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If I were God how could I live with myself when I look at life on Earth? How could I put things right? Should I intervene and stop evil from happening? Do I only intervene in extreme cases like murder, rape, child abuse, and violence? What about the murder of a drugs dealer, or injustice, theft and fraud? Where do I draw the line that determines when I should intervene?
If I know evil is about to happen, how do I prevent it from happening? Do I have that person executed? Do I cause events to happen so evil is prevented? Do I have them locked up before the event? Do I impose my thoughts on a person’s mind so they will do things my way?
To do any of these things I am ‘God the Dictator’ because I become judge, jury, and executioner, probably thousands of times every day. Intervention takes away free will because I am going to decide what I will allow you and everyone else to do.
If I had the power of creation to create a completely new structure of life on another planet would I have the emotional courage to create children in my own image and give them total freedom to love? Or would I create a lower form of life and only give them a conditional freedom; that is you can only do the things that I allow you to do.
If God has total freedom himself then I feel that for God to create in an ultimate way he must create real children in his own image and love them as he loves himself: unconditionally. Therefore he could not control them in any way by withholding or restricting freedom.
To have freedom in this way seems the greatest way that a loving God could create life and this is the model for life that we can perceive existing on Earth today. To create life that can love is a risk, because this freedom also gives us the choice to be a saint or a serial killer or anything else
Is our life on Earth designed to teach us how to make choices between good and evil? Was life on Earth designed to be a fragile and limited existence to minimize the power but not the choices that we have to choose between good and evil? Mankind has used stone, iron and nuclear tools for both good and evil purposes. If all of humanity was born immortal and if we had the ability to gain supreme knowledge, we can imagine for ourselves the chaos that would follow because we would still have the freedom to choose between good and evil.
Sadly to create life with total freedom will mean that the innocent will suffer. In terms of man’s inhumanity to man it can seem that human suffering is too high a price to pay for the freedom to love. A loving all-powerful God must have known the risks involved to create life with the freedom to love. There has to be more to life. The innocent must not suffer in vain.
LOVE GOD
If we are created in God’s image and have the freedom to love, then mankind was created to act in accordance with this ultimate purpose. But how can it make sense for God to say that the greatest quality we can have is to love God, when God can only exist in our imagination. Can we only love an imaginary God?
Would God the creator be content to create life that only lasts a few years? Would he be content if he never had the chance to come into contact with his children on equal terms? If God went to all the trouble of designing and creating a vast universe for the purpose of creating children in his own image, he must also have a need to be with his children on equal terms.
If God has the capacity to create life from nothing then he must also have the ability to resurrect life after death. If we choose to show our love for God and our neighbours in this life, we can then meet God face to face in a greater life after death. That is to say, loving God can then become a reality. The greatest commandment is now making more sense.
Life after death with God must be God’s final purpose for humanity.
CHRIST
How can God teach humanity his ultimate purpose without imposing his will on us by force?
What role did Christ have in the creation of the universe?
Could it be that Christ said to God the Father, if humanity strays too far from the truth, I will take human form and be a role model?
Did Christ plan his destiny, his life, and his death before the creation of the universe? Or was his destiny decided for him on the day he took human form?
Was the plan to use the death of Christ to teach us put in place before creation began, because God knew the risks involved in creating life with the freedom to love?
Did God know that if humanity was to be created with the freedom to love that many of his children would be innocent victims?
Did Christ know in advance the price that he would have to pay if humanity were to be created? Did he know that he would also have to be an innocent victim?
With our knowledge and hindsight could there have been any other options open to God that could have had a greater impact on humanity?
We can look at the choices available to create life in an open way, we can see the risks involved, we know the price that would have to be paid by humanity, Christ, and God.
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Eric Hyom
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Comments
Is Freedom of Belief Orthodox? Jean Jaindl | Apr 6th, 2004
Though I am only on p. 16, this article is, on the whole, pretty logically layed out. However, I have detected some modernist tendencies (as condemned in Pius X's encyclical Pascendi), which I would like to question. God the mother? Really, this is quite unorthodox. Also, I cannot see how you or any other Catholic can say that we should not try to convert Musilims, Hindus, atheists, etc. to the one, true faith. Certainly God created us with the freedom to believe whatever we want to believe and to do whatever we want to do. Does that mean we have a right to do so in either case? Is it not owed to God that we serve Him in the way He has planned, and to attain to Heaven and the fullness of His love through the Church which He established? If it is owed to God to be loved, honored and obeyed by individuals, how much more so must He be obeyed by society, which is made up of these individuals? It is only through conversion to the truth that there is one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that we will achieve the social reign of Christ the King. This is very well outlined in The Social Reign of Christ the King by Fr. Fahey
-JJ
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