God Wills It

This is one of those posts where I've had something mulling about my head for some time and just needed to put it down in sentences and try to get my thoughts straight.

I often hear people talk about the "will of God". They will do so-and-so if "God wills it"; they don't know if they should do such-and-such because they don't know if God "wills it". As I hear this, I thinking to myself: God doesn't will anything. I'll explain.

I take very seriously the fact that humans are free creatures (yes, Free-Will). To qualify this, sometimes we have physical barriers to action (alcohol? illness? handicap?); sometimes we have economic barriers (no money?); sometimes we have mental barriers (fear? insecurity? shock?). But, in light of all this, I think I can still say that human beings have a free will.

The next step in my thinking is such: if we are free creatures, then we are free to make our own decisions. The fact that we are creatures capable of making our own decisions makes me think that perhaps that's the way God intended us to be. So then, God has allowed us the capacity to make our own conscious decisions in life.

One may say at this point that indeed we are free - free to choose the path that is God's will. Well, maybe that's the way it is. But I want to propose something else: God won't make the choice for us. That is the reason we are free creatures, to make our own choices. Now, we have guidance: we want to strive to build character, and we want to avoid actions that are morally wrong (e.g., murder, robbery, and other universally recognized wrongs); we have wisdom, experience, and common sense; we have the advice of others. Why would God provide us with all this if he wants us to make the choice that he himself has already made?

I think what I'm getting at is that there are two different paradigms of how to approach living the Christian life and making decisions. One approach is to try and figure out the one-and-0nly-one thing which God wills that we do. The other approach is to recognize the boundaries (don't kill, act in love, etc...) and make our decision using the heart and head which we all have.

If God made a creation which can self-create (no lies, I'm an evolutionist)--and I would think he very much enjoys watching this process--then surely he enjoys seeing created beings create their own paths through life.

I have rambled long enough. I can see a dozen loose ends and logical faults in what I've said. But I ask for your grace as you read - consider this a publicly available freewrite.

Cheers,
Kev