no one available to him who could get a verbal answer from God. He needed a tangible answer, void of any potential claims of bias on His part. For Joshua, strange as it seems, casting lots was an act of faith, not gambling.

This is not to suggest any justification for gambling whatsoever. Frankly, to throw money to what is essentially a god of chance trusting in his favor of "luck" is idolatry now that I think of it. That said, I enjoy games. I just won't play with real money.

But I wonder if I were faced with a situation where I needed God to deliberate an important and potentially life-altering decision between choices with no perceptible difference in risks, and I did not want my own unavoidable biases to influence the decision, would I trust God to govern a roll of the dice?

Thankfully, I have been blessed with wise counselors who help me see when my own discernment is lacking, so I haven't needed to take such a leap. But pondering this whole question has helped me understand why dice and lots might have been used in this way in the Bible.