Sunday, March 15, 2009

The free will to choose God's will

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too” applies to the spiritual realm in a number of interesting ways. Many people express frustration with God for his apparent absence in human affairs. Interestingly, some of the angriest voices on this subject come from atheists. How can they be angry with something they don’t believe exists? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you don’t believe in God, stop blaming him for everything that’s gone awry in this world. If you do believe in God, do your part to bring about His Vision for humanity.

If we value free will and recognize that it is a remarkable gift that elevates humankind to a unique position in Creation, is it fair to blame God for not stepping in and making everything right in our world? Free will cannot reign simultaneously with God’s Absolute Dominion. On earth, human will rules. Yet God is involved with “our” world and intensely interested in our affairs. But He will not impose His will upon us. This is not His way. A parent who loves his child does not seek to control her. He gently guides and nourishes the child to help her grow into the complete person she is able to become. A parent who squelches a child’s free will, crushes it even, in order to institute a more ‘perfect’ domain is a tyrant or abuser. To exercise total control over another being, no matter the reason, is oppression and dominance. Is this what we want from our god? If God were to sweep into the world right now wielding a sword of lightning and strike down all evil-doers and demand submission and devotion from us all, would he be the God of love? Is a parent who gains submission and obedience from a child by overpowering her, a loving parent? We want our cake and eat it too. We want free will – the autonomy, the joy, the power of it – without the responsibility. Our collective free will makes us responsible for the state of our world. This is hard too swallow even for atheists. We need a scapegoat and God has become just that.

So if we are responsible for the state of our world, does God have any role in this world? I believe that Jesus came to earth to reveal God’s will. Reveal not impose. What did He reveal? That God abhors injustice and loves peace. That God is unimpressed with outward appearance and status but knows and cares deeply about what is in our hearts. That God forgives and redeems all of humanity because of His Love for us. Jesus, the son of God, showed us a glimpse of his Father’s will. Jesus is the spiritual equivalent of Johnny Appleseed. Jesus, the Great Gardener, came to earth and planted the seeds of God’s Love among us. Jesus gave us a template, a road map if you will, pointing to where we need to go, pointing us to the kingdom of heaven on earth. Clearly, we are not there yet. 2000 years, I suspect, is a fraction of time in God’s plan. He is waiting for us to catch up with His Vision for humanity. Jesus gave us a glimpse of this vision – one in which the sick are healed, the dead are resurrected and prejudice, inequality, violence and hypocrisy are replaced with justice, harmony, love and righteousness. 2000 years later those seeds are growing and bearing fruit. Despite what the cynics may say, progress has been made and is being made. Yet we have a long way to go.

God’s fertile ground is our souls. In the soul-fields of humanity, God’s Love continues to grow. God’s love is the seed. Jesus is the gardener. We are the laborers who must cultivate the soil. We must pull out the toxic weeds of sin. We must continually assure that the seeds remain in the fertile soil of faith. And we must turn towards the Son to receive the Light that is necessary for spiritual photosynthesis to occur - the process by which sinfulness is converted into Holiness, corruptible matter into Eternal Life,..

God will wait for us in the same way a loving parent will wait for his child to grow up. The parent nurtures the child’s growth and waits faithfully for the child to become fully formed as to be capable of a deep and reciprocal relationship. God is waiting with patience and longing for our arrival and maturation. Then we could meet, in the Garden, without the distance our ignorance creates. Until then, God will not impose His will. While we are young – that is, unprepared, unyielding, defiant – God waits. We must grow towards His Light and be ready to embrace and enact His Vision as it is in heaven. Then we can say with the full conviction of our free will, “Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

1 comment:

TMS said...

Good stuff Joseph!....my question is are we here to pull out the weeds or, as the parable says, to leave the weeds until the harvest? I know I don't always see clearly enough to be able to distinguish the weeds from the crops and I know that I prefer God's judgement over that of other people.