O Lord, Stay Your Hand
After some browsing through thesmokinggun.com, badjocks.com, and various other news websites, I am forced to come to the conclusion that the whole world has become nothing other than a Sodom-and-Gomorrah-inspired hell hole, and I am left wondering why we have not all been squished. When people disingenously ask, "How could a good God allow evil to exist?" they should really be asking, "How can a good God allow us to still exist at all?" He allows evil to exist because that's what we have become, thanks to all of us. The only good in the world comes from God.
I've been thinking a lot about Free Will lately, and how it's obvious to me that it comes standard in every human that comes off the line. Some people say that Free Will is an illusion, but I think it's really the other way around -- we allow ourselves to become enslaved to some act or thought when a simple act (or, in hard cases, repeated acts) of God-given Will would immediately break the enslavement. We don't have to be programmable machines that are socialized to act in a certain way. That's the beauty of being human. We aren't like the animals, who act on some programmed instinct. We may have instinctual emotions, thoughts, and even physical symptoms, but we can always act against our instinct, if we try hard enough.
That's what makes Tony Robbins and Scientology and every other cult that promises "Personal Power" or "Freedom from Whatever ails you" just different versions of the same thing -- they all tap into our Free Will and call it something else. It's not mystical (although a supernatural God did give us this natural gift), it's just part of everyone's ability set. And they make billions off of it by claiming they're the gatekeepers of some hidden knowledge. Crazy.
Of course, this Free Will is limited by our ability to think of things (we can't do what we don't conceive of), and our physical abilities (we can't run a 2-minute mile, no matter how we push ourselves). There's also a more disturbing thing that inhibits it: our own selfishness. If we do end up going all "mind-over-matter" and can act in whatever way we Will, where do we go from there? How do we know what to do? If we just do whatever we really want to do, we will end up in the same place we were before we recognized our Free Will, namely, a slave to our own selfish desires. If we are honest with ourselves, we will understand that our Will always bends towards selfish action -- not merely self-preservation, but self-destructive desires that make us feel better immediately but have dire consequences later. So why have Free Will if we're just going to act in our own selfish interests anyway? Why not just give up and do whatever feels good to us?
There is a solution to this underlying selfishness. It can be and has been solved by the only one who will call it what it is: sin. The only one that can turn you from sin is Jesus, because he defeated it. The person who recognizes this sin and turns away from it will find that his Will is suddenly Free, and that his newly Free Will is looking for ways to thank the one that turned him from sin. He will also have guidelines on what to be doing with his Free Will, instead of just letting his heart lead him around like a man holding on to a giant deflating balloon. We do have a purpose, it just needs to be found.
That's a pretty surface explanation of things, I know, but I like it.
I've been thinking a lot about Free Will lately, and how it's obvious to me that it comes standard in every human that comes off the line. Some people say that Free Will is an illusion, but I think it's really the other way around -- we allow ourselves to become enslaved to some act or thought when a simple act (or, in hard cases, repeated acts) of God-given Will would immediately break the enslavement. We don't have to be programmable machines that are socialized to act in a certain way. That's the beauty of being human. We aren't like the animals, who act on some programmed instinct. We may have instinctual emotions, thoughts, and even physical symptoms, but we can always act against our instinct, if we try hard enough.
That's what makes Tony Robbins and Scientology and every other cult that promises "Personal Power" or "Freedom from Whatever ails you" just different versions of the same thing -- they all tap into our Free Will and call it something else. It's not mystical (although a supernatural God did give us this natural gift), it's just part of everyone's ability set. And they make billions off of it by claiming they're the gatekeepers of some hidden knowledge. Crazy.
Of course, this Free Will is limited by our ability to think of things (we can't do what we don't conceive of), and our physical abilities (we can't run a 2-minute mile, no matter how we push ourselves). There's also a more disturbing thing that inhibits it: our own selfishness. If we do end up going all "mind-over-matter" and can act in whatever way we Will, where do we go from there? How do we know what to do? If we just do whatever we really want to do, we will end up in the same place we were before we recognized our Free Will, namely, a slave to our own selfish desires. If we are honest with ourselves, we will understand that our Will always bends towards selfish action -- not merely self-preservation, but self-destructive desires that make us feel better immediately but have dire consequences later. So why have Free Will if we're just going to act in our own selfish interests anyway? Why not just give up and do whatever feels good to us?
There is a solution to this underlying selfishness. It can be and has been solved by the only one who will call it what it is: sin. The only one that can turn you from sin is Jesus, because he defeated it. The person who recognizes this sin and turns away from it will find that his Will is suddenly Free, and that his newly Free Will is looking for ways to thank the one that turned him from sin. He will also have guidelines on what to be doing with his Free Will, instead of just letting his heart lead him around like a man holding on to a giant deflating balloon. We do have a purpose, it just needs to be found.
That's a pretty surface explanation of things, I know, but I like it.
posted by Mike Pape @ 8:02 AM
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