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i>All our pitiful little analogies break under scrutiny.

There are two sides here and they seem to by mutually exclusive. I see lots of scripture that says God does it all but in my experience, I make choices all the time. Analogies are different than the original or they wouldn't be analogies and while man's analogies may break down under scrutiny, God's analogies blossom as you look closer.

MHGinTN's tagline reminds me of one analogy that may fit here. We say that distance = velocity x time and we say that the speed of light is constant. The contradiction may not be apparent but Einstein spent a lot of time trying to explain it. He called it the theory of relativity and if true it means that distance and time are subject to the absolute properties of light. We would describe events differently depending on our perspective and our relative speed.

The reason this analogy is significant is because God is light and the reason it works well is because God designed it to work well. How many times in the book of Revelation does John use the past tense to describe something that has not yet happened? From God's perspective things may already be finished from the beginning. I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. Isn't it possible that God created the past, present and the future all at once?

Yet we are forced to make choices all the time. Shall we accuse God of making them for us because he knows what decisions we will make? I don't like the analogy of a puzzle, but for me there are still some pieces missing.

There are two sides here and they seem to by mutually exclusive.

They are mutually exclusive. There is monergism which believes God does the work. This is usually identified by Reformers and was the view of the early church. And there is synergism which believes that it takes man's cooperation to some degree. This is probably 90% of what the churches believe to day to varying degrees. Synergism is wrong.